There is no categorical imperative or law of physics committing the US to support everything Israel does. "Stability in the region" on behalf of "the only democracy" is invoked like abracadabra. The Yemen atrocities, however, seem to be part of a bigger pattern. This analysis is from 3 years ago, under a president not known for being pro-Israel:

Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the United States is primarily as a source of cash for weapons. Since October 2010 alone, the Obama administration has agreed to sell $90.4 billion in weapons to the Gulf kingdom, according to the Congressional Research Service. That President Obama would so enthusiastically endorse arming such a brutal authoritarian government is unsurprising, since the United States is by far the leading arms dealer (with 47 percent of the world total) to what an annual State Department report classifies as the world’s “least democratically governed states” CFR

Perhaps "christian conceit" isn't fair or accurate. The US seems intoxicated by the same peyote of hubris that inspired other interventions. Our self-righteousness has a religious vibe to it.

EDIT: Noam Chomsky from 2015.

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An interesting tangent is the anti-Zionist Orthodox. I've posted links to religious Zionists like Meir Kahane; it's only fair to mention other views. The Three Oaths of the Talmud are a cental issue. 

Last edited by 119 (11/23/2018 6:42 am)

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power), all the rest is just a distraction!

Last edited by nojoum (11/23/2018 3:09 pm)

119 wrote:

nojoum wrote:

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power),

 
No, the best argument for Classical Theism "works" as well as anything in philosophy. That's the problem. The perception that there's something WRONG about the war in Yemen is more than a hardwired kinship altruism response. Our moral intuitions may have been manufactured by an evolutionary process, but they were manufactured to intuit something Objective. The foundation of morality is non-contingent because its Source is non-contingent.

Both through Reason and Revelation all humans are prohibited from shedding the blood of innocents. This is part of Noachide Law. If there's any burden of proof it rests entirely on the shoulders of those supporting any aggression. (What, it's only prohibited for individuals, not groups larger than X acting in the name of Y? Defending wars of prevention requires greater philosophical chops than I possess.)

Getting our Theology & Ontology exactly perfect isn't expected of mankind. Refraining from idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, and cruelty to animals is. And we're supposed to establish courts to punish violators. There is no "right" to observe false religions, curse G-d, sleep with everyone, or engage in acts of collective slaughter. 

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The War Nerd is a national treasure, though not for the faint of heart. His multidimensional analyses are often illuminating.

Well  you misunderstood my point. All I am saying that the politicians of any country hide their agenda and lust for power and wealth behind a religious mask/ humanitarian concern and etc. The rest can be also applied to media/ large companies and so on. At least Trump was honest and directly said that Saudi's give us way too much money that I can't risk losing.

Last edited by nojoum (11/24/2018 5:56 pm)

119 wrote:

American foreign policy is so bad I worry we could max-out our credit, Nineveh-style, Sodom & Gomorrah-style. We're not G-d's chosen nation. We weren't charged with a cosmic mission to spread democracy and American values [sic].

Did/does America have any credit to begin with?

When Americans discover that their country is not as good as they thought, then what? Should America get back on the godly path (as if it ever was on it)? Or is it appropriate to acknowledge that no secular nation whatsoever is God-chosen? Never was, except perhaps Israel and Judea up to Jesus' times, but that country got whipped by God just as any other, so on the outside there was little difference.

I tend to liken USA to the Roman empire. Was Roman empire a God-chosen nation? It surely built a great civilisation and spread it around as far as it could. But from the point of view of Israel and Judea, Romans were sheer colonists. And their devotion to their own state gods was sheer paganism.

Same with USA. Some aspects of "the American way of life" are contageous in themselves (particularly the decadent aspects of course), but spreading them around the world at gunpoint under the name of "democracy" and "freedoms" is sheer colonism. And the sense of religious messianism that Americans have, whenever it is seen as stemming from and protected by the Constitution - a secular document -, it is worship of the secular might of your nation, not worship of God.

Did the apostles try to put the empire on the right path, to reconcile it with God, by having the senate write a good constitution? Did they demand equal rights for Christians from the secular powers? No. They held to their own worship regardless of persecution. They had no hopes or delusions about a possible reconciliation - they in fact prophesied the opposite. The apostles accepted that martyrdom was their destiny. Insofar as your hopes depend on your nation, they are not depending on Christ.