I've never been a big fan of those alternative-history novels in which Hitler wins World War II or Richard Nixon becomes president for life, but recent events have me pondering a hideous prospect: What if John McCain had defeated Barack Obama in 2008? The answer, as indicated by McCain's recent posturing, is that we'd be struggling with a lot more than an economic downturn; we'd probably be in costly and unwinnable wars not just in Afghanistan but in Syria and Iran.

McCain has not only forgotten the lessons of his own generation's war in Vietnam, he's forgotten what this generation learned in Iraq. He is eager not just for Israel to bomb Iran, which would set off a devastating regional conflict likely to drag in the United States, but for Washington to bomb Syria. On Monday, he became the first U.S. senator to call for air strikes on that country, and during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting Wednesday, he admonished Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for failing to show leadership by "focusing on diplomatic and political approaches rather than a military intervention."

Panetta didn't take this sitting down; he said the administration was working to build international consensus, as it did in Libya, rather than taking unilateral action, and that as Defense secretary he has to know "what the mission is. I've got to make very sure we know whether we can achieve that mission, what price and whether or not it will make matters better or worse."

That's the part McCain either doesn't understand or doesn't care to discuss. U.S. military intervention in Syria in any form -- whether airstrikes or arming rebels -- would be extraordinarily risky. Syria is a powder keg of ethnic and sectarian factions with networks in neighboring countries; foreign intervention there would set off a proxy war that would further destabilize the entire Middle East.

To name just a few of the complications: In Lebanon, the politically powerful and heavily armed Hezbollah is committed to upholding the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it's not unrealistic to think that a broader civil war in Syria could spread to its fragile neighbor. If Assad should fall, it would almost certainly lead to reprisals, and likely atrocities, against Syria's minority Alawite community, the regime's most important domestic backers. The Syrian opposition that U.S. hawks would like to arm is an unknown quantity made up of Islamic fundamentalists and other groups that aren't necessarily sympathetic to U.S. interests. Taking out Syria's air defenses would be nowhere near as simple as taking out Libya's and would require a massive U.S. military commitment; it also presents risks that it would prompt Assad to use his country's stockpile of chemical weapons, which is said to be 100 times the size of Libya's.

I could go on, but I doubt I could say it better than the International Crisis Group, which wrote in a recent report:

Frustrated and lacking a viable political option, Western officials and analysts have toyed with a series of often half-baked ideas, from initiating direct military attacks to establishing safe havens, humanitarian corridors or so-called no-kill zones. All these would require some form of outside military intervention by regime foes that would more than likely intensify involvement by its allies. Even if they were to provoke the regime's collapse, that in itself would do nothing to resolve the manifold problems bequeathed by the conflict: security services and their civilian proxies increasingly gone rogue; deepening communal tensions; and a highly fragmented opposition.

McCain's hawkishness is starting to turn off most of his fellow Republicans, and even if he had won the White House, he might not have been able to fulfill his neocon nation-building fantasies. Fortunately, it will take an alternative-fiction writer, rather than a journalist, to imagine the harm he could have done.

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Photo: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) talks to the press Monday after calling for air strikes on Syria. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The departure from Egypt of six American employees of nongovernmental organizations is good news for those involved and may dampen efforts in Congress to cut military aid to that country at a delicate time in Egyptian politics. But the price tag for their release -- $300,000 in bail  per defendant -- makes the  resolution  look more like a hostage deal than a victory for due process. Indeed, the Americans were hostages of a sort, having  taken refuge in the American Embassy in Cairo. One is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The  Egyptian government has not ended its investigation of  the National  Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (LaHood's group), which walk the fine line between promoting democracy and interfering in Egypt's internal affairs. A State Department spokeswoman warned  that the decision to allow the activists to leave "doesn’t resolve the legal case or the larger issue of NGOs in Egypt," and noted that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton must certify to Congress this spring that Egypt is abiding by democratic principles.

The crisis might be finessed if Egypt's new parliament were to repeal the registration law the NGOs were accused of violating. But the initial reaction from Egyptian politicians  has been criticism of the military government for caving in to the United States. Investigating the NGOs may have been the brainchild of a holdover from the Hosni Mubarak regime, but perceived U.S. interference in the Egyptian judicial process offended even reformists.  Nor are the NGOs necessarily welcomed even by Egyptian parties that took advantage of their expertise in the past.

Meanwhile, the imagery of the Americans' ordeal isn't likely to do a lot for tourism.

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The West to Syria's rebels: You aren't Libya

-- Michael McGough

Photo: American activists arrive to the airport to leave Egypt aboard a U.S. military plane, in Cario, Egypt, on March 1, after the government lifted the travel ban. Credit: STR/EPA

America, it's time for a little presidential poker. Republicans and Democrats need to go "all in" on Rick Santorum vs. President Obama.

Yep, it's "put up or shut up" time for all you political Texas hold 'em folks out there.

Now, the Obama bet you probably understand. After all, he's the incumbent, and he's running unopposed in the Democratic Party.

But why Santorum? After all, he's not only anathema to Democrats, it's not clear whether most Republicans favor him over Mitt Romney (not to mention Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul).

For the good of the country, though, the GOP needs to run Santorum.

Wait, wait, hold the comments, angry or otherwise. I didn't say "Santorum would be good for the country."  If you're asking me personally, well, it's a secret ballot, but no, I wouldn't put my ink spot next to "Rick Santorum."

But I'm also sick and tired of the partisan divide. It's time to call everyone's bluff.

Conservatives maintain that Obama and the Democrats are destroying the country; that we need to return to Christian values, to exceptionalism, to less government, less regulation, less spending and less taxation.

Sure, Romney touts all that too.  But he just wants the Republican nomination. With that secured, he'll pivot to the center, and pretty soon you'll never know he said half the stuff he did to get the GOP nod. With an Obama-Romney clash, should Romney lose, plenty of Republicans would complain that he wasn't a true-enough conservative.

Santorum, on the other hand, is nothing if not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He might pivot to the center too, but he's so far right that he can't even see the center at this point. With an Obama-Santorum battle, we'd be able to settle the liberal vs. conservative debate that's stifling government. 

And here's where the "all in" part happens.

If Santorum wins, liberals should acknowledge that the country is on the wrong path. America doesn't want gay marriage, or legal abortion, or government healthcare, or environmental protections. It wants to slash the size of government and reduce or eliminate entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. It wants religion back in public life; it wants the government out of schools. It wants to spend big on defense; it wants to back Israel no matter what. 

However, if Obama wins, all those conservative Republicans would have to acknowledge that they were wrong. That they're not America's voice. That America is OK with gay marriage and a woman's right to choose; it wants affordable healthcare for all, and a safety net that includes Medicare and Social Security.  It agrees with the separation of church and state and believes that while generating good-paying jobs is important, so is protecting the environment. It doesn't want a 1% and a 99% but a 100% that favors social and economic justice for all.

So after election day, that's it. Someone rakes in all the chips. 

If it's Santorum, then Republicans in Congress, the tea partyers and the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity crowd can crow all the way to the inauguration and beyond.

But if it's Obama, those same folks need to face reality. They need to stop the scorched-earth warfare and let him lead.

And we can go back to the old days, when elections mattered.

Did someone say "deal"?

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 --Paul Whitefield

Illustration by Wes Bausmith / Los Angeles Times

So what have the Syrians done wrong?

When rebels in Libya revolted against the regime of Moammar Kadafi last year, the West rushed in with air power when it appeared that the insurgents would be slaughtered by government forces.

And the airstrikes continued to the bloody end -- Kadafi's bloody death included.

But in Syria, antigovernment protesters have been fighting -- and dying -- for months trying to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad.

So where's the NATO air power?  I mean, what's a rebel group got to do for a few 500-pound bombs? Are the lives of Syrian rebels less important than those in Libya?

The cold, hard answer is yes. Syria's rebels aren’t going to get NATO's help.

Why? 

As we used to say in the Cold War days, it's realpolitik.

In truth, what happened in Libya is the exception in foreign affairs.  Just when you think a precedent has been set, there hasn't.

An example? Nuclear weapons.  North Korea -- all Western bluster aside -– is allowed to have the bomb. But the fact that Iran is trying to acquire one brings talk of World War III.

It's much the same with Libya and Syria. The West could afford to challenge Kadafi, who in the end had few outside friends.  But Syria, and Assad, have powerful outside allies, including, as we saw this week, Russia and China.  And, of course, Iran.

Overt Western action to promote regime change in Syria, then, risks a wider conflict.  The Libya action didn't pose as big a gamble.

For an excellent update on the situation in Syria, read Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter’s story this week.  As they point out, the situation in Syria is more like that in Saddam Hussein's Iraq than in Kadafi's Libya. And we know how Iraq turned out.

So is the world forced to stand by while Assad butchers his own people?

Of course not. There are diplomatic tools available. The Obama administration and others are using them.

But that's cold comfort for the people in Syria fighting -– and being killed daily by -- an oppressive regime.

Unfortunately, it's the only comfort they're likely to get.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Two Syrians evacuate an injured fellow opposition member in the northwestern city of Idlib this month. Credit: Associated Press

Mark Levine, a professor of history at UC Irvine, responds to The Times' Jan. 9 Op-Ed article, "The U.S.: MIA in the Mideast." Levine is also a distinguished visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, "The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh." If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy. 

Has the U.S. really gone MIA from the Mideast under President Obama? Apparently so, if your knowledge of the region comes from its surviving monarchs, autocrats and assorted military leaders.

These are the people to whom John Hannah, former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and the author of the Jan. 9 Op-Ed article, has been talking lately, and it seems they are not at all happy with Obama's "lack of resolve" in maintaining the decades-old "Pax Americana" that has been crucial to ensuring their hold on power.

Hannah would like us to consider the failures of Obama administration policy that have led to this perception, including "overblown promises" to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "betraying" faithful clients such as deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and failing to attack Iran. But the far more pertinent question is why Hannah is attempting to sell a narrative of American retreat that is so at odds with the realities on the ground.

Specifically, Hannah accuses Obama of being a "willing accomplice in the dismantling of a regional order ... that has been the linchpin of Mideast security for decades." In fact, at almost every turn, the president has done everything in his power to preserve the existing system. Setting aside the assassination of Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and the surge in Afghanistan, Obama has continued and in many cases increased U.S. aid (most of it military) to clients such as Morocco and Jordan, sold tens of billions of dollars in advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, tightened the economic screws on Iran and refused to punish Israel (and in fact just increased aid) despite its continued settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Most important, Obama has consistently refused to offer more than the weakest support for the pro-democracy forces in the region during the past year of revolutionary upheavals. Contrary to Hannah's claim, Obama never "betrayed" Mubarak. Rather, the sclerotic Mubarak so badly miscalculated the level of public anger at the regime's increasingly oppressive and corrupt behavior that the military leadership was forced to push him from power to protect its dominant position in the country.

Obama has stood behind the Egyptian military since Mubarak's departure despite the junta's deadly attacks on the most fundamental human and political rights of Egyptians. Similarly, the president continues to throw America's weight behind preserving the status quo in Bahrain while refusing to push for a real political transition in Yemen.

More broadly, Obama has deepened American support for the region's corrupt and repressive monarchies. Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive countries on Earth, is in no danger of being abandoned by Obama, who authorized at least $60 billion worth of arms sales to the kingdom in the last two years. These will, of course, be matched by tens of billions of dollars in extra military aid to Israel and Egypt to preserve the "balance of power" in the region, not to mention the immense profits for U.S. arms makers.

The only country where the United States has been willing forcefully to support anti-government protests is Libya, which was ruled by a longtime nemesis of the United States whose replacement by NATO-backed forces clearly strengthened U.S. interests.

In fact, as the head of a foundation that ostensibly supports the "defense of democracies," Hannah is noticeably silent about the one area where the Obama administration has been woefully MIA -- in forcefully condemning the ongoing abuse of human rights by America's Mideast allies.

If Hannah had chosen to listen to civil society and pro-democracy activists rather than autocratic leaders, he would admit that Obama has remained as engaged as previous administrations in the region, with a similar disregard for how American support for repressive and corrupt governments harms the cause of peace, democracy and development.

But Hannah never once quotes or even mentions a pro-democracy activist or directly discusses the protests that have swept the region. It's as if the last year never happened in his political universe; or, if it has, its implications can only be mentioned obliquely, as a threat to an order whose true nature can't be admitted yet must be preserved.

I have spent the last year regularly meeting with grass-roots activists across the Arab world. In almost a dozen trips, the most consistent message I have heard from activists is not that the United States is in retreat but rather that it remains too supportive of the system many have died protesting. Wherever I've traveled, the goal has been the same, as symbolized by perhaps the most famous chant of the Arab Spring: "The people want the downfall of the system!" ("Ash-sha'ab, yurid, isqat an-nizzam!")

Needless to say, the Obama administration has not listened to such pleas. It has consistently told activists that the U.S. will not abandon longtime military and political allies or a system that has served American interests so well for the sake of human rights and real democracy. 

Sadly, this policy, and not the supposed "erosion" of U.S. power and credibility, as Hannah describes it, constitutes the real tragedy of Obama's  Mideast policy. If the president doesn't change course soon, it will also be among his most ignoble legacies.

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-- Mark LeVine

Photo: President Obama in 2010 with, from left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press

Follow LeVine on Twitter at @culturejamming.

Rick Perry is not the first to defend the four Marines who were catapulted to infamy last week when an Internet video emerged capturing them urinating on what appeared to be the corpses of three dead Taliban fighters. Conservative luminary Britt Hume said on Fox News  that he didn't see anything despicable about it, and author Sebastian Junger penned a thoughtful essay in the Washington Post that defends if not excuses the Marines based on his own experiences studying the emotional state of combat soldiers. But that's not the way Perry put it. And that's why he doesn't just infuriate liberals, he inspires little confidence among educated conservatives.

In an appearance Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Perry blasted the Obama administration for what he considered its overreaction to the video. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the actions of the Marines might be considered a war crime, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the incident "utterly deplorable" and numerous generals condemned the individuals involved while promising a full investigation. To Perry, this reaction shows nothing but "disdain for the military."

"These kids made a mistake, there's no doubt about it," Perry said. "But to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top."

What would you call it, Gov. Perry? Desecration of enemy corpses is clearly forbidden by the Geneva Convention. If Perry's looking for legal advice, he might want to consult a memo sent to the troops Friday by Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who wrote, "Defiling, desecrating, mocking, photographing or filming for personal use insurgent dead constitutes a grave breach of the (law of armed conflict)." The four Marines are very likely to be court-martialed, and while it's not clear what charges they'll face, there is nothing remotely "over the top" about suggesting they may be guilty of a war crime; that's merely stating the facts.

What's more to the point, Perry --who is trying to drum up pro-military votes -- seems to think it would be a good idea for the president and his administration to shrug off breaches of the rules of military conduct, international law or common decency when they're committed by active-duty soldiers. Perry's approach, popular as it may be among his dwindling base, would invite international condemnation, promote retaliation on the battlefield, gift Islamic insurgents with a sterling recruitment tool and undermine relations with key allies such as the Afghan and Pakistani governments. Which makes me wonder, and not for the first time: How long are we going to have to listen to this hillbilly nonsense before Perry bows to the inevitable and drops out of the GOP presidential race?

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I guess now we can call it the "Iran rule."

You know: It's the rule that says the United States must go to war with a country or risk loosing another Hitler on the world.

In 2003, of course, it was the "Iraq rule." Remember how George W. Bush and other administration officials and conservatives justified the invasion of Iraq by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler?

Although, to be fair, Bush was just following in the tracks of his father, who also invoked the Hitler comparison in deciding to oust Hussein from Kuwait in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

If I didn't know better, I'd say too many U.S. policymakers have seen "The Boys From Brazil" and assumed it was a documentary.

Today's Hitler, though, is -- take your pick -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the mullahs who rule Iran. And they want Iran to be a nuclear power. And they must be stopped. And the U.S., of course, must do the stopping. And all options must be on the table, including military action.

Who says so?

Well, except for Ron Paul, every Republican running for president, for starters. Here's Mitt Romney:

"If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney stated unequivocally. "And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

But this is a bipartisan stance, it appears. As The Times quoted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Sunday:

"Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon?  No," Panetta said. "But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, 'Do not develop a nuclear weapon.' That's a red line for us."

"I think they need to know that ... if they take that step, that they're going to get stopped," Panetta said, adding that he was not taking any options off the table.

Gosh, fellows, maybe you could all take a break from the Xbox and Call of Duty for a bit?  You know, get out for some fresh air?

Because honestly, I think the American people are just a bit tired of playing Hitler whack-a-mole.

And this is starting to give me 2003 deja vu: Everyone knows the Iranians are building a bomb, just like everyone knew Saddam Hussein was pursuing a bomb.

Except he wasn't. 

And even if the Iranians are, what makes everyone so sure they'd use it?

Ah, you say, just check what Ahmadinejad has said.

OK. Check what Romney just said. Check what Panetta just said. Does that mean we're automatically going to war?

If we went to war every time someone said something bellicose, we'd be going to war a lot -- uh, I mean a lot more.

We didn't want the Soviet Union to get the bomb, but it did. We didn't want China to get the bomb, but it did. Ditto North Korea. And Pakistan.

Each time, some argued -- as some, especially Israel, argue now about Iran -- that it would be Armageddon if the bad guys got the bomb.

Well, the United States has lived for more than 60 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at it.

It's no picnic, but we're still here.

Plus, sanctions against Iran are starting to take their toll. They might work. At any rate, they don't cost nearly as much as a military action.

So why don't we give the war talk a rest. Hitler, after all, is dead.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: A U.S. sailor in a safety boat observes a boarding team from the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Kidd after Iranian fishermen were rescued from pirates in the Arabian Sea. Credit: U.S. Navy

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, responds to The Times' Jan. 2 Op-Ed article, "Bibi and Barack." Bennis is the coauthor of "Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer" and the author of "Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer."

If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy. 

Aaron David Miller is right: President Obama does have an Israel problem. But Miller is wrong about the roots of the problem. 

The problem isn't Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his Likud Party, or even Israel's current extreme right-wing government. Israel's fundamental policy toward the Palestinians is the problem, and that policy has hardly changed, despite the seemingly diverse sequence of left, right and center parties that have been in power.

Just look at the occupation of the territories seized in 1967 -- the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Settlement building, along with all the land and water theft that goes with it, began just weeks after the Six-Day War. And a right-wing government wasn't in power; it was Mapai, the left-wing precursor to today's Labor Party. The right wing wouldn't come to power until almost three decades after Israel's founding, when Menachem Begin led the Likud coalition to victory in 1977. 

Settlement construction and expansion started right after the war and continued under all the leftist (in the Israeli context) governments. By the time Likud came to power 10 years after the 1967 war, there were already more than 50,000 Israeli settlers living in Jews-only settlements in the occupied territories, most of them in occupied East Jerusalem, with smaller numbers in the West Bank and Gaza. Settlement expansion advanced under Labor, Likud and Kadima-led governments. Now there are more than 600,000 settlers living illegally in Palestinian territory, divided between the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As Moshe Dayan, a former defense and foreign minister, explained, the settlements were necessary "not because they can ensure security better than the army but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the [Israel Defense Forces] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population."

The different parties, prime ministers and officials sometimes used different language. Some repeated the words the international community wanted, a "land for peace" deal and "two states"; others insisted that only "peace for peace" or "Jordan is Palestine" was acceptable. Some spoke loudly in defense of settlements, while others only whispered.

But there was no diversity of substance. What happened in the real world, the "facts on the ground," continued regardless of which party was in power.  

Other things continued too -- settler violence against Palestinians, expropriation of Palestinian land and water, illegal closures, collective punishments including massive armed assault, arrest without charge, extra-judicial assassinations and the siege of Gaza. 

Of course, that's just in the occupied territories. Inside Israel, Arab Israelis -- those who survived the dispossession of 1947-48 -- live as second-class citizens. They have the right to vote, but they are subject to legalized discrimination in favor of the Jewish majority. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah reported to the United Nations more than 20 such discriminatory laws, the most important of which deny Palestinian citizens equal rights on issues of immigration and citizenship as well as land ownership. And outside, the Palestinian refugees, now numbering in the millions, have been denied their internationally guaranteed right of return by Israeli governments of every political stripe.

The whole range of Israeli political parties has continued to implement these same policies. They may talk a different talk, but they all walk the same walk.

What none of these governments is prepared to acknowledge is what it will take for a real solution, one that is lasting, comprehensive and just: human rights and equality for all based on international law. It shouldn't be more complicated than that. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies everyone has the right to return to their home country, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to live in safety, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to an equal say in the government that rules their country, no exceptions.

Every law should treat all citizens the same, no exceptions. Every government has the obligation to live up to the treaties it has signed, including the U.N. conventions on human rights, against racism, the Geneva Conventions and more. Israel has signed them all. Yet not one Israeli government, of any party, has implemented them. 

As long as the United States provides the Israeli government more than $3 billion in aid every year, regardless of those violations, and protects Israel from being held accountable in the U.N., regardless of those violations, no Israeli prime minister has much reason to change. That's Obama's Israel problem -- not Netanyahu. Changing U.S. policy should provide the solution.

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-- Phyllis Bennis

Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

Remember "the mother of all bombs"?

Well, there's a whole new mama in town.

The Air Force's Massive Ordnance Penetrator, developed by Boeing, is more than 20 feet long, weighs in at 30,000 pounds (by comparison, the "mother" GBU-43 MOAB is a trim 22,600 pounds) and is packed with 5,300 pounds of explosives.

The  Air Force ordered 20, at a total cost of $314 million, and started taking delivery in September.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator (wonder if anyone calls it the MOP?) has one job: pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.

Hmmm, wonder which country we don't like that has stuff hidden in underground bunkers?

From Times staff writer W.J. Hennigan's story:

"The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a weapon system designed to accomplish a difficult, complicated mission of reaching and destroying our adversaries' weapons of mass destruction located in well-protected facilities," Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Experts took note of the fact that the military disclosed delivery of the new bunker-busting bomb less than a week after a United Nations agency warned that Iran was secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon. That country is known to have hidden nuclear complexes that are fortified with steel and concrete, and buried under mountains.

This week, Times columnist Doyle McManus wrote that both President Obama and his Republican rivals  have made similar statements on Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon:

Obama and all the likely Republican nominees for president have long said they consider a nuclear-capable Iran unacceptable. There's no wiggle room in that word; no president could back down from that warning without major damage to U.S. influence.

Obama has favored sanctions. The GOP's Mitt Romney has offered saber-rattling, writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he said that "I won't let Iran get nukes."

Romney's prescription? Increase military aid to Israel and send more ships to the Persian Gulf to convince Iran that when the United States threatens to use force, it means it.

But as McManus points out:

If the Iranians called his bluff, a President Romney would all too quickly face that same stark choice: go to war, or back down.

Which is when, yes, the MOP might come in really handy.

But would we use it? Should we use it?

No one can say now, of course.  But certainly the option of a non-nuclear weapon with such destructive power seems a sensible precaution. 

Iran's leaders now know that their nuclear facilities are at risk. That, coupled with sanctions, might persuade them to abandon their efforts to build the bomb.

If not? Well, then the United States has one big saber it can rattle.

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Image: An artist's rendering of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb. Credit: Boeing Co.