I admire you, Ms Williamson, and have for many years, and I am grateful for your heart and compassion and wisdom - and that you are bringing many important but way too infrequently discussed issues and ideas to the election and national conversation.
But unless you are cynical in a way I would never have imagined and just trying to jump in front of the woke mob parade, this stand on the Hamas War is stunningly myopic and self-defeating,
Such a position is not only potentially ruinous to any attempt to build a mainstream voter coalition behind your campaign - as it alienates the vast, vast majority of compassionate but fearful Americans who are tired of foreign wars but also committed to defending, though not militarily spreading, democracy, tolerance, pluralism and calm coexistence around the world.
Perhaps worse, it is also just a naive, dangerous and arguably impossible foreign policy. So the US should not stand by its staunchest ally when that ally is invaded and its citizens slaughtered, raped, tortured and kidnapped, en masse, by a fascist jihadist movement that publicly and repeatedly calls for genocide of a nation and a religious group, while evangelizing a medieval theology that dehumanizes and abuses women, LGBTQ+ people, other religions, and basically anyone who doesn't swear fealty to their apocalyptic death-loving orthodoxy and creed? If not then, when would the US come to the aid of an ally?
But ok, say I'm crazy. Hyperbolic. So we don't support Israel. Then what happens? Hamas comes to the table seeking peace and a two state solution? With Hezbollah, Assad's Syria, Turkey and Iran gracious and ready to make a real and lasting peace? And the mobs in the Islamic world and elsewhere screaming "Allahu Akbar" start dancing, laughing and cheering and go home peacefully to get online to start planning vacations to Jerusalem?
And our other allies? You must know that no matter what they say publicly to appease the mobs they privately tell the US and Israel to please eliminate the Hamas threat - and send a deep dark message to their sponsor, Iran. But when we de facto give Hamas a victory and they get their dark stranglehold over Gaza back, what then?
Our more ambivalent allies, or the ones most at risk of insurgent Islamic fundamentalism will make a beeline for China, Iran, Russia, or whoever will give them assurances they can do literally whatever they want, and get arms, trade and protection, as long as they respect the new lines drawn on the map setting out their new patrons spheres of influence.
Our closer allies quickly start trying to figure out new, more reliable security alliances and arming to the teeth -- a jobs program in the US? or will you also dismantle our already thinned out defense manufacturing base? -- and rapidly acquiring or building up nuclear arsenals if they can, as a deterrent or tactic of last resort, while shaking in their boots, waiting for the inevitable provocations, skirmishes and ultimately wars that will come to the frontiers as China, Russia and Iran expand, one tasty bite at a time.
And likely, eventually nukes get used, dirty bombs at first perhaps, or in a war, when some tough but in the end vulnerable country or alliance fights back in earnest against the newly emboldened authoritarians and gets a nuke, to put the hammer down. Or launches a nuke, in a desperate effort to enforce some kind of red line.
And I guess in your vision we here in the USA wag our fingers and lecture authoritarians to behave and impose sanctions that no longer matter as no one else in the world will go along. But whatever, we've got out broadband and our devices and our protest rallies so we fiercely, nobly debate whether biology is a social construct, and exposing who is speaking or consuming "disinformation" and should be muzzled or exiled, while we enjoy our universal healthcare, authentic ethnic foods (but only if created by verifiable ethnics) and electric cars, and tut tut at the the foolish regressive world, so unnecessarily oppressive and brutal when all anybody needs to do is chill and talk it out.
Until, emboldened with some wins under their belts, our enemies start tightening the noose on the US, economically still strong but militarily and diplomatically weak with no will to fight, by cutting us off from trade and markets, and holding kangaroo court trials in the UN (transplanted to Beijing) and the Hague (now in Tehran), finding the US guilty of everything, and snatching our more remote territories and bases (though perhaps as POTUS you would have abandoned them already?) and staging huge rallies around the globe, and stirring up the woke mob in the US, to protest and riot and maybe, finally start the US civil war the mob seems to want, perhaps rewriting the Constitution to impose some sprawling "equity"-adjudicating state system, to finally mete out retribution to the "privileged" or "fascist" or "Christian" or "right wing" or "MAGA" or whatever "oppressors" that deserve disenfranchisement and humiliation.
Or we can recommit to Lincoln's pledge to perpetually, energetically labor to create "a more perfect union," while listening to the rallying call of that neocon, trust-fund-baby, aristocrat, dead white guy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
youtube.com/watch?v=G7BKvlob…
