Monday, July 14, 2008

College Kids Gone Wild

There is a site called College Analysts that aggregates content from about a dozen college students across the U.S. It has some decent content, and I have been a reader for some time.

On Friday, the site took what I consider a disturbing foray away from Finance and Investments into Politics with a post blasting our nations alliance with Israel. The post was written by Stephen Frankola and contained many broad generalizations, factual errors and misstatements about the situation over in the Middle East.

He argues that the birth of Israel was possibly "unfair," and that our alliance with Israel "has been the biggest foreign policy blunder since the Vietnam era."

The post pretty much blames our support for Israel as causing hatred of us by the Arab population, high oil prices, and much of the terrorism directed against the United States. Or as he puts it:

"the relationship has been detrimental to US foreign goodwill, especially in the Middle East. Oil is outrageously expensive, and we have been attacked by radical Arab groups, and our pockets have been slowly emptied. What have we gained?"

Israel is a bully that treats its Palestinian resident as sub citizens, according to Frankola. The exact quote is:

"Israel, you’re a bully. We, the United States, claim to target other bullies all across the world, but we hold your hand, supply you with your weapons, and then promise to protect you, if you should ever get yourself into trouble that you can’t handle. That has created a volatile, undesirable situation for the United States - and ultimately, we care about us, NOT you. Fight your own war if you really want to, but don’t come crying to daddy if things get bad."

I was going to let his post slide, and blame it on the exuberance of youth. After trading comments with him over the weekend, he showed little remorse for his statements, and I feel that I would be remiss if I didn't give it wider distribution so those with more time than I could add their opinions.

The full post is here.

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