On this weekend, three years ago, Israel began retaliatory actions against Hamas in Gaza after the second largest massacre of the twenty first century ten days earlier.

War has been a virtual constant since the dawn of man. Humans fight for territory, property, resources, control. dominance, political position – you name it, humans find a reason for killing other humans. Sometimes humans fight out of fear and other times they fight in self-defense. And each time we fight, we claim that we don’t want to fight, but we have to. Even when the wars become more horrific (WWI’s trench warfare and chemical weapons, WWII’s tank warfare and nuclear weapons) we find new reasons to initiate wars.

So many wars are borne out of hate. One group wishing to diminish, dominate or exterminate another. Because of their cultural practices, their ethnicity, their language, their race, their beliefs – ultimately because the others are different. And that is where the flaws in human reasoning arise – because humans are uniquely different from one another. We will always possess differences, and for so many those differences are enough to justify war and killing.

The Middle East is the current epicenter of these behaviors. The Shiites hate the Sunnis. The Houthis hate the Saudis. The Muslims hate the Christians. Hardline Islamists hate the Druze. Egyptian Muslims hate the Muslim Brotherhood. And nearly everyone hates the Jews (who are concentrated in Israel). Oh, and most of the countries also hate the Palestinians, who Arab countries feign support for but won’t allow to settle with civil rights in their own countries.

There is a large contingent of Israelis that mistrust the Palestinian neighbors to the west (Gaza) and east (West Bank). With that mistrust comes an opposition to a two state solution that was popular in Israel just 15 years ago. The Palestinians, who have rejected two-state proposals for nearly 80 years, are equally emphatic that they are disinterested in being good neighbors to the Jews in their midst – their leadership continues to seek the elimination of Jews from their homeland. This is all separate from the objectives of Hamas, who’s struggle is against Jews as a people, and naturally that means the state of Israel. The current government of Israel has translated this enmity into a forever war where anyone who takes up arms against the State of Israel, or may do so, must be eradicated. The consequences of such an attitude places Israel at war perpetually, never knowing when the war might end. The mirror image of this exists with Hamas, that has attacked Israel with terror attacks and rockets for decades. It is an existential battle with no end.

The West has largely rejected the idea that this type of conflict is desired. While the armies of the West have engaged in battles since the close of WWII, the objectives have largely been finite and political (even Vietnam, which was ostensibly a fight against the rise of Communism in SE Asia, was ultimately a war that was abandoned without the desired outcome for the West for the sake of political expedience). That was true until the current Trump Administration. This US government is fighting a war with Iran with a supposed objective that the Iranians must not be able to have a nuclear weapon. But Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. They have never had a nuclear weapon. They claim to not desire a nuclear weapon capability. The US claims to have decimated their nuclear program, but the war continues. So the war is essentially being fought over the idea that Iran may someday desire a nuclear weapon. And Iran continues to fight the US (and their usual Arab enemies in the Middle East) because no peace is acceptable to this US government that doesn’t eliminate the independence of Iran. The US government was willing to pay billions of dollars to Iran (a world-wide sponsor of terror groups), in exchange for obedience to the US. This wasn’t going to happen – remember that Iran fought a war for 8 years with their neighbor Iraq, to a virtual standstill – this is not a state that will give an inch to anyone. After 40 years of proselytizing our destruction to their populace, the US are the last people with whom they will likely seek peace. So we are fighting a war over possible threats with an adversary that will not give an inch.

This administration, in their first term, abandoned an international nuclear monitoring structure in Iran that limited the proliferation threat. They replaced it with fear and sanctions (that make no impact on Iran’s political calculus). Seven months into the Trump forever war, the American people are paying (quite literally) for this administration’s adoption of the Middle Eastern attitudes towards war – it can never be certain if our objectives are being achieved, so the war can never end. The American people see though it – they expect the war to continue, despite the President’s claims that it will end soon. Americans do not support the war effort and do not agree with the philosophy behind it. The question becomes whether the American people can save the country from those in power who insist that wars are simply avenues of negotiation – Cuba is next up on the Trump Administration’s agenda, after all.

And the national disgrace continues…