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...Damn. I have honestly pondered whether or not putting all of Israel-Palestine under American control so as to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from hating each other for long enough would actually be an improvement. Never thought anyone would actually even consider something in the ballpark of that idea, though.
Why? What's the point?
Should the US go in and annex the Congo and Rwanda to stop them fighting? Should America get involved in Ngorno-Karabakh? Annex Kurdistan and sort things out? Go into Kashmir? Annex Donbass?
Even if the US had the military-political power to 'fix' these things, which is very dubious... why even try? What does it gain for the US? How are US interests at stake in these places, such that the effort expended and risks incurred would be commensurate with the gains?
If someone on the other side of the city has a feud with his drug dealer/girlfriend/gambling partner/brother there's no reason to join this fight and impose yourself as judge and arbiter. It's a lot of work for no payoff. You'd need to be Superman to get away with it. And Superman would be bitterly resented even if everyone had no choice to tremble and obey.
And if you're not Superman...
The time to not get involved was generations ago, you must realize. There is little will to become uninvolved; therefore, one must either live with the current level of involvement (mild, but still causes issues here at home), or get more involved (painful and intense, but has the potential to end the issue for good).
I would contend that it actually does serve US interests because the status quo keeps causing issues for us. Downstream effects, the flap of a butterfly's wings, and so on. I made a similar point in response to 2rafa about the desire to just ignore Chinese aspirations to hegemony in favor of trying to focus on domestic issues: ignoring the outside world may actually make it harder to fix problems at home. If you let chaos fester far away, it will probably find you at home.
Firstly "putting all of Israel-Palestine under American control so as to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from hating each other for long enough" would make it extremely difficult to do anything about China.
Secondly, chaos finds its way to America precisely because of its support for Israel. First World Trade Centre bombing motive? US support for Israel. 9/11? Osama Bin Laden was heavily influenced by his anger over US support for Israel.
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That's how it all started, 1918-1948, just with British as controllers instead of Americans. Clearly it didn't work out that way.
By the way, some British soldiers were lynched and their corpses booby trapped by Israelis. Doesn't sound like a good time.
Google does not seem to find this, and neithjer is it in /r/britain on reddit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sergeants_affair
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This sounds more like: the US does the ethnic cleansing part, invests billions of dollars into cleanup and reconstruction, risks American lives and reputation, risks outbreak of regional war if some major attack on American troops happens, all to ultimately hand the land to Israel sort of deal. Not what you're suggesting. But to be fair Trump is being very vague here.
At least we're finally past the point of pretending that this is about Democracy, that's a relief. Imagine that the entire dialectic about the Iraq war was one side saying it was for Democracy and the other side saying it was Oil, and nobody in good standing was allowed to say that it was for Israel. That dialectic is impossible to enforce on whatever adventurism Trump is proposing here. Cats are out of bags.
Why do you think the Israelis spend so much money on AIPAC?
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