Mother Jones assesses the defense portion of the new compromise budget passed by the House in a Dec. 13 post: "The passage of the Ryan-Murray budget plan in the House sends a strong signal that the Pentagon's budget is basically untouchable. Under the deal, the military's base budget (which doesn't include supplemental funding for overseas operations and combat) will be restored to around $520 billion next year—more than it got in 2006 and 2007, when the United States was fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan." The post cites as Exhibit A in Pentagon excess and lack of project control the F-35, which is called "the pricey plane with a reputation as the biggest defense boondoggle in history". Originally estimated to cost $233 billion, the program to acquire the new jets now will cost nearly $400 billion.
Another Mother Jones post, "Can't Touch This", examines the Pentagon budget in more detail. Among other topics, it discusses the size of the military budget (the US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined), the Pentagon's "inauditable" financial statements (the Pentagon insists that they will "achieve audit readiness" by 2017, 20 years after it was required to do so), and ideas from various think tanks that could save billions in the defense budget.
An Al Jazeera post on Friday reminds us of the harsh conditions facing refugees from the Syrian civil war. Describing the scene at the refugee tent camp in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, Josh Wood writes: "...snow dumped by Lebanon’s first storm of the season melts when the temperature rises a few degrees above freezing during the day, turning the narrow paths between tents into shin-deep patches of mud. Thursday found children standing shivering by a puddle, their rubber sandals sinking into the mud and their pajama pants rolled up in a futile attempt to keep them clean....At least 80,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon are living at winter’s mercy in tent settlements like this one, according to Dana Sleiman, a public-information officer with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Hundreds of thousands more are living in unfinished buildings, garages and other structures offering insufficient protection against winter’s bite."
BBC News noted the increasing concern in the West of "the violence perpetrated [across Syria] by the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), hardline Islamic radicals linked to al-Qaeda." Although the position of the West publically is that Assad must go, privately some are beginning to question that position. "As the year draws to a close, and the West's chosen allies in Syria suffer one setback after another, have policymakers started to ponder the unthinkable - that there's more to be gained from working with Mr Assad than against him?"
Ahead of John Kerry's trip to the Middle East to try to breathe some life into the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Al Jazeera reported on the pessimistic assessment published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations: the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has become increasingly unlikely. The two-state solution has been the "default negotiating position of the United States and the international community" since the 1993 Oslo Accords. "According to researchers, the two factors found to place the most strain on a two-state solution were the 'territorial issue' and 'the dynamics of the Israeli political and public debate.' Researchers noted strain added by the decreasing physical space available to establish a territorially contiguous Palestinian state, as a result of ongoing Israeli settlement growth. They noted that as of July 2013, there were 367,000 Israeli settlers in the Israeli occupied West Bank, whereas the total had been a little over 100,000 at the beginning of the Oslo process 20 years ago. Israeli discourse also strained the likelihood of realizing two states. Levy said the “indifference of the Israeli public” to the Palestinian issue and “a government that includes – something that is relatively new – a significant cohort opposed to two states, and who say that there are other options” has weakened the appeal of the two-state paradigm in Israel."
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz opined on November 27 that, with the EU intent on preventing funds from flowing to Israeli companies operating on Palestinian land, "Israel is now beginning to pay the price of its deeds in the occupied territories. Four years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University, in which he recognized the principle of two states but nevertheless refused to stop construction in the settlements - following the government’s extremist statements and decisions to build thousands of housing units in the settlements; and following Israel’s ongoing harassment of Palestinian residents of the territories - the international community is beginning to take practical measures against Israel’s tactics of deception and the apartheid it practices toward the Palestinians." In an article published December 13, Haaretz reported that "The European Union is expected to announce on Monday that it will offer an unprecedented assistance package to Israel and the Palestinians, if the two parties sign a final-status agreement. The organization also promised to upgrade relations with both parties to the highest level possible for nonmember nations in the event of a peace treaty."
Image of Syrian refugee camp is from the Al Jazeera article and by Ahmad Shalha/Reuters.
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