Now, this is not a criticism of Israel. As a sovereign nation it has a right to defend itself. This is a criticism of our politicians for placing their interests ahead of our country’s interests. We support Israel to our detriment. Why have so many Middle Easterners trained to be terrorists to strike American targets? Why is the supply of oil and its price so unstable? Why are some Arabs threatening revenge against both Israel and the United States over the current violence in Gaza. The answer to all of these questions is because we support Israel. By not supporting Israel the United States would be safer and oil would probably flow more freely. We would be promoting our national interests and perhaps no more American international schools would get blown up as well.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Kenn, I think you're missing at least two aspects of the larger picture of the larger picture of why we're allied with Israel.
First, by being their ally and a source of financial assistance to them, we do have at least some claim and influence on them. I think it's quite possible that Israel's behavior would be WORSE if we were not their ally. Now, it's arguable that Israel's problems might be solved if they were less restrained in their reaction to terrorism, so maybe our efforts to hold them back are counterproductive. But being their ally does give us some influence.
Second, Israel does perform some indespensible services for us, especially by occasionally acting as a convenient surrogate and even a scapegoat for dirty work in the region. When the Syrians were storing purloined Iraqi WMD materials in the Syrian desert, Israel acted on our behalf to take them out with an airstrike. Similarly, when Iran finally makes some substantive progress on nuclear weapons production we'll likely let Israel take care of the problem, because they can get away with it whenm it would be impolitic for us to do so.
Dave
2 - kaddie
First of all, Israel is not a democracy. It is an apartheid state worse and more murderous than South Africa.
Here are some examples of Israeli "democracy"
Since Israel's inception, the Jewish state has implemented a segregated school system similar to school systems in the Jim Crow South. Under Israeli Law, non-Jewish children are educated in separate schools from Jewish children.
Even though non-Jewish citizens in Israel must pay the same taxes as Jews, the
Israeli government spends more money on the Jewish children than the non-Jewish children.
This results in over-crowded non-Jewish schools many of which have no counselors, recreational, facilities, or even libraries.
Even the
US State Department had the following to say about Israel's policies: "... the Government does not provide Israeli Arabs, who constitute approximately 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of education, housing, employment, and social services as Jews. In addition, government spending is proportionally far lower in predominantly Arab areas than in Jewish areas... Although such policies are based on a variety of factors, they reflect de facto discrimination against the country's non-Jewish citizens."
Women are forced to sit separately from men on several public buses in Jerusalem.
This is not a Moslem bus or an Arab bus, but a state-run Jewish bus that forces women to sit "in the back of the bus" like the Taliban used to do with their women, and like blacks in the pre-60s South.
One UK rider describes her experience in April 2007. "Husbands left heavily pregnant wives or spouses struggling with prams and pushchairs to fend for themselves as they and all other male passengers got on at the front of the bus. Women moved towards the rear door to get on at the back"
This is not an isolated incident. These types of buses operate on 30 public bus routes across Israel.
When Women attempt to oppose this rule and sit where they want, they are physically and brutally attacked.
Miriam Shear, an American-Israeli woman, attempted to sit in the front of the bus told police that she was "...slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women."
3 - kaddie
Israel is not defending itself an innocent victim would.
Rather, it uses BULLYISM to incite violence in others.
They bully and provoke, then have the nerve to be surprised when people fight back. Here they torture with guns.
Here they try to starve by plowing up fields and orchards about to be harvested.
And these are all incidents in the West Bank which is controlled by a government that Israel claims that it finds "acceptable".
If this is how they treat what they find "acceptable", then you can surely see how they treated Palestinians in Gaza.
If Israel has a right to murder and destroy because of rockets fired into Israel, then how is it that Gazans don't have a right to respond to illegal destruction of property, torture of humans, starvation, and murder by firing the rockets in the first place?
Israel is the worst of what the 20th century had to offer. It defines humanity as only themselves, and everyone else as pawns or prey.
4 - kaddie
In order to make sure that Israel's illegal actions are not broadcast in the U.S., it has started channeling Goebbels and created an Office of Propaganda charged with controlling the message about Israel's acts in the Western Press.
This is office is responsible for making sure that damaging images like the ones of Israeli children signing bombs to be dropped on other children don't make it out during this conflict as it did during the Lebanon's war.
They have further strengthened that position by violating international law and preventing journalists from entering Gaza so that a different POV can be present.
As a result, reports from foreigners within Gaza to report the actual conditions and actions of Israeli soldiers are scant.
Reports like this one: "One missile killed three Palestinian children, aged between eight and 12, as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis in the south of the strip. "These injuries are not survivable injuries," Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza's Shifa hospital, said. "This is a murder. This is a child," he said."
BTW, the missiles that Israel refused to permit international monitors like the UN (Hamas and Fatah have both asked for the UN to police and monitor the borders, Israel has refused on all occassions - funny though how we don't treat them like the Sudan when it refused) have killed less Israelis in the 2 year period since Hamas took over, than Israel drunk drivers have in the last 6 months.
If the question is really about Israeli life being taken, then the fact remains that more Israelis are killed by Israelis than Arabs every year.
At the end of the day, Israel has a real problem with racism and these quotes best sum it up.
The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure."
-- Rabbi David Batzri, head of the Magen David Yeshiva in Jerusalem [Haaretz, March 21, 2006]
And:
"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
-- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]
Each of these men is funded by U.S. dollars.
The majority of the world is against Israeli because they have more access to the viewpoint from both sides than Americans.
The only question facing the U.S. about this conflict is whether we will wake up and stop funding genocide in the name Israeli democracy?
Or will we continue to let ourselves be governed by people that want to support for Israel because it plays into their own bloodthirsty needs to bring about Armageddon and the 2nd coming of Christ?
5 - voirdire
This is about a war that has been declared by an enemy that has no nation-state, but extols an ideology of religio-racist supremacism. Pretend it's 1938 and instead of a national socialist party localized in one particular European country, imagine a block of nazi countries controlling the majority of oil on the planet with their citizens insinuated into every government of Europe and the United States, every school,every court, armed with nuclear weapons and a promise to their God to incinerate the remainder of the Jews who survived the last war.
Now pretend Israel is Great Britain in 1939 and I'm neither a Jew nor an Evangelical Christian.
6 - jamminsue
Yes, the Arabs are angry because of Israel. However, I believe they would be attacking us with or without Israel in the mix. I am not saying the Islamic religion is bad. It is not. Only the extremists are, just as our own Christian extremists are dangerous.
Voidire has it right.
7 - Ed
"Over the weekend, the benevolent Bedouin and the institution he gave birth to were killed and demolished by Israeli bombers."
I wonder how you know it was Israeli bombers? Hamas has announced that it has eliminated hundreds of Israeli collaborators. It would be hard to imagine that Abu Gleg would not have been a target of Hamas. At the same time, it is hard to see why the Israelis would have targeted the school if it was as you describe it. I don't know who did it, and I'm not sure how to find out. Palestinians in a position to identify Hamas as the perpetrator would themselves suffer reprisals. I think we need to withhold judgment now.
8 - Alkl
It's time to take sides. Lets fight this out. Go Israel.
9 - reality_bites
I think you guys forget about the short term history of this latest confrontation.
First Israel left all Gaza in 2005 and left a lot of the former Israeli settlements infrastructure to the Palestinians who destroyed them. Everybody thought all the Gazans will do is start trying to improve the peoples life now that they have driven the Zionist occupier out of Gaza. Instead, Hamas took by force the reign of Gaza from the Fatah; killed Fatah associated people in tens to hundreds and build the only industry that flourished: Gaza's underground tunnels and Islamo-fascist brainwashing and dictatorship.
As an aside, all that think Israel is a Apartheid country have never visited Israel or talked to an Israeli Arab. The educational resources are divided unequally between communities as they are in Britain, France or US. In US, as an example, school districts in a wealthy socio-economic areas are getting higher budgets than in East LA or East Palo Alto. Does that mean that US is an Apartheid regime because the majority in East LA is latino or black? No. So cut the crap of Israel = Apertheid and look not further than in your backyard.
10 - Ajai burns
For a professor the author sure does refer to college political science theory over real world experience and understanding. Israel had been an impressive ally to the US during the Cold war and for many important things such as technology and scientific research. They currently provide intelligence and expertise about the arab world having the experience, knowhow and language skills to track what America foes in the region are doing. Israel has never defaulted on a loan and has proved its trust through decades of experience. There is No other country in the region whose government, people, military or Values the US can come anywhere need to TRUSTING.
11 - Baritone
That the Palestinians and Israelis have never been able to come to any kind of lasting peace says a lot about both sides. For many of them, it is all or nothing. No compromise. No give and take.
Much of the hatred aimed at the U.S. by Arab & Muslim nations stems from our support of Israel to the detriment of the Palestinians. Of course, the indignation of much of the Arab world is rather disingenuine in that they have all looked upon the Palestinians as an embarrassment, as little more than poor step children. However, I do believe that we would not be the focus of so much emnity from the Arab/Muslim world if we had aligned ourselves with their interests rather than those of Israel.
Much of our support of Israel comes out of our collective guilt. Strictly from a pragmatic standpoint, there is little justification for our dauntless support of Israel. It is true that they have little to offer the U.S.
I am not suggesting that we should abandon Israel, but a more even handed approach would likely pay dividends to the U.S. down the road in the form of less opposition to us by the Arab/Muslim world.
B
Each side has its own patented set of claims against the other.
12 - Dan(Miller)
I find myself in very substantial disagreement with the major premise of the article, that countries -- including the United States -- should have no interests beyond their immediate self interests.
However, there still persists a common morality in the United States. It is unfortunately diminishing, but it has not yet completely vanished.Looked at solely through the lens of immediate self interest, I doubt that the U.S. should have participated in either World War I or World War II. She did, and the results would have been quite unfortunate had she not. Germany in 1914 (or for that matter in 1917) posed little real threat to the U.S. Nor did Hitler's Germany or Japan in 1939; they would have been very happy had the U.S. not intervened. Perhaps they might have been willing to share their spoils of victory in return for abandoning our allies. Nor should the Marshall Plan have been instituted. Nor should relief supplies and other assistance have been sent to places outside the U.S. in time of natural and man-made disaster. The U.S. did and continues to do these things, and I think doing them remains entirely salutary.
The notion that all forms of morality are equal, and that the U.S. should not take sides in any conflict unless her immediate self interest is imperiled, strikes me as pernicious. Like her or not, Israel is the closest thing to a free democracy in her part of the world. Like the U.S., she is imperfect and occasionally screws up; sometime, royally. However, I much prefer having Israel as an ally than, for example Iran or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia. The fact that Iran has oil and Israel does not fails to alter my view. I also find disheartening the use by Hamas of non-combatants as shields for their combatants. Intentionally placing weapons of war in densely packed civilian areas, and then whining when civilians are killed through its own efforts to place them at risk, I find despicable. It seems rather worse than the young man who killed his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the ground that he was an orphan.
Here is an article by Alan Dershowitz which, I think, fairly sets out the parameters of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Even were all of the above to be rejected as sentimental nonsense, there are reasons why supporting Israel is in the best immediate self interests of the U.S. Here is an opinion piece from the LA Times contending that Hamas is a proxy for Iran and that Israel's total defeat of Hamas is, for that reason alone, a good thing; and not only for Israel. According to the article, I find it inconceivable that an Iran with nuclear weapons would be advantageous to the U.S. That Iran would be a substantial threat seems clear.
Small countries like Panama, where I have lived for going on seven years, have little ability and, therefore, little obligation, to do much in situations such as this. They are probably fortunate. Few such countries have permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, and therefore do not have a veto. The U.S. does have significant world responsibilities, and has in the past shouldered them. I am very pleased that the U.S. did what I expected of her, and prevented adoption of Saturday's resolution which would have done no better than to allow Hamas to breathe, regroup, re-supply and resume its attacks on a country to the abolition of which it is committed.
Dan(Miller)
13 - Jason
Much of our support of Israel is not collective guilt, by calling it that it gives us a better chance to be able to denounce them. That is the support we offer on the surface.
Israel should be supported by the US openly and freely. If we stood behind the Palestinians, what would we get out of it? Violence and poverty.
With Israel, there are the Medical, Technical, and Military advancements.
Lets not forget who invented the Cell Phone, Email, Firewalls, and Text Messaging, or where a majority of those Intel chips that are powering your computers are made.
14 - Ruvy
Cut the shit, kaddie. What you do not know about this country and more to the point, what you do not know about the Middle East generally is encyclopedic.
1. Under the Ottoman Empire, there was a millet system that segregated everybody by religion and nationality. This millet system was continued in Lebanon under the French, and in Mandate Palestine by the British. The Lebanese "confessional democracy" that Dave Nalle saw there as a child/youth growing up in the Middle East was based on this millet system; the refusal of Arabs to sit in the same room with Jews under British rule enforced that millet system under the British in Mandate Palestine. Israeli patterns of residence, education, transport systems and often (but nor always) of doing business are based on this, and in developing an education law, the Israelis considered that the Moslems wanted an Islamic religious school system for their children. The Jews were divided (and still are) on that issue.
2. All schools in Israel are overcrowded with the exception of special ed schools and small toraní schools which try to operate in a semi-private manner with an independent curriculum that heavily emphasizes the Torah, Tana"kh and Talmud. All the others are overcrowded and under-funded, particularly by comparison to American schools. I know this, as my sons are both products now of the Israeli school system. I do not care what bullshit stats you get. I have lived as a parent coping with Israeli education, as have both my sons, and you have no clue as to its problems, or the sources of the problems. I do. I LIVE HERE.
3. Women are forced to sit separately from men on several public buses in Jerusalem.
This is not a Moslem bus or an Arab bus, but a state-run Jewish bus that forces women to sit "in the back of the bus" like the Taliban used to do with their women, and like blacks in the pre-60s South.
The Haredím insist on sexual segregation on buses. It is they who segregate women from men on the grounds of "modesty". While religious Jews generally will seat men apart from women except for husbands and wives, or boyfriends and girlfriends, the Haredí carry this further, in my opinion, to extremes. However, this is not an issue for Arabs or Jews, but a cultural issue which Jews alone must deal with. It is none of the damned business of long-nosed foreigners. There are plenty of other buses they can ride. If they insist on being with Haredím, they should be prepared to abide by the rules of the Haredím. If they do not like it , they can get the fuck out. They are not needed here.
When women attempt to oppose this rule and sit where they want, they are physically and brutally attacked.
Miriam Shear, an American-Israeli woman, attempted to sit in the front of the bus told police that she was "...slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women."
As I said, this is an issue for Jews to resolve, and not for long nosed foreigners who think that they know better to involve themselves with. Miriam Shear, (whom I know) is suing Egged, and eventually some resolution will be reached. I hope she succeeds and the Haredím are forced to accept more sexually integrated buses - but that is OUR business, not that of foreigners. If they don't like how we live our lives, they can get and stay the hell out also. We'll take a shit without their help.
Israel is not defending itself an innocent victim would....
4. kaddie, it is none of your damned business how we choose to defend ourselves. It is OUR business, because it is OUR lives at stake. You fuckin' goyim have sat silently when our people were exterminated, so we will defend ourselves how WE choose. If you do not like it, that is too fuckin' bad. This is OUR country, and frankly, after 1,700 years of you stinking goyim trying to murder us off, NONE OF YOU, NOT A DAMNED ONE OF YOU, HAS ANY RIGHT TO JUDGE US!
G-D AND G-D ALONE WILL JUDGE US - NOT YOU ASSHOLES!
I for one, do not give a damn what you say or what you think.
If you do not like what we do, send in your troops and watch them go home in body bags for they will surely die! We do not need your soldiers, your opinions, your aid money or you interference in our affairs. Get the fuck out and stay the fuck out! We do not need your vetos at the UN or anything else. Frankly, we don not need your "friendship" and you will see the day under Hussein Obama, that this friendship disappears.
OUR NUKES WILL KEEP ORDER IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND MAKE THE ARAB SAVAGES BEHAVE - AND BRING YOUR STINKING ECONOMY DOWN ON YOUR HEADS - FOR IT IS BUILT ON EVIL, MURDER AND DECEIT!
The Arabs are not our real enemies. YOU ARE!
The day will come when Arabs and Jews will see reconciliation and peace, when Arabs will sacrifice at our Temple in Jerusalem, and there will be peace and prosperity in the Middle East. The discrimination will end, those of us who have discriminated wrongly against their neighbors will either seek forgiveness or die. To be blunt, I do not see the same bright future for you.
15 - mghirsch
After reading this article, I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's quote (which I am paraphrasing): We used to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated, now we must worry about the ignorance of the educated.
I feel sorry for Jacobine's students. I also worry about the education of all the students at the American Univeristy of Lusaka, Zambia whose administration allows its faculty to pass on such drivel as scholarly work.
16 - Dan
Once again a guy like Kenn wants to find a reason to slam America. We are not the problem here. The problem here is Israel and Plaestine. These morons have been killing each other since the dawn of time. We will not stop their fighting and killing. They will keep going until they wipe each other out.
Kenn, please stop blaming America for everything. Your friends in the middle east own this crap pot they have cooked up.
17 - Dr Dreadful
Ruvy, out of interest, are the Haredim-designated public buses clearly marked as such in both Hebrew and English? Is it just certain buses? Or are all public buses thus segregated?
18 - fred
Remember that the US has been the great power in the world since WWII, imposing the Pax Americana. Like an alpha in any human society (or apes for that matter, hell, any social mammal) the alpha gains status by enforcing peace. That easily enough explains why we entered into the dispute in the first place, that is the job of the alpha and we wanted to be the alpha.
We grossly underestimated the depth of Arab opposition to the presence of Israel (although some did not, particularly in the State Department) and thought we could impose our will. The tide is turning against Israel and us, but it is not easy for most to turn their backs (read Walter Russell Meade on the Jacksonian Tradition)- it is a "dishonorable" thing to do.
That is not to take a moral stance in either direction, but to explain that there are quite natural reasons beyond religious alliance to explain the course we have taken. In my experience humans are not so much rational as rationalizing animals. We act on our gut and then come up with reasons.
To be honest, the vehemence of your complaint implies to me that you think things would be better if it were not for this problem (and you might be worried about your own exposure as a teacher in Africa). I thought like that sometimes when I was younger. You need to take a deep breath and get a good grip. Things are going to be rough this century regardless.
If you can't take the heat...
19 - fred
One more thing; remember that we intervened in the Suez crisis on the side of Egypt against the Brits and Israel. Again this is the job of the alpha, restoring order and keeping the peace.
It is the Arab unwillingness to accept the order and peace we tried to impose that has pushed us to Israel's side. Again, this is not to argue morality or the justice of this course, but to explain is rational terms amenable to your questions.
20 - Jack D
"For a professor the author sure does refer to college political science theory over real world experience."
There is no question that what has been proved through decades of 'real world experience' is that Israel is a liability to the US.
Israel "has proved its trust through decades of experience... Israel had been an impressive ally to the US during the Cold war"
How 'impressive' is an 'ally' that attacked the USS Liberty on a clear day in 1967 and killed or wounded the crew with a 2-hour attack with aircraft and torpedo boats and then claimed it was a mistake.
"They currently provide intelligence and expertise about the Arab world having the experience, know how and language skills to track what America foes in the region are doing."
If tracking 'what America foes in the region are doing' had any substance, why did the USS Liberty 'mistake' happen and 9/11 not get 'tracked'?
"Israel has never defaulted on a loan"
When has Israel ever paid back a loan?
"There is No other country in the region whose government, people, military or Values the US can come anywhere need to TRUSTING. "
Sadly, other countries in the region do not trust the US because it has voted against the rest of the world to support Israel in the UN in over a hundred Israeli violations of international law, the UN Charter and UN Resolutions..
The following MUST be read if US problems in the Middle East are to be understood.
21 - Ruvy
DD,
are the Haredim-designated public buses clearly marked as such in both Hebrew and English? Is it just certain buses? Or are all public buses thus segregated?
Like everything else in Israel, it is not clear and folks assume you know - even when you don't. This was the issue with Miriam Shear - at first. When she foud out that the bus she was riding was not an officially designated "kosher" bus by Egged (the bus coöperative, not the dairy), she insisted in sitting in the front. If I remember right, she has some difficulty walking. She was attacked by three or four Haredi men, and the driver, responsible for keeping order on the bus did nothing. It was for this reason that she, a religious Jew, sued Egged. Other organizations with agendae of smearing religious Jews joined the suit and helped finance Miriam's cause. I do not remember how or if the suit was resolved; civil matters take a long time in Israel.
22 - Ruvy
Jack B.
The USS Liberty was attacked because it was providing intelligence to the Egyptians on Israeli tank movements in the Sinai in June 1967. This is denied by both governments because it is embarrassing for both to state openly - though if I were prime minister, I would state it openly and watch the fuckers at Foggy Bottom drop their mouths in astonishment. The Jew-hating bastards there are not used to Jews calling them out and calling them liars - which they usually are.
The American government had a plan to intervene in the fighting in 1967 to prevent Israel from advancing - but the Israelis were so fast - they completed their campaign in six days - that the United States couldn't get their act together. I know this because I know one of the soldiers on the team that was to coordinate the intervention.
The United States tried to bully Israel out of attacking first in 1967, threatening that if they did, they would be all alone. They did, they were all alone, with the US secretly siding with the Arabs, and they won.
The United States tried to bully Golda Meir out of attacking fiorst on Yom Kippur, 1973. They succeeded in their bullying, and not only did the Henry Kissinger welsh on the deal he made with the Israeli government to resupply it (it was the Sec'ty of Defense and Al Haig who made sure the resupply deal was kept), the Israeli lost over 2,500 dead, and lost territory in the war.
Did I read you nimrods calling America an ally of Israel? With allies like that, who needs enemies?
23 - Jack D
"It is the Arab unwillingness to accept the order and peace we tried to impose that has pushed us to Israel's side."
The Palestinian people have been under siege for over 50 years. They have been subjected to killing, imprisonment, land confiscation, and just about every other degrading and humiliating act that mankind has ever conceived, yet they do not submit to these oppressive acts.
After the Palestinians voted in a free and democratic election, and the results were not to the liking of Israel, they are being subjected to collective punishment, which is a crime under international law.
So much for the “democracy “ that we send our military forces into the Middle East to die for. What is been touted as “democracy” in reality is colonialism.
Israel's onslaught against innocent civilians goes unchallenged by the US, the UN leadership, European and Arab governments.
24 - fred
@jamminsue,
I know it is hard for people today to say things are "bad", but there are serious problems with fundamental Islam that make it completely incompatible with the rest of the world in a way completely unlike other major religions. There are Muslims who are peaceful people because that is their nature, but fundamental Islam, and that incorporates the vast majority of Muslims, is tribalism gone metastatic. Like cancer we can either succumb to it (submit) or exise it, Islam offers no other option. By fundamental Islam I mean that which regards the Quran as the literal eternal word of Allah and the Ahadith as the record of the life of the perfect man whom all men should emulate.Before anyone takes me to task and starts quoting the Quran, I would like to say that I am familiar with the meaning of abrogation and its application to the Quran and if you are not please do not waste your energy typing a response - it will be meaningless.
25 - Ruvy
Kenn,
You better study your history before writing dumb articles like this. In 1947, Setc'ty of State George Marshall quit when Truman insisted on voting for a partition (illegal, by the way) of the Palestine Mandate, saying it was a mistake of historical proportions. After the partition vote, they tried to sandbag ben-Gurion's declaration of a State. In 1949, when YitzHaq Rabin's tank colum reached el-Arish, Truman threatened withdrawal of American recognition of the State unless Israel pulled back, America has never recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. With one hand they have given this country money - with the other, they have twisted the knife of destruction in its back. America isn't allied with Israel, even though lots of Americans feel a sense of commonality with her.
AMERICA IS AN ENEMY. AND TOO DAMNED MANY AMERICANS JUST CAN'T SEEM TO ACCEPT THE REALITY OF THE POLICY OF THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT - LIKE YOU.