“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests” — Henry Kissinger
Photo Credit: Nicolas Casey
By Nicolas Casey
Sentimentality has no place in foreign affairs. When we allow our judgement to be clouded by emotional considerations, we run the risk of making catastrophic miscalculations on behalf of the American people. The very real trauma that this nation experienced as a result of the tragic 9/11 attacks distorted our ability to make objective decisions in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. If we do not heed the lessons of history today, we gamble with repeating this mistake at a far more disastrous scale in Israel.
The initial job in Afghanistan, according to The 9/11 Commission Report, had been largely achieved by March 2002 over the course of Operation Anaconda. Following the Battle of Shah-i-Kot, “almost all remaining al Qaeda forces took refuge in Pakistan.” By this point, three of the four phases laid out by the Department of Defense and CIA were completed, costing the US the lives of approximately 40 servicemen and roughly $20 to $30 billion. If the Bush Administration had called it quits here, we would be living in a radically different world—one where 6,378 Americans had not aimlessly laid down their lives halfway around the globe to fight a $2.3 trillion, 20-year war whose key strategic objectives were fulfilled during the first year of fighting.
Unfortunately, George W. Bush was seeking reelection in 2004 by an electorate clamoring for revenge against the terrorists that had struck at the heart of America’s most important city. With an approval rating of around 80%, Bush had a mandate to deliver on the fourth phase, “the indefinite task of what the armed forces call ‘security and stability operations.’” It is this fourth phase that encapsulates the original sin of 21st century American military strategy. By allowing justified public anger to open the door to anything beyond a proportionate response with a defined end goal, we unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe far worse than 9/11 itself—a catastrophe that ravaged Afghanistan, permanently destabilized Iraq over tenuous connections to 9/11 and WMDs, and otherwise negatively affected over 17 other nations.
2,996 people died on September 11, 2001. American military deaths alone represent more than double this figure. Considering only the direct civilian deaths of Afghans estimated by the Brown University Costs of War Project, the human cost of the conflict was an order of magnitude greater than the attack itself at 46,319 lives. If one continues down this statistical line of reasoning—including figures such as the over 30,000 US service members and veterans of post-9/11 wars that died by suicide—they rapidly begin to reach numbers two orders of magnitude above the original toll. Accounting for all direct and indirect deaths from the Global War on Terrorism, the Costs of War Project estimates a death toll of between 4.5 and 4.7 million deaths.
Nothing can justify loss of life on this scale—the deaths of many will never atone for the deaths of others. Retribution is more likely to lead to further human tragedy than right a wrong. Today, these truths are especially salient to the American relationship with Israel—following the attacks on October 7, 2023.
Since the heartbreaking loss of 1,139 people during the attack, over 46,707 Palestinians have been killed. There is substantial disagreement over what proportion of this number represents combatants. For the sake of argument, however, assume that the Israeli military’s most extreme estimate of a roughly 1:1 ratio, constituting 20,000 militants killed, is correct. This still leaves over 25,000 dead civilians with an astounding floor of at least 14,500 children killed. Israel has relied heavily on American munitions to carry out its deadly aerial bombardment campaign against Gaza, employing “2,000-pound bombs … four times heavier than the vast majority of the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS during the war against the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.” (LINK)
When dropped in areas as densely populated as Gaza, these bombs cause devastating damage that “will take decades” to recover.. Meaning that the nation that House Speaker Johnson has described as our “closest ally in the world” is currently implicating the U.S. and billions of our aid dollars ($3.8 billion as of 2024) in attacks against civilians that will be remembered by generations to come. This is especially the case considering the many documented cases of our weapons being used to commit war crimes.
Such circumstances are ideal conditions for the radicalization of the next generation of terrorists, and it should come as no surprise that the Department of Homeland Security’s latest Homeland Threat Assessment highlights an elevated terror risk motivated by retaliation for our support of Israel. Given the tautology that ideal American policy is policy that benefits the American people, our continued support for Israel must serve American interests in a way that justifies multibillion dollar aid expenditures and added terror risks to the homeland caused by anger spawned from a civilian death toll five times higher than our war in Afghanistan. This, however, is simply not the case.
From an American strategic perspective, Israel offers little in unique value. The nation is not well-poised to secure modern energy flows in a world where the U.S. produced an average of 13.2 million barrels per day last year and Gulf states dominate exports. Our Israeli expeditionary and intelligence interests are redundant with what Jordan, Egypt, and Gulf allies provide—without the same credibility baggage that affiliation with Israel weighs us down with. By insisting on placing Israel in a privileged position within our foreign relations apparatus, we risk alienating our other partners in the region with Muslim majorities that place their leaderships in difficult positions over actual or imagined Israeli escalation against Palestinians. In doing so, the door is opened to influence from “China, Russia, or a dangerous nonstate actor” that can jeopardize more productive cooperation with other allies. Consider, for example, the historic sidelining of the US from the China-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, restoring diplomatic relations between the two nations for the first time since 2016 and dealing a massive blow to American prestige.
Despite decades of economic and military assistance, what October 7 shows us is that Israel today is no closer to being a functional sovereign state absent foreign aid than it was in 1948. When the Israeli military mobilized 300,000 reservists in response to the attack, the economy shrank by 20% due to the worsening of labor shortages from the suspension of Palestinian work permits, placing extreme pressure on leadership to demobilize as quickly as possible. In fact, this incentive structure motivates the wanton disregard for civilian life that their armed forces have displayed. The Israeli government is in the unfortunate habit of entrusting large numbers of inexperienced reservists, 40% of whom do not attend training exercises, with high-powered weapons, a culture of winning quickly, and a mandate to do so all in the name of getting their citizens back to work to avoid a recession. If Israel cannot reasonably provide for its own security and defense, it must be asked whether or not it is reasonable to expect the American people to foot the remainder of the bill, place her children at risk, and compromise her own security interests when Israelis escalate regional conflicts. While this may sound like a hyperbole, precisely this scenario played out from August 2024 until the fall of the same year: when the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group was redirected from the Western Pacific to the Middle East over concerns that two Israeli assassinations would cause further conflict escalation from Iran. Such a scenario, however, created a carrier gap in our ability to project power and defend freedom of navigation around Taiwan, a nation whose continued existence is substantially more important to US interests than Israel due to its role in the semiconductor industry. Had China decided to avail itself of this opportunity, the subsequent escalation ladder might not have left you in a position to be reading this article today.
The lesson of our misadventures in Afghanistan was given to us decades before by John F. Kennedy during a commencement speech at American University: it is a deadly mistake to rely on a “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” Israel is a leading example of the US’s misguided attempt to do just that. It is a nuclear-armed power in a region where its existence—in its current political form—will perpetually generate a stream of threats to itself until it collapses under its own weight. If this happens, the US will be forced to enter into yet another endless war to prevent the transfer of Israel’s WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) to third parties. This time, however, the battlespace will not be the sparsely populated, rugged terrain of Afghanistan, and the nukes will be very real. The alternative is to set aside our emotional feelings about the need for a Jewish state in its current structure and the very real tragedies perpetrated against Israel. By incrementally scaling down US support, we can motivate the political compromise required to arrive at a peaceful, prosperous settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. In the New Jerusalem, as in Kabul, realpolitik must prevail—or our generation will yet again pay for its sentimentality with blood and treasure.
Nicolas Casey is a senior in the College studying Mathematical Economics from London, England. Nick is also the Technology Director for The Pennsylvania Post. His email is ncasey25@sas.upenn.edu.
