Shut Up Iris

As an American, I'm often struck by how far the United States will go to help and protect some allies and how little we are will do for others. I'm also struck by how few allies actually share any of America's basic interests or goals. Most of these are easy: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Georgia..................all non-democratic states that we share very little in common with that we routinely pony up money and weapons for. You might notice that at least one of those states has a bad hobby of funding terrorists to kill Americans (I'm looking at you Saudi Arabia) however I digress. In light of recent events I decided to look into two of America's allies: The State of Israel and the Republic of Turkey.

First , which is the better bang for the buck?



Israel: A break down of direct aid to Israel compiled in 2008 the tally was 112 billion dollars and that is at a current rate of about 3 billion dollars per year. That is a lot of fucking money. What does it go for? Mainly it goes to keeping Israel a first world economy. Israel is the only nation in the world that has a first world economy and yet still receives foreign monetary aid.

What do we get for that? In the Cold War we had an ally against Soviet Communist encroachment in the Middle East. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq were all Soviet clients as Iran also became after the Islamic Revolution. Since the Cold War? I couldn't tell you. As far as I can rationally determine we've gotten no value for the aid since the end of the Cold War, Who knows, maybe it's a good idea to hedge our bets.



Turkey: Turkish aid was a bit harder to find. You'll see that the data only comes up to 1999 and totals about 17 billion, roughly 1 billion a year, so if we extrapolate we can estimate the total at about 30 billion in total. Holy shit, that is next to nothing compared to Israel, we can also note that very little of the aid is military aid.

Bang for buck? Turkey is a NATO ally, the second largest NATO ally in fact and we get all the military, intelligence and training benefits that entails. During the Cold War Turkey even hosted our mid and short range nukes. Turkey is a member of the Nuclear NPT pact and Turkey has had no fear of swinging it's big stick on our behalf in the Middle East.

For what we pay, that's a win for the Republic of Turkey

Next, As an ally, who gives us actual combat support?

Winner of the last category is up first:

Turkey: Turkey has sent boots on the ground to Korea during the Korean War and the Turkish Brigade is credited as having saved the 2nd US Army from annihilation by the Chines and North Koreans. Turkey as a NATO member maintains the NATO Rapid Deployment Force and Turkey even offered to send troops into Northern Iraq during the first and second Gulf Wars, during the First Gulf War the US was able to use Incerlik Air Base to fly combat missions and supplies into Iraq. However in the Second Gulf War Turkey refused to allow US or coalition troops to use the base unless Turkey was allowed to send troops into Northern Iraq, the US declined, not wanting to anger it's Kurdish allies in Iraq. However Turkey did reconcile with the US and sent ground forces to Afghanistan, which is fine, no Kurds there to upset.

So, good stuff there sort of a dick move in the second of the Gulf Wars but as bad as that has turned out who can blame them?

Israel: Israel cooperates in the US Military's research and development deploying many new and experimental weapon systems and helping to develop them. The port of Haifa in Israel is the main port of call for the US Navy's Mediterranean Sixth Fleet.

That's it. Israel has never allowed the US to ever use it's troops or air bases for any military operation. Fuck, that's 2-0 to Turkey so far.

Third, money, or who buys our shit?

Turkey is up first again: In percentage of trade Turkey imports 8.1% of all consumer goods from the United States and 10.2% of all of Turkey's exports are headed for the United States. Not bad, but not great, a bit of a trade deficit there. Turkey needs to buy more of our shit.

Israel: I wish I could say, but I can find no break down that gives us a total percent of Israeli and US import and export what I did find is that we currently have a trade deficit of 62.65 billion dollars with Israel.

That is a draw, they both want us to buy their shit but have a hard time letting us into their markets. Motherfuckers.

Now we delve into the negatives of both nations, how have our 'allies' hurt us?

First, spying, do our allies spy on us, oh yes they do!

Turkey:If anybody is listening to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds than we know that the 9/11 terrorists that trained in Turkey were such an embarrassment that Turkey is doing all they can to cover it up. Turkish intelligence has allegedly infiltrated the FBI and the CIA to not only get information but to have the FBI and CIA 'lose' information that may damage Turkey in the eyes of the good ol' US of A. The main point of focus is apparently the ATC or American Turkish Council.

What happened to Sibel Edmonds for exposing both Pakistan and Turkey? She was fired. That is a BIG black mark for Turkey. Not cool guys, not fucking cool.

Israel: The number of Israeli spies that have been arrested and either convicted or expelled from the US is too large to recount here. More Israeli Mossad agents have been caught stealing military and government secrets from the US than all other nations combined including Soviet Russia. A good and detailed article is here.

You both lose. Assholes.

A biggie here, whose military has killed the most Americans?

Turkey: Zero. That's right, no American has been killed by the Turkish army that I can find. I researched this for about a week now and Americans killed in Turkey were the victims of Islamic terrorists that were also targeting the Turks. Good job, now how about you get your spying on us thing down to zero too?

Israel: Oh boy, this is another big number. When you consider that during the six day war Israel attacked and killed 33 American sailors aboard the USS Liberty (even after it was identified several times as American and was in international waters) wounding dozens of others and machine gunning the life boats, Israel isn't off to a good start. More Americans killed are detailed here.

Israel has committed more acts of war and killed more American citizens than Iran. Think about that for a moment.

That is big, BIG win for Turkey.

Finally, The swimsuit competition:



Prime Minister Erdogan. First of all, fantastic 1970's porn star mustache, truly, truly epically bad. I'll also point out he has very broad shoulders. He looks like he could kill an Armenian or two.



Prime Minister Netanyahu. What can I say that hasn't been said about all used car salesmen the world over? When you're sitting for an official picture as a head of state try not to smirk like a jackass.

The result? A big loss for both. Both Erdogan and Netanyahu don't qualify as 'eye candy' not even for the blind. You ugly sons of bitches!

The total result: Turkey 3 Israel 0

I hope that current events will make Americans think long and hard about who our 'friends' are and who deserve or help and support. Turkey deserves much better from the US of A than the shaft that we are giving them currently. We also need to stop writing blank checks for Israel and tell them that to stay our ally they have to start acting like a responsible citizen of the world.

That's all I have to say.