This is how wars start

One of the bigger stories now is the incident between Israel and the "peace activists" that tried to cross their blockade of Gaza. The ship ,which was sailing under the flag of Turkey, was stopped and the result was the deaths of nine people at the time of this writing. This has resulted in universal condemnation of Israel. There is one question that is being asked, why is his happening since Turkey was Isreals only Muslim ally in the region?

Part of the reason is that Turkey has elected a Muslim government that has increasingly seen itself as a leader of Muslims in the region and is trying to assert itself as such. What better way than to set up a Turkish ship as a victim of Jewish oppresion? The Prime Minister of Turkey was warned that this would happen and when you violate a blockade, this is the result.

There is more to this than we may realize though. There is a recent spat between the US and Turkey that may have to do this. Last year the Democratic led House Foreign Affairs Committee in the House voted along party lines to recognize that the Turks commited a Genocide against the Armenians during WWI. This may not mean much to you and I, but in Turkey this is their equivalent to the problems of our past with slavery in America. For us to have interfered with this since it had no real meaning for us was foolish to say the least. To the Turks, this was the worst kind of insult. Now the Turks have plenty of reason to not listen to us and to want some sort of political payback.

How does this affect the current situation? Well, Israel is our ally. We have a president that shows no desire to defend Isreal and therefore there is not consequence for their defiance of past US policy. So, this shows US weakness  to the Turks and all of our enimies.

This is how wars start. When we go down the path of deserting our friends around the world and try to cozy up to our enimies who have no interest in working with us causing them to see this as weakness, we get this kind reaction. For those of us who are old enough to remember, this was what happened when Carter was present and we were dealing with Soviet communism. Today we are dealing with Muslim terrorists. Different ideology, same result.