>>What I am about to say will probably alienate me permanently from some here, thinking of Tamar in particular. (Tamar, I ask your forgiveness in advance -- you are one of my faves). I think Israel is a horrible ally. They have brought the U.S. nothing but trouble. 9/11 would not have happened if not for our persistent bias for Israel in the endless resentment between Jews and Muslims. We shouldn't be sticking our necks in. Leave them to their endless resentments. To those who are committed enough to care so much about it, move there and duke it out. Don't bring foreign fights to our shores.
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>So, now you suggest that the attack on the Twin Towers is afterall the responsibility, the guilt, of the Jews and even the Americans themselves! And you also hold a plea for non-interventionism and isolationism?

Isolationism gets you nowhere, and is pretty much impossible nowadays. Isolationism would also mean pulling back all the troops (and the same number of soldiers :) who are presently stationed abroad, and I don't think I'll live to see that.

But non-interventionism may become a popular option.

>I think many bad people in the world would celebrate that, terroristic movements foremost.

They may celebrate it once, but the next morning they'd understand they're out of business. Worse, they'd have a responsibility for managing their societies after the victory they'll have claimed. And then, as it goes, the successful fighting party is most often not the successful building party.

>But the progress of the world, think of trade and internet and the UT, would also come to an end.

You lost me here.

>And in the mean time there would be a dramatic increase of injustice and cruelty on almost every continent, in almost every not-so-democratic country. Not just for some, but for the masses, because dictators would come to power and stay there, for sure.

OTOH, some democracies may flourish because they wouldn't fear being overturned because they dared build schools and hospitals for everyone (like it happened in Nicaragua), or Fidel Castro may have some popularity issues, losing the backdrop of the big enemy.

>That reminds me of a saying I've read today in my newspaper. It is written by a columnist who has always been a non-interventionist, but now has turned into an interventionist:
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>Having clean hands doesn't necessarilly mean you have a clean conscience.

It's probably not a question of whether to intervene or not, it's the choice of how, when and where. I've seen some weird side-taking happen, while on the other side people were dying by tens of thousands. It depended on optics, image in media, and general interest.