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The sight of two U.S. carrier groups being dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean should be a wake up call for all of us. I have a grandson who is 16 and many of you have sons and daughters of age if the draft is reinstated. At the same time, the 10-year treasury bond interest rate hits 5 percent, indicating that investors and foreign countries who stash these bonds in their vaults as a safe haven no longer believe America’s IOUs are safe.
And, yet, we are faced by a moral obligation to help a longtime friend and ally, Israel, defend itself. If the war spreads to other nearby countries, Iran may step in. Egypt is cooperative with humanitarian relief, but concerned with contagion in the neighborhood.
The Chinese are buzzing our aircraft over Taiwan. They’re angry.
It’s crystal clear to me at this point that our war of choice in Ukraine was a mistake.
The good news is that we have a sitting president with deep experience in navigating the Middle East. I admire President Joe Biden’s guts in his high-wire trip to Israel. But, we are placing our prospects — and possibly the lives of draft age young Americans — in the hands of two war hawks, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Let’s be honest. Does either one of them really know what they’re doing?
Tom Deegan
Orono
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