From the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD — An American solider was killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. military said, marking the first American fatality since the last combat unit in Iraq pulled out of the country.

Lt. Col. Bob Owen, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, said the attack took place while the solider was conducting operations in Iraq’s southern province of Basra.

Owen declined to elaborate, and a U.S. military statement provided no further details, saying only that the incident is under investigation.

The name of the deceased soldier was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The death raises to at least 4,416 the number of U.S. military personal killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. That’s according to an Associated Press count.

The fatality comes three days after the last American combat unit left Iraq. Some 50,000 U.S. troops will stay another year in Iraq in what is designated as a noncombat role. They will primarily focus on training Iraq’s security forces.

As Jason Ditz points out:

The killing is a difficult one to reconcile with the narrative, as the soldier was killed when a rocket was fired at him. He was “on operations” in the Basra Province, but military officials declined to provide further details on exactly what he was doing.

I suppose it’s fair to say that honesty will continue to be lacking in the post-war era just as much as during the pre- and present-war eras. Hooray for political spin.

From the Associated Press

JERUSALEM—Israel has proposed an inquiry commission into its bloody attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla two weeks ago, to be headed by a retired Israeli judge and to include two high-ranking foreign observers.

A government statement said the “independent public commission” proposal would be brought before Israel’s Cabinet on Monday for approval.

Chairing the commission would be Yaakov Turkel, a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, the statement said. The two foreign observers would be Lord William David Trimble of Ireland, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and retired Brig. Gen. Ken Watkin, the former chief military prosecutor in Canada.

Now of course it will be headed by an Israeli so probably will not be free of bias; however, what’s interesting is that a Canadian was selected as one of only two foreign participants in the investigation.

Last week the Economist ran a very illuminating piece about Israel’s blossoming relationship with Canada. Some even say the latter is currently Israel’s most loyal ally. Perhaps Israel thinks it’s increasing the odds of a favourable outcome if a foreign national from an unlikely champion is also on board. And given Israel’s recent tension with America, its allies are few and far between these days.

But the notion of a strategic alliance has become more complicated. Many analysts here — from the mainstream Cordesman to the more extreme Walt and Mearsheimer faction of the foreign policy establishment — argue that U.S. foreign policy goals are often impeded by Israeli policies and missteps.

And some argue that the whole idea of the alliance has become skewed, with Jerusalem demanding unwavering U.S. support for all its policy decisions without a corresponding willingness to factor U.S. priorities into Israeli policymaking.

More and more “there is this unrealistic view that we always have the same interests, and that the United States must always support Israel’s view of what those ‘shared interests’ are,” said Hadar Susskind, director of policy and strategy at J Street, the pro-peace process lobby group. “There’s this idea that you don’t support the U.S.-Israel relationship if you acknowledge differences of opinion.”

Over the years, the sense that there is an imbalance in the alliance has focused on U.S. concerns about settlement building and quality-of-life issues for West Bank Palestinians, and what is seen in Washington as Israeli indifference to those concerns.

Today, it is being refocused on the issue of the Gaza blockade as Washington faces huge international pressure to push Israel to loosening or ending it, and with Israeli leaders and their friends here arguing that any concessions to that pressure will represent a violation of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

“The people who are responding to the flotilla tragedy by circling the wagons, and arguing that Israel was 100 percent right are perpetuating this absolutist myth of a relationship that can’t possibly be met in real life,” Susskind said.

Most important, however, is the larger determination of what the meaning of an alliance really is. Does an alliance between two people, two groups or two nations imply that each has to accept the actions of the other on faith? Is the greater connection that initially drew them together ultimately more important and more powerful than the sum of the trials and tribulations that follow? And simply put, can one not disagree with the other without breaking the alliance?

These kinds of questions as they pertain to the American-Israeli relationship easily extend to the Jewish diaspora at large. The parallels are in plain site: Should a Jewish person blindly favour all of Israel’s decisions because of faith; because of how they were raised; because of loyalty to their parents, or any other reason?

No. And those who do are sorely misguided. Whether they realize it or not, they are unwilling to put the well-being of all of humanity before that of their own.

In the Fall of 2004, I wandered down to the common room of my college residence and found a few neighbours watching a show about a plane crash. There was a pretty girl on the run from a cop in what appeared to be a flashback heavy show, not dissimilar from Prison Break. I always figured shows like that were unsustainable because the circumstances of the show (eg. a plane crash or a prison break) forced the climax to come too soon (eg. escaping the island or prison). After all, how much can you write for characters stuck in one space for so long?

Of course I dismissed the show and thought it was no good. I then proceeded to forget about it entirely for the next 3 years, save for a brief moment where I caught a glimpse of an episode where two characters were underground looking at television sets. I thought, “What in the world has this show come to?” In the winter of 2008, a co-worker proclaimed it the best show on television. Still, however, I remained unconvinced based on my initial impression.

Another year passed and when the show’s fifth season was on, I finally decided to give it a chance. I downloaded the first 10 episodes and uploaded them to my iphone. Without considering the morbidity of it, I watched the first episode on a plane to Florida. Even on the tiny screen, I was utterly captivated. The opening sequence of Jack rescuing people from the plane wreckage was more intense than anything I’d ever seen on television.

The rest is history, really.

I quickly made my way through all of the first 5 seasons (my record was watching 12 episodes in a day) and caught up to where the show was airing live with 3 episodes left to go in the fifth season.

This year I watched the show’s sixth and final season along with everyone else and became somewhat of a superfan. Like much of the internet fan base, I partook in extensive theorizing about the show’s many mysteries. It made it more fun, trying to piece the puzzle together. Along the way there were times where I got heated about some of the decisions made by the writers, especially when it came to revealing (or not revealing) all of the island’s mythology, but mostly I was very enamoured by all the twists and turns.

Last night, the show ended. It was a glorious two and a half hours where I felt like I was saying a heart-wrenching goodbye to all my best friends. The final ten minutes sealed it all for me and erased any qualms that I had about unsolved mysteries and the decision to spend 50% of the final season on an alternate reality. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t yet seen it (other than with the image above), but it was so incredibly moving. The music, the acting, it was all just so stunning.

Now I’m not quite sure what to do with myself…

From the Washington Post:

“We are frustrated with the fact that Iran does not feel the pressure of the world, does not care about the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N., because we feel that time is running out,” Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said in an interview.

An Israeli security official recently complained of a muddled discourse on sanctions that has made the ultimate objective unclear: whether the Obama administration is trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb or only to roll back its growing capabilities. Israeli officials have been seeking clarity from their American counterparts on what the U.S. plan is for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear device if sanctions fail.

What I continue to find most outrageous are Israel’s demands that Iran comply with the IAEA and the UN when Israel, itself, has never allowed IAEA inspectors to examine its nuclear facilities and still is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Personally, I think the policy of ambiguity makes them look like assholes at worst and idiots at best. And as I always remind people, I don’t take any of this lightly, being Jewish and all.

Either way, the games will go on and we’ll all continue to forget how we got here.