Some say the US should admonish Israel for its attack on the Gaza aid ship.
But Israel is not violating US doctrine. Israel is implementing it.
A former US national security chief just said on CNN: "I mean, imagine for a moment if you had videotape of a U.S. Navy SEAL being thrown by civilians off the side of a ship. We would be surprised if not everybody on that ship was killed as a result of that." (CNN, The Situation Room, May 31, 2010).
There were 600 people on that ship. US doctrine, evidently, says: kill them.
Saying this was Frances Fragos Townsend, the former top adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism to US President George W. Bush, and a current member of President Obama's CIA External Advisory Board.
Townsend also served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence at the US Coast Guard.
Under President Clinton, at the US Department of Justice, Townsend's official biography states, she "played a critical part in establishing the [Criminal] Division's international training and rule of law programs."
The problem is not just one of stopping Israel's crimes, but of stopping Washington from authorizing them -- and from exporting worldwide a US version of "rule of law" that legalizes official killings of civilians.
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