An affection is one thing, but an alliance is quite another. America might very well have an affection for Israel. But she has an alliance with Turkey. Sooner an occasionally difficult friend than a spoilt child.
Evidently. Since the Turkish undertaking of naval protection for future flotillas, an undertaking which once given can never be entirely revoked, could not have been given without the approval of the Pentagon. Turkey knows who has her back, and who therefore does not have the other side's. Public sentiment does not enter into it. Where was the public sentiment to "liberate" Kuwait from, and to defend Saudi Arabia against, Saddam Hussein? If necessary, the media can manufacture such feeling. That is what they are kept on for.
Even Presidential opinion hardly matters, certainly not when the President in question has neither military experience nor, as the last one had, any role as the front man for some cult of foreign policy loonies who had staged a coup. The military will just tell Obama to stay out formally while backing Turkey informally. And Obama will just do it.
But, as Craig Murray asks, whatever happened to NATO? A NATO member-state has been attacked. Will everyone now realise what a waste of time and money that organisation is?
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