Yet another reason

We were in the Netherlands and with our kids, who were, well, just kids, big enough to understand most of what we were seeing, but just kids on the lookout for McDonalds any chance they could get.

We'd decided on the Open-Air Museum in Arnhem, another version of Iowa's Living History Farms, the kind of place where life, in many ways, hasn't changed. Men and women dressed in their era's standard wardrobes still plow with horses and chase chickens around the yard.

David and I were in what we'd call an old-fashioned "general store," where the clerk, a round and jolly big-bearded fellow wearing a broad denim apron looked up at us and said, not asked, "You're Dutch, aren't you?" 

It was his job, of course, to engage the wanderers, but it was an unexpected question and a good lead. "Yah," I said, "Dutch-American, however, five generations in."

"What's your name?" he asked.

I told him.

"Schaap???" he said, and then, quickly, "--you're Jewish."

We're not Jewish, but we'd just come from a visit to another museum, this one at Westerbork, the last stop for Dutch Jews before being shipped, by train, to Auschwitz. It was a stunning visit I've never forgotten, as was this. These Schaaps are not Jewish.

Sometimes that moment is haunting. Like yesterday, when Secretary of State Rubio gave us all the administration's fourth or fifth explanation for taking up military action against Iran. If I have this right, what he said goes something like this: We started military action because we knew that Israel was going to; we knew also that when they did start blowing things up, Iran would retaliate, not just in Israel but around the region, including our bases and people. Let's be clear, he might have said, we did not start this. We are only protecting our interests. This is not a war of aggression. It's all defense.

True? What is "true," in Trumpworld, always requires discernment. 

But Rubio's explanation comes uncomfortably close to confessing that we're Netanyahu's big, no-brained brother--or sister. We're at war in the Middle East because Netanyahu was going to be? We're his handy-dandy palace guard. We show our teeth when he says, "get em." Consider us Israel's lapdog, his hand-maiden.

It's not easy to say that these days. Harvard's student body protested the endless death in Gaza, and Trump sued them for being anti-Semitic, when the percentage of Jewish students and faculty on the Quad is as high as it is anywhere, save Columbia, who also took their licks.

It's tough to say what I just said. Do it publicly, nationally, and you're an anti-Semite, a bigot.

But if Rubio's latest explanation is the right fit, something about the arrangement really, really stinks.