Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 November 5

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November 5

Israel & American policy

From a foreign policy perspective, why does it make sense for the United States to continue supporting Israel and alienate almost every Arabic country in the process? If our Israel - United States relations article is to be trusted, the US went from the most admired country in the Middle East to the most hated due to this support. I understand that during the Cold War, the US wanted allies in that region to prevent all of it from falling into the Soviet sphere, but that concern is obviously no longer valid. --140.180.36.161 (talk) 06:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

A non-American's guess - the big parties' policies are influenced by their big financial supporters. It sure happens in my country. HiLo48 (talk) 06:44, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It's complicated. First you have to read about the Balfour Declaration, which raised the expectation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Then, after the appalling persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, and other factors, President Truman recognized the State of Israel at the moment of its creation, because, as he later said: "Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by while the victims [of] Hitler's madness are not allowed to build new lives." So ever since, the U.S. has been an ally of Israel. That's how we got involved in the first place. But - there is no simple answer to your question, first of all because it depends on exactly what you mean by "supporting Israel." Militarily? Politically? Approving some particular action or other of the Israeli government? There are many conflicting points of view on those topics here in the U.S., so without a more specific question, no precise answer is possible. However, the overall policy of the current U.S. administration is summed up by our State Department in this speech given yesterday by Assistant Secretary Andrew Shapiro:

We don’t just support Israel because of a long standing bond, we support Israel because it is in our national interests to do so. This aspect of our relationship with Israel is often overlooked. America’s commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity has extended over many decades because our leaders on both sides of the aisle have long understood that a robust United States-Israel security relationship is in our interests. Our support for Israel’s security helps preserve peace and stability in the region. If Israel were weaker, its enemies would be bolder. This would make broader conflict more likely, which would be catastrophic to American interests in the region. It is the very strength of Israel’s military which deters potential aggressors and helps foster peace and stability. Ensuring Israel’s military strength and its superiority in the region, is therefore critical to regional stability and as a result is fundamentally a core interest of the United States.

Beyond that, it may be difficult to find a neutral assessment of the relationship. Feelings run high on both sides of every issue having to do with Israel, it seems to me, both here and around the world. As an individual, my greatest concern is for the victims of injustice and violence, the ordinary folks who suffer because the politicians and religionists of both sides can't sort things out. I just wish everybody would beat their swords into plowshares, settle down, follow the Golden Rule, and get along - but that's just me. Textorus (talk) 11:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You should carefully distinguish between pre-1967 and post-1967 phases. In the 1948-1967 period, the United States certainly supported Israel's existence and the two countries generally had friendly relations (except during the Suez Crisis and its aftermath), but it would have been going a little too far to call the U.S. and Israel active allies -- and the U.S. was always very careful to avoid any appearance that there was any form of military alliance between the U.S. and Israel. However, those inhibitions on the part of the U.S. were thrown out of the window by the events of 1967, when the United States public formed an overall extremely low opinion of Arabs (or certainly of Egypt and Syria), due to the very frequent virulent "Throw the Jews into the sea!" type hate rhetoric accompanied by anti-Americanism that was being loosely tossed around by prominent Arab personalities or spokesmen or ugly mobs, followed shortly by the farcical and pathetic military collapse of the Arab armies on all fronts and the formation of strong and tight Egyptian-Soviet and Syrian-Soviet military alliances. After 1967, the United States and Israel became open close allies in the military and other spheres, and the Arabs mostly had themselves to blame for this turn of events... AnonMoos (talk) 12:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It is an interesting question, why the U.S. is stuck in a posture obviously detrimental to its own interests. In 1948 the Arab world was not a strong actor on the international scene. The oil boom was yet to happen, and most Arab regions were still (directly or indirectly) under colonial control. Siding with the Zionists against the Arabs didn't appear to have to much consequences. The Arab states were also internally very weak, their resistance to the destruction of Palestine was to some extent a symbolic stand and I think many analysts at the time thought the conflict would eventually blow over. Now the situation evolved differently, as the Palestine question was instrumental in shaping the democratic of the Arab masses. Which in turn put the US on the sides of Arab dictatorships, having to repress the Arab people in order to shield of Israel.

That doesn't mean that the US-Israeli alliance is solely negative for US interests, through the military capacity of Israel the US is able to exert pressure of regional oil producers. But clearly the US puts in more in this relationship than it gets back. The problem is that once your get into deep shit, it is not so easy to get out of it. Any US politician speaking out against US funding of Israel is likely to get marginalized, and essentially all recent US govts are held hostage. Interestingly, Obama is more vulnerable to these types of attacks, due to race and conspiracy theories, and thus needs to reaffirm steadfast support for Israel again and again.

We should also remember, that in 1948 both the US and Soviet Union sought to outbid each other for support to Israel. The Soviets hoped that Israel would evolve into a progressive state, and supplied (through Czechoslovakia) armaments for the new state. However, the US sphere provided the financial support for the new state (through direct funds from the US and reparations from West Germany, still technically under occupation), which held to the forging of business linkages and the integration of Israel in the Western sphere of influence. Post WWII events in the Socialist Bloc also contributed to turning Israeli public opinion anti-Soviet. So, in the end the Soviets (after some years of rather confused Middle East policy) opted for aligning with the emerging Arab nationalism of Nasser. --Soman (talk) 14:44, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

"The Soviets hoped that Israel would evolve into a progressive state" seems to be a highly-tendentious code-phrase for "Stalin was in favor of anything that that would lessen British control and power in the middle-east, and was not hesitant about stirring things up and trying out a number of seemingly-inconsistent policies in pursuit of that goal. Stalin also was not without hopes that a new state of Israel could be influenced in some manner by Stalinism -- or at least that the Communist party in Israel would play a role analogous to the French or Italian Communist parties." The word progressive is really a grotesque solecism in this context. AnonMoos (talk) 15:12, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, that is your interpretation. Also, don't forget that Mapam was clearly pro-Soviet in the early phase of the Israeli state. At 1948 Mapam was the second largest party in Israel, and combined with the smaller Israeli CP and the Arab list of Mapam the pro-Soviet bloc had 18.8% of the votes in the 1949 election. So, politically there was a foundation for the Soviet policy. However, the Soviets were incapable to matching the US support economically, leading to the integration of Israel in the Western sphere of influence. --Soman (talk) 16:29, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

By the way, when it comes to Israel's reputation in the U.S. (which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for U.S. support for Israel), Israel actually has a very mixed and overall indifferent record over the years when it comes to spinning specific events. 1967 was a great public opinion success (more because of Arab failings than because of any marked Israeli propaganda prowess, as indicated above) -- but 1956 and 1982 were almost equally great failures. However, one area where Israel was highly successful in connecting with the U.S. public for many decades was in giving the general impression that the Israelis are "like us" or "like Americans" in their values of democracy and political freedom, their desires to work hard to build up a successful society and to be left alone to live with their 2.5-child family in the resulting prosperity, etc. By contrast, the events especially of the 1960s and 1970s gave many Americans an impression of Arabs as a people who hadn't achieved many real accomplishments in modern times that Americans would respect (such as building up strong economies, advanced technologies, progressive societies -- in the sense of the word "progressive" which does not mean "being a subservient toadying groveling flunky to Stalin" -- or political democracies), and yet who seemed to be eager to tear down and destroy the accomplishments that others had achieved, displaying somewhat self-destructively spiteful attitudes of the "I would rather starve than accept half a loaf of bread, if that means that my enemy will also receive half a loaf" type. If things are starting to change in recent years, it's more because of the apparent inability of the Israeli government to crack down on provocative actions by a small number of Jewish religious fanatics and/or the events in the Arab world outside the Palestine-Israel area (since Arabs have almost always been hopeless in framing the Palestinian issue in terms that will significantly appeal to the broad U.S. public, outside of a few lefties or paleocons...) AnonMoos (talk) 16:22, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure about that last statement? There seems to be considerable debate about the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the US, and lots of people partially support Palestine (and don't unconditionally support Israel). --140.180.36.161 (talk) 17:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Such debate really hasn't affected the broad majority of the U.S. populace (as opposed to a committed political minority) in any major way. If the Palestinian claims resonated in an unambiguous and unequivocal way with a broad segment of the U.S. public, as the situations in Burma, Tibet, and Darfur have done (or Bosnia etc. did in past decades), then this could hardly fail to have a significant impact on U.S. politics -- but in actuality, the number of U.S. congresspersons who could be called "pro-Palestinian" in any meaningful sense is almost certainly in the single digits. The Palestine Solidarity Movement has limited its broad influence on U.S. public opinion by refusing to condemn in any way any terrorist attacks (no matter how bloodthirsty or brutal), while the International Solidarity Movement strongly antagonized a large number of U.S. Jews when Adam Shapiro made some overly simplistic and propagandistic-sounding remarks in 2002 which were extremely poorly received, and it also strongly antagonized many western journalists based in the mid-east when these journalists were pretty much lied to by ISM activists in the immediate aftermath of the Rachel Corrie affair. Down the decades, strong pro-Arab anti-Israel advocates have pretty much consistently shot themselves in the foot as far as expressing their case in terms that are acceptable and appealing to the broader American public. If things are starting to shift in recent years, then as far as I can tell it's more because of Israeli government actions (and its inability or unwillingness to put a stop to settler stupidities or brutalities), or perhaps because Arabs are overall perceived a little differently in the aftermath of the Arab spring -- rather than because pro-Palestinian advocacy is having a major impact on U.S. public opinion (something which has never been the case). AnonMoos (talk) 11:41, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the initial question can best be answered by taking the question in the inverse: Why would it be in the world's interest if there were no Israel, that is, if the Jewish people had no sovereign state at all of their own? That's what the OP is really asking here; phrasing it in the positive rather than the negative doesn't change the fundemental nature of the question; which is about the survival vs. extinction of the Israeli state. I'd posit that the world is NOT a better place without a sovereign Israel in it, which is not to say that the existance of the State of Israel does not itself create stresses on the world. However, this is not a situation where there is some magic solution that has no negative consequences, it's a matter of which situation is less negative; and then working through that situation to ammeliorate the problems it creates. The world tried having the Jewish people as a stateless ethnicity; see The Holocaust for how well THAT worked out. Statelessness is never good for a culture or a people, and the recognition of that is why Isreal has a fundemental right to exist. Now, that DOES raise the problem of how to deal with the (now) stateless people that the creation of Israel caused (the Palestinian people), but we're working on that... The solution is painfully slow, but it would be inaccurate to say that progress has not been made at all in that regard. --Jayron32 16:13, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

That's a false dichotomy. The Palestinian question is not one of Israel as it is now vs. no Israel at all. The favoured solution by the international community seems to be the "two-state solution". There would still be an Israel for the Jews (albeit smaller than it is now), but there would be a Palestine for the Arabs as well. --Tango (talk) 17:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I never once, in any word above, made that claim in my entire analysis, so I will thank you not to pretend that I did just to make your own attempt to disagree with me look better. The question was made of why the U.S. supports Israel. The answer is that without U.S. support, Israel would likely cease to exist. The question of Palestinian statehood is a problem that needs to be solved. I clearly and unambigously stated this, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to disagree with a statement that I did not make. It is quite possible to believe that full statehood for both peoples is the only tenable solution to a peaceful middle east, which is why above I made that exact arguement. I'm not sure why you say my statement was false, and then go on to make the exact same statement I made in slightly different words. Let me say it in smaller words and packed all together in one sentance so it is not confusing for you: The Israeli and Palestinian people both deserve sovereign states. If the U.S. did not support Israel's right to exist, however, it would not exist at all. That is the arguement I made above. --Jayron32 20:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You said "I'd posit that the world is NOT a better place without a sovereign Israel in it" - why did you posit that? No-one has been proposing eliminating Israel completely (well, Iran has, but that's about it). Israel would continue to exist without US support, since no-one with any real power wants to get rid of it. You are the one arguing against straw men, not me. --Tango (talk) 22:48, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's the United States government that believes that Israel's survival depends on U.S. support, not me. I was answering the OP's question regarding the beliefs of the U.S. government, not my personal beliefs. My personal beliefs are irrelevent to this discussion, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to assume what they are. If you wish to change the U.S. government's position on this, you should contact your congressperson to convince them, not me. I have no power to change the U.S. government's position. If the arguement is a strawman, then you need to contact the U.S. government who believes that strawman, not me, who is impotent in changing policy with regards to Israel. If it is so important to you that the U.S. government stops supporting Israel, you need to realize I have no power in that regard! --Jayron32 23:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

What a bunch of odd responses. The OP's question wasn't about the history of Israel or about Jewish persecution. It said "why does it make sense for the United States to continue supporting Israel?" (I've bolded what seem to be the key words.) It's still a good question. Talk of what happened way back in 1948, '56, '67 and '82 doesn't help explain the word continuing. The Soviets are obviously irrelevant too. Non-specific comments about what's best for the world don't explain American behaviour. HiLo48 (talk) 16:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The U.S. continues to provide support for Israel because without that continued support Israel could cease to exist. --Jayron32 20:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

But why does it care about that? HiLo48 (talk) 21:26, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Why do you care whether New Zealand ceases to exist, or any other country? See Israel: Background and Relations with the United States, Congressional Research Service, 2007, p. 3: Since 1948, the United States and Israel have developed a close friendship based on common democratic values, religious affinities, and security interests. . . . The United States and Israel concluded a free-trade agreement in 1985, and the United States is Israel’s largest trading partner. Israel is a prominent recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The two countries also have close security relations. Not to mention 7.7 million souls that could potentially be wiped out because The government views Iran as an existential threat due to its nuclear ambitions and support for anti-Israel terrorists. Textorus (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

More history (not relevant to "continue"), and free trade, etc. The US has NOT intervened automatically to stop citizens of other nations being "wiped out". So why Israel? The only hint of a formal reason in your post was "...close security relations". Note: I'm not advocating standing around and watching any people being wiped out, but every country is selective. HiLo48 (talk) 22:13, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

HiLo, it's like you are being deliberately obtuse and disruptive here. You keep asking why, why, why, like a little child who is never satisfied with any answer but keeps on and on just to annoy the hell out of his daddy. I don't make U.S. foreign policy myself, nor do I necessarily agree with every iota of it, but twice in this thread I have quoted the official U. S. government explanation of the policy to you, and provided the links to further reading on the subject in official U.S. government publications. If you don't understand what you read, I guess the only thing left for you to do is to write the State Department and ask for clarification. Textorus (talk) 22:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Let's look at that last bit of "policy". It mentions Iran's nuclear ambitions. Hey, Israel already has nuclear weapons. So that doesn't work. Then it mentions Iran's support for anti-Israel terrorists. That's just begging the question. It comes back to the issue of why the US takes Israel's side. Would the US be concerned about terrorism aimed against Iran? The US didn't worry too much about Tamil terrorism. Again, all countries are selective. The US is very selective about Israel. It's interesting to ask why, without condemning that behaviour. HiLo48 (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You already stated the answer you want to hear in your first comment on this thread. If you want Hillary to confirm that for you in writing, click here, select the "E-mail a Question" tab at top, then in the Topic drop-down box, choose U.S. Foreign Policy - Middle East. Fill in your email address and the answer you wish to receive, and press Continue for more options. Or stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly. Textorus (talk) 00:14, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

HiLo48 -- Historical factors have a lot to do with the current pattern of alliances (not just for Israel). A few months after the six-day war of 1967, De Gaulle made a cold-blooded decision to change French diplomacy from a policy of relative friendliness towards Israel to an anti-Israeli pro-Arab policy, based almost solely on his calculations of what would increase the gloire et grandeur de la France (which was his main reason for most of the major decisions he made), disregarding all considerations of history, past alliances, domestic politics, personal relationships, rights and wrongs, etc. to focus solely and exclusively on naked national self-interest. U.S. decisions about whether to continue long-standing alliances are not generally made in this exclusively coldly calculating manner, and I don't think that the U.S. public would be in favor of making decisions only on that basis... AnonMoos (talk) 11:55, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

The answer is really the same as to any question about why politicians do a particular thing - they think it will get them more votes than not doing it. That's not necessarily due to lots of voters supporting the idea (it can be due to campaign funding, for instance), but at the end of the day it always comes down to votes. --Tango (talk) 17:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

One can't ignore the possibility that supporting Israel no longer is in the US' rational interest, but that the US continues to do so because it has in the past, and it fears instability should that support diminish or cease. Much of US middle-east policy emphasises short-term stability over a rational (for the US or the middle east) long-term strategy, but short term electoral math says "don't rock the boat". 87.114.91.4 (talk) 17:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

With the choice basically being a binary one, between support for Israel or the Muslim states, I believe the reason for a lack of support for Muslims is their terrible reputation in the US. The US sees them as terrorists, people who refuse women the vote, beat them for not wearing a burqa, and stone them to death if any man says they committed adultery. If they convert to Christianity, they can be executed for that, too. The US gets video of them dressing up toddlers as suicide bombers wielding machine guns and see them as hostage takers and murderers. The 1973 Arab oil embargo didn't win them any friends in the US either. Then we see Palestinians dancing in the streets in celebration on 9-11.

There's also the political fact that Muslim nations seem to be unreliable allies. For example, when Turkey was asked to allow US troops to pass through their nation to invade Iraq, the Turks refused, but also implied they might go along if bribed with enough money. And Turkey also refuses to admit to the Armenian genocide and imprisons anyone who talks about it. The there's Saudi Arabia, with a government and laws straight out of the dark ages. And our former ally, Iraq, whom we supported in the Iran/Iraq war, then turned around and used poison gas on the Kurdish villages and invaded Kuwait. Pakistan was also our ally, in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, but then turned around and supported Al Queda. Then low and behold, we find Bin Laden hiding right next to their military academy. And Egypt was another ally, but with a government so oppressive it led to a revolution.

Also, if we need something "dirty" done, like bombing the Iranian nuclear sites, Israel is the only one that will do it for us. Now, if as a result of the revolutions of this year (hopefully including the fall of the Syrian government), we get democratic governments that respect basic human rights (freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equal rights for women, etc.) then perhaps the situation will change. I'm skeptical, though, and picture more Taliban-style governments. StuRat (talk) 22:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's easy to find lots of nasty things that some of Israel's neighbours have done, but Israel hasn't exactly been as pure as the driven snow in its behaviour either. I know a tit-for-tat argument is pointless. But saying that the support for Israel is on humanitarian grounds is not enough. That Israel will do the US's dirty work makes sense. HiLo48 (talk) 22:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd agree that Israelis have done nasty things to Muslims, just as Muslims have done nasty things to Jews. However, I can't think of any terrorist attacks on the US launched by Jews, nor do they oppress their own people to the same degree that many Muslim nations do. Also, Muslims have attacked other religions, too, such as Christianity (church attacks), Hindus (attacks in India), and even Buddhism (the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban). When you attack everyone, you end up with no friends. StuRat (talk) 22:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's just random odds and not official ideology of Islam that makes that difference. "Muslims" as an entire ideology have not attacked anyone. It is not a monolithic single-minded movement, it's a bunch of random people who are as prone to being good or bad, law-abiding or terrorist, as any other random group of people. There are several orders of magnitude more Muslims in the world than Jews, and so their criminal actions will be greater merely because some constant percent of all people commit crimes; and so there are going to be more crimes committed by Muslims merely because there are more of them. There's nothing in Islam which makes them more prone to terrorism!!! Muslims are not "attacking everyone". There are several hundred million muslims in the world who haven't attacked anyone! --Jayron32 23:30, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The numbers might figure into it, but somehow I doubt if more Jews would mean they would then have committed a 9-11, too. After all, even if you lump all non-Muslims in the world together, none of them have done anything similar to the US, unless you go back to Pearl Harbor. Note that all Japanese were considered untrustworthy after that, not just those who ordered the attack, hence the Japanese internment camps. It may not be logical, but that's how public perception works. StuRat (talk) 23:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

No, Americans are just fine doing horrific terrorist attacks all by themselves. And regardless of what another person believes, you are under no obligation to perpetuate the horrifyingly offensive insinuation that there is something in the nature of being Muslim that causes terrorism. There just isn't, and to imply in any way that there is is just awful. --Jayron32 23:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

There is the current wave of Islamic fundamentalism which seems to be the cause of most of the Muslim terrorism. And yes, 1000 years ago Christian fundamentalism was as bad or worse, leading to the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, etc., but that threat has long-since ended. StuRat (talk) 00:18, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

With the choice basically being a binary one, between support for Israel or the Muslim states. But that isn't true, at all. Turkey, for example, is a NATO ally. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 03:29, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Only nominally. As I described above, they aren't a very reliable ally. StuRat (talk) 13:20, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the summary here should be that there's more to U.S. foreign policy than realpolitik. The U.S. is to at least some extent a democracy, and abandoning Israel has little support among the populace. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Éamon de Valera and the plastic Paddies

Was Éamon de Valera a plastic Paddy? --Belchman (talk) 16:09, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't appear so. Our article, which surely you have read, mentions his mother was Irish and his father absent (or so); he appears to have been raised Irish and taken to Ireland age 2. The articles gives every indication he was properly Irish. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:14, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, his mother was Irish and he was raised in Ireland. Plastic Paddy's are the people who show up for the St. Patricks Day parade to drink green beer and wear the "Kiss Me I'm Irish" buttons, and have no other connection to Irish culture than that. Despite the American location of his birth and his Cuban father, Éamon de Valera was clearly an Irishman through and through; I think it borders on offensive to imply that a man who fought hard for Irish independence, and seved multiple terms as both Taoiseach and President of Ireland was a "plastic paddy". --Jayron32 16:18, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who survives the Irish educational system is Irish as far as I'm concerned whether they're white yellow, brown, green or pink. Dmcq (talk)

On Cherokee Grandmothers. Buddy431 (talk) 03:00, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

The universal Cherokee grandmother I have personally known plastic paddies in the US to claim spurious Cherokee Indian ancestry besides the Irish.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 16:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Actually, I'd wager that at least three out of four caucasian families in the U.S. claim to have a Cherokee great-great-grandmother. This claim is common knowledge among people who work in family history, but alas, said grandmas are notoriously shy about appearing in the actual genealogical records. Textorus (talk) 16:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Yes and it's always a Cherokee. Never Sioux, Cheyenne, Iroquois, Choctaw. As if the only Native American tribe was Cherokee and all the women married white guys! I once saw an online family tree where a family claimed their great-grandmother was a full-blood Cherokee yet claimed she was directly descended from English royalty and Charlemagne!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 16:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC) In which case, Charlemagne must have had his own Cherokee grandmother.  ;) Textorus (talk) 17:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Actually, I don't see what makes the claim impossible. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC) The Cherokee lived in the South as a "civilized tribe" during the early settlement of the thinly settled frontier. There was thus some neighborly interaction in the 1600's and 1700's. I'm not sure the Easterners going out West on stagecoaches or later trains interacted in the same way with the Sioux and other western tribes. Many of the ancestral "Cherokee" might have been other tribes of the south and southeast. In many cases the claim is true. Edison (talk) 20:06, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Same story in my family, but when I traced all the lines back to the appropriate generation and before, there's nothing to indicate Indian ancestry, and nobody turns up on the Dawes Rolls. There may well be a basis for the stories somewhere in the past, but not so near as we were told. Textorus (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC) Guys... all that is very interesting but it's not related to my question, you know. --Belchman (talk) 22:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC) You got your answer in the first two replies. What did you not understand? Textorus (talk) 23:04, 5 November 2011 (UTC) You miss the point. I'm saying that this is not the place to chit-chat about that. --Belchman (talk) 23:26, 5 November 2011 (UTC) This is not the place to ask obviously silly, time-wasting questions about famous dead politicians, but we didn't throw you out of the park for that. Textorus (talk) 23:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC) I'm reporting you for incivility. --Belchman (talk) 00:28, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Go right ahead, be my guest. I don't work here, I'm just a volunteer. Textorus (talk) 00:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Same story in my family, which does come from the southern Appalachians and could plausibly have interacted with the remnant Cherokee, but I've found no sign it's true. In that region the story might be cover for Melungeon ancestry.Acroterion (talk) 00:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)