By Brian McGlinchey
Stark Realities
May 5, 2026
On April 25, I spoke at a conference hosted by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, as part of a lineup that included former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. Here are both the video of my speech and my remarks as I'd prepared them; some of my words at the podium naturally varied from what I'd written.
I'm going to begin our examination of the US-Israel relationship by taking you to an unlikely location, thousands of miles from either Tel Aviv or Washington. We're also traveling more than 36 years into the past.
On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded the Republic of Panama to oust its leader, General Manuel Noriega, who had outlived his usefulness to the empire. At that point, it was the largest US military operation by far since the end of the Vietnam War, and it marked the beginning of an era of endless regime-change wars that continues to this day. Before Operation Just Cause was over, 23 American service members lay dead and 325 wounded.
At the time, I was a brand new platoon leader in the Army's 5th Infantry Division at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Two of my fellow 5th ID soldiers, members of a battalion that was on a rotation to Panama at the time, were killed in the invasion. They died in the assault on the Comandancia - the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces.
I was not part of the invasion, but soon after, my Military Police unit was deployed to Panama to conduct joint patrols of Panama City with the country's reconstituted and demilitarized security forces.
One afternoon, several weeks into my deployment, I had an interesting conversation with one of our Panamanian officer counterparts - a major. As we stood outside a police station near Tocumen International airport, he told me that, on the night of the invasion, he was at the Comandancia. Knowing it had been the site of one of the invasion's bloodiest battles, and knowing what he must have experienced as my fellow countrymen attacked, I could only quietly shake my head to reflect my appreciation of the ordeal he must have endured.
And then, without prompting, he said, "We knew you were coming."
"How?" I asked.
And he replied, "The Israelis told us."
And that's how, 36 years ago, under a hot Panamanian sun, my education about the true nature of the US-Israel relationship began.
This is a relationship without parallel in world history. It's no exaggeration to say that it's the strangest relationship between two countries the world has ever seen.
One in which the largest economic and military power the world has ever known, subordinates itself to a tiny country that would otherwise be almost entirely inconsequential. Not only systematically redistributing its own wealth to that tiny, well-off country, but unconditionally embracing that country's geopolitical agenda, and taking extreme actions on behalf of that country in a way that causes immense harm to its own interests, while also inflicting death, displacement and despair on millions of innocents.
US support for Israel comes at a staggering, multifaceted price. The steepest costs of this relationship are not measured in dollars, but we'll start with dollars... mindful that every one of them is borrowed at interest.
When aid is discussed, you'll hear people refer to a very specific figure: "$3.8 billion a year." That's just the beginning. That's what the United States is committed to giving Israel under the current 10-year "memorandum of understanding." But thanks to supplemental authorizations, total aid is frequently far above that floor. For example, in the first year after the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, Congress threw on another $8.7 billion.
Israel is routinely the top annual aid recipient - by far (though the Ukraine war briefly disrupted Israel's winning streak). Going back to World War II, Israel isn't just the largest beneficiary - it's received almost double what the next country has. Let's put that in perspective: Israel represents just 0.12% of the world's population, but has received upwards of 30% of total aid since World War II.
That's even crazier when you realize that Israel is among the world's richest countries. In per capita GDP, it's 20th in the world, above the likes of Austria, Germany, the UK, Canada and France. And yet Israel typically receives more than double what America gives to all of sub-Saharan Africa combined.
But even that's a wild understatement, because in addition to what it hands over directly to Israel, the United States spends so much more on behalf of Israel. Since World War II, the second-largest cumulative aid recipient is Egypt. For all intents and purposes, aid to Egypt is aid to Israel, because it's part of commitments made to seal the Camp David peace deal between Egypt and Israel.
In recent years, the third-place recipient is typically Jordan. Because of a 1994 treaty of their own, you can add them to the Israel account too. Essentially, this money is how the United States rents the obedience of the Egyptians and Jordanians.
Further obscuring things, Uncle Sam often uses bureaucratic tricks to conceal how much aid is being given to Israel. For example, in just six months following Oct 7, the Biden administration made 100 separate arms deals with Israel, each one structured so it was below the dollar threshold that triggers mandatory, detailed reporting to Congress. There are other under-the-counter tactics, like dishing out US weapons from stockpiles in Israel that are supposedly there for America's use.
All American aid to Israel comes in the form of military aid, which means Israel rakes in more than half the global total. Get this: Because Israel's share of US aid is embarrassingly high, Israel's supporters actually push for the United States to increase its military aid to other countries - NOT for Israeli security - just so Israel's share doesn't look so bad.
In case you aren't sufficiently agitated, Israel's illegal aid comes with sweetheart terms. Every other country receives its aid money in installments spread over the year. Israel gets ALL its money front-loaded at the start of the fiscal year - deposited in a special account at the Fed... where it earns interest.
And here's a stark reality: every single dollar of aid to Israel violates US law. The Glenn and Symington amendments prohibit aid to countries that have gone nuclear without joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...you know, that treaty that Iran is a member of.
The biggest costs of the relationship come from something that Donald Trump emphatically promised to end - regime change wars.
Fully adopting Israel's agenda, US policy puts top priority on ensuring Israel has no powerful rivals in the region. In cases like Egypt and Jordan, subservience is rented. But throughout most of the region, Israeli primacy is pursued by repeatedly weakening and shattering other states so none of them can stand as a potent rival.
At the extreme, that's accomplished via regime change. Two of the most prominent such campaigns pushed by Israel and its US-based collaborators were the invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, and the long and bloody effort to oust the Assad regime in Syria.
In dollar terms, regime change puts us on a whole new order of magnitude. The Brown University Costs of War Project estimates these two efforts to ensure Israel's dominance cost America $2.9 trillion.
Part of that is future medical and disability costs for veterans - patriots who signed up to defend America but ended up serving as attack dogs for a tiny country on the other side of the world.
Now we're turning from dollar costs to incalculable human costs.
In Iraq alone, 4,600 US service-members died and 32,000 were wounded, many of them dreadfully. Then there's the relentless pace of suicides from soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injuries, PTSD and moral injury - a term that describes the psychological burden of having engaged in, witnessing or failing to prevent acts that betray one's morality.
Iraq and Syria are at the forefront, but there've been many other costly US engagements that spring from the US-Israel relationship. For example, there's the 1983 truck-bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 US service members. Why were they there ? A peacekeeping mission to try to bring order after an Israeli invasion of Lebanon - one marred by ghastly atrocities and massacres.
Most people wouldn't realize it, but the 2012 attack in post-regime-change Libya - the one that killed a US Ambassador, a foreign service officer and two CIA contractors - has an Israel connection. Why was the ambassador in Benghazi ? Why was there a CIA safe house two blocks away ? As Seymour Hersh reported, they were shipping weapons from Libya to Syria for the project to oust Assad in service to the Israeli agenda.