State Department warns Americans: Israel might kill you

Following weeks of conspicuous silence, the Obama administration is taking decisive action in response to the Israeli Defense Forces' killing of Furkan Dorgan, an unarmed U.S. citizen aboard one of the ships in the “Free Gaza” flotilla who was shot four times in the head by IDF commandos: it's telling Americans to stay the hell out of harm's way – that is, out of the range of the Israel's U.S. taxpayer-subsidized weaponry.

In a travel warning issued Sunday, the State Department “strongly urges that U.S. citizens” – including all those pesky “journalists and aid workers” who might be tempted to report on the Palestinians' plight – “refrain from all travel to the Gaza Strip”:

The security environment within Gaza and along its borders, including its border with Egypt and its seacoast, is dangerous and volatile. U.S. citizens are advised against traveling to Gaza by any means, including via sea. Previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest, and deportation of U.S. citizens. 

In light of the warning, it's worth remembering what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared soon after news broke that an American was among the nine activists bringing aid to Gaza who were massacred by the IDF:

Protecting the welfare of American citizens is a fundamental responsibility of our government and one that we take very seriously. We are in constant contact with the Israeli Government, attempting to obtain more information about our citizens. We have made no decisions at this point on any additional specific actions that our government should take with respect to our own citizens.

Now we know what additional specific action the secretary of state had in mind, and it's essentially the same one the brave knights of Monty Python's "Holy Grail" came up with when confronted with a superficially friendly little bunny rabbit with a penchant for murder: Run Away!

When is a coup a coup?

The Center for International Policy's Adam Isacson, who has been chronicling the Obama administration's efforts to station U.S. troops on bases throughout Colombia, highlights this revealing exchange from earlier this month between a reporter and State Department spokesman Robert Wood regarding the U.S. government's conspicuous refusal to declare the overthrow of Honduras' democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya a "military coup":

MR. WOOD: [W]e’re going to continue to try to convince both parties and go from there. But a coup took place in the country, and –

QUESTION: Well, you haven’t officially legally declared it a coup yet.

MR. WOOD: We have called it a coup. What we have said is that we legally can’t determine it to be a military coup. That review is still ongoing.

QUESTION: Why does it take so long to review whether there’s a military coup or not?

MR. WOOD: Well, look, there are a lot of legal issues here that have to be carefully examined before we can make that determination, and it requires information being shared amongst a number of parties. We need to be able to take a look at that information and make our best legal judgment as to whether or not –

QUESTION: It seems to be taking a very long time.

MR. WOOD: Well, things take time when you’re dealing with these kinds of very sensitive legal issues.

Having majored in English in college, I am ill-prepared for deciphering the language of government and State Department flacks. Indeed, my lack of education in bureaucratic legalese does not permit me to fully comprehend how Robert Wood can concede Zelaya was overthrown in a coup -- defined as "the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group" -- but at the same time claim it an unresolved question whether said overthrow was a military coup. My confusion is compounded by the widely reported and undisputed fact that it was the (U.S. School of the Americas-trained) Honduran military brass which forced Zelaya into exile.

In other news, a spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the department has concluded that the sun rises in the East, but that officials are still "carefully examining" whether it sets in the West.