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You're missing a couple of key points.
Israel is a democracy. America, especially lately, always attempts to support and preserve democracies, because we feel its in our interest to do so. We were less able to do this during the Cold War, and made some huge blunders in this regard (Iran, Vietnam). There's been a gradual shift in foreign policy since 1990 towards promoting democracy and human rights as a long term goal at the expense of short term goals.. I write about that here.
For a long time, US policy was for the Israelis and Palestinians to live together in harmony. We basically felt that the Israeli and Palestinian economies were too interdependent for them to survive separately. We've finally given up on that. Our current goal is for a separate state for the Palestinians, even if we end up with a "Tel Aviv" wall.
I just went on a business trip and left the laptop at home, and only used my iPad. It worked great. I still took my laptop briefcase, because on trips I put boarding passes, pens, papers and other stuff in it, but it was now 7 pounds lighter. I may have to get a new case, if I can get over the idea of carrying a man-purse. I easily spend more hours on my iPad then I do on my laptop because frankly, the ergonomics are just that much superior. You can't really use a laptop comfortably in any other position then table+chair. But all of these combinations work fine for an iPad: * table + chair * couch * armchair * bed lying down * bed sitting up * bed upside down So iPad = Freedom to move around the house. You can argue its about consumption, but we are all 90% consumers. I probably wouldn't write a novel on one, true. But I have reviewed and edited documents on it, produced graphics, all kinds of "creation". I also have the wireless keyboard, so I...