Throw a party, that is what Freedom Democrats should be doing. They should be getting stronger and finding new supporters.

Get everybody together, the election is over, the Democracy is safe. Donald Trump’s days of overthrowing the government and falsifying election results seem finished now that he has won. He wants to be boss and leave his mark on history.

Wars in Palestine and Ukraine agitate Freedom Democrats. War is the opposite of freedom. In war the powerful tell the weak what to do, and the soldiers kill to prove they mean it. President Kennedy said that peace does not require some fantasy of harmony. “It requires only” that nations and groups “live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”

Freedom Democrats favor peace. Got a complaint take It to a lawyer or a diplomat. Don’t shoot and be a brute.

In Ukraine and Palestine, bullets and bombs are flying;  families are crying. Young men with lives to live are robbed of their future; tens of thousands are dead or their bodies mangled.

Israel is bringing out a blood lust among its own people and leaders in the United States. Trump’s love of Israel is part of a larger movement in the U.S. accepting all-out war. To be a supporter of Israel requires tolerance of brutal warfare.

Trump’s choice for Defense Department Chief, Pete Hegseth, argues there is only one way to fight, that is fight to win. In this view, wars are not a popularity contest where local groups can be persuaded to support our side. The objective is forcing an invaded nation to submit to our policies or face fatal consequences.

When we left Afghanistan, the people we thought were on our side fled and in a matter of days the Talian took control. We thought that supporting women’s rights, schooling, and other services would win popular support. But the Afghanis realized that without U.S. soldiers the Taliban were going to rule and Muslim Sharia law would prevail.

Hegseth’s view is that soldiers must be warriors and should have the full backing of the U.S. government and fight until they win. Afghanistan is 2.5 times larger than France. Pacifying, or perhaps the word is “subjugating,” such a large country would cost billions. The number of soldiers required probably would prevent the U.S. from fighting anywhere else in the world.

Thus, Hegseth’s ideas lead to two potential conclusions: Afghanistan is not that important and shouldn’t be the United States’s number one priority. In this case the argument leads to nonintervention. Or, alternatively, the size of the U.S. military must be drastically increased, and the U.S. budget must pay for all-out war.

People in the United States are not joining the military in large numbers. The U.S. avoids confronting this issue. It adjusts its targets down to coincide with new enlistments; only with this sleight of hand can the D.O.D. claim its targets were reached. Why all-out war in a far-away nation like Afghanistan would increase enlistments is beyond my comprehension.

Hegseth’s nomination is controversial. He is not crazy and Republicans may well unite to back him, and it might be possible to split the Democratic minority in the United States senate, giving Hegseth additional support.

The downside to his view is that American public opinion should accept an extraordinary level of violence. The movement towards an American security state and away from democracy would proceed by making the country accustomed to all-out war. This is a dangerous prospect.

This article is being written before the Israeli cabinet has agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon. Stopping the killing is a victory for Israel; it means that the Palestinians are abandoned. Iraq accepts Israel’s domination of this people and the increase in Israel’s size to include Gaza and the West Bank.

Presumably, Israel should curb its hostility towards Iran. Iran in turn will likely accept Israel’s right to drill for oil and gas in the Mediterranean off the Lebanon coast. In other words, Iran and Israel will benefit from the ceasefire and the Palestinians get nothing.

Hamas will have left the Palestinians crushed. No other Middle East nation is willing to risk Israel’s wrath by going to war in support of the Palestinian cause. Undoubtedly, this is a lesson that the United States and Israel hope will be accepted by the Palestinians. Rather than think of Hamas as heroes they will be convinced that Hamas’s adventurism has harmed their lives. Surely, this is a lesson that Israel and the United States support.

If there was world government, then Palestine could take its complaints to the United Nations and try to end the apartheid separation between Muslim and Israeli. Unhappily, the ceasefire will demonstrate to Israel and the Middle East that policies deemed genocide by the International Criminal Court prevail.

The Palestinians will be left to suffer without any meaningful international support. World government could produce an opposite result without death and destruction.