We may be in for a rough ride.
And then there’s this:
The article, which includes a senior administration official gloating that Obama successfully pressured Netanyahu to avoid launching a military strike on Iran back when it could still have stopped the radical Islamic regime’s nuclear program, signaled that Obama has Iran’s back.
It continues to amaze me that any American Jews continue to support this man. Or Americans who care at all about our national security.
If you want to figure out why American Jews might support one position or another with respect to Israel, it is instructive to learn what Israeli voters and Israeli leaders think. If Israeli voters and/or Israeli leaders disagree with each other about what to do, then it shouldn’t be a surprise to find Americans (Jewish or otherwise) who also disagree with respect to the same issue!
Many Israelis who would surely die if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons are nonetheless opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran. Why? Some are reflexive peaceniks, and we can dismiss them as uninteresting. But others are thinking about what would happen next, after a successful Israeli strike. Would the results be as successful as the 1981 preventative strike on the reactor in Iraq? Opinions legitimately differ. Look at the Israeli opinion polls.
Moreover, look at the divergence of opinion reported in the Israeli cabinet.
Finally, consider that Netanyahu and his former defense secretary Ehud Barak (a man of the left, a former PM, a man who agreed with Netanyahu on military matters, and whose military history with both Netanyahu and Netanyahu’s fallen brother made him an important decision maker) ultimately decided not to attack Iran. If there had been a strong case for an Israeli strike, Obama couldn’t have persuaded them otherwise. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak live and breath Israeli security issues. They feel the weight of the Holocaust. They wouldn’t have have been able to be dissuaded. They Israel needs US support to keep its planes flying, etc, but with Netanyahu appealing to the American Right, and Ehud Barak appealing to the American Left, Israel would have continued to receive vigorous American support after an Israeli strike. So why didn’t they attack? There must have been good reasons. If Netanyahu and Barak were willing to hold off on attacking Iran, then it should not amaze you that American Jews continue to support an American President who believed that Israel should hold off on attacking Iran.
According to Goldberg, “By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations.”
Yes, that would indeed be a calamity. Just think of the horror Israelis would endure if their country’s popularity at the UN were to drop from its current level.
Does anyone really think that an Israeli strike could stop (as opposed to merely delay) Iran’s nuclear program?
It continues to amaze me that any American Jews continue to support this man.
Not all American Jews (or all Israelis) support Likud.
If you mean could the Israelis destroy (not retard) Iran’s capabilities with a single strike (without resorting to nuclear weapons)….no, they cannot. I rather doubt that the US could do that either, for that matter.
On the other hand, could the Israelis accomplish the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure (beyond their capacity to repair in a reasonable period without excessive costs, remember that ANYTHING can be rebuilt with infinite resources) with a sustained (say 10 days or so) campaign….yes, that could accomplish that. It wouldn’t be easy, it certainly wouldn’t be something that they would do casually or without a real belief that they had no other reasonable options (which is likely why they haven’t done it yet), but they could do so.
Three points:
1) You infer that destruction, not delay, is the only acceptable option, and I believe that this is not correct. If you delay the Iranian program by say 2-5 years (easily done with a much less risky set of strikes, along with some covert activities), you could buy quite a bit of time for other things to help your situation. Lets call this the ‘Maybe the horse will sing’ option.
2) By hinting that it may establish a détente with the Iranians (who make no secret of their long term plans for Israel), the Administration is undercutting the argument that Israel has any option OTHER than a military strike. So even if one believed that Obama’s misbegotten policy was a good one, the way he is going about implementing it (particularly with ill-timed leaks such as Goldberg’s article),, is actually making such a strike more, not less likely.
3) While any sane person acknowledges that the Israelis would pay a terrible price even for a successful strike, an unsuccessful one (whether because the execution was botched or because the thing isn’t possible in the first place despite their belief that it was) would be worse still. In the aftermath of a failed strike, the Israelis would face international opprobrium and a severely weakened military. That, combined with the existential threat of a nuclear Iran might actually cause them to breach the last barrier, and go nuclear. That catastrophe, I leave as an exercise for the student…
So, yes, they can do it, we are going out of our way to increase the likelihood of them doing it, and if they do, we had better hope that they succeed.
You are correct that not all American Jews (or Israelis) support Likud…but even fewer support the various peace parties. The Israeli left (in the foreign policy sense) is essentially non-existent, having been discredited by the rejectionist Palestinians and their enablers.
Ironically, most Israelis have little love for the one reliable source of support they DO have in the US…evangelical Christians. Oikophobia all around I suppose…
I attend an independent, self-described “unorthodox” synagogue, because I appreciate the freedoms of thought and worship it provides. But there, as in the overwhelming number of non-Orthodox synagogues, the number one priority is ‘Social Justice’ – of result. Jews in this country have, for sincerely felt reasons, long since internalized that as essential to Jewish tradition. That it is in practice socialism is something they are entirely comfortable with. I’m the odd duck who has to be careful what he says lest I be verbally pelted. So I just avoid politics as much as possible. Fortunately, my libertarian views on personal behavior (gay rights, etc.) _do_ align with theirs, so I’m not totally out in the cold.
Charles, do your fellow congregants lean strongly in one direction or the other regarding an Israeli strike on Iran?
My late mother, who I think of as the prototypical Reform Jew, was completely torn: she believed war is a tragic stupidity but she generally supported any Israeli military action on the grounds that Israelis probably know best what they need to do to survive. (Israeli military actions in the occupied territories gave her a case of cognitive dissonance, and she responded by ignoring the whole issue…)
Supposedly Iran has centrifuges at 2-3 facilities. That we know of. So you would have to hit all of those to actually stop the program. What is being done is a campaign of assassination and sabotage of relevant people and materials which Iran has complained about and is factually known to exist to a point.
The centrifuges aren’t the only targets necessary to destroy in order to stop the program, but they are an excellent start. All of these facilities are defended, and some significant SEAD work will have to be done before they can be taken out, but this is certainly doable with what the Israelis have available. If we assume that the Israelis will engage in a roughly 10 day long air campaign, none of this is particularly difficult to accomplish. These facilities are not mobile, and the Israelis have superb intelligence and operational recon of the targets in question, not to mention satellite imagery that is (in this particular region) superior to our own in some ways.
None of this suggests that it would be easy, or desirable in anything less than the most extreme circumstances, but it is doable. If the Obama administration is really interested in peace in the area (instead of simply providing an Islamist counter to the Israelis), then he will do what he can to ensure that the Israelis do not see themselves to be in an extreme circumstance. Right now he is doing the opposite of that….
It’s kind of amusing how so many of the TV talking heads are showing their bias by asking what the Republicans will do to work with Obama. I’ve yet to hear the first one ask what Obama will do to work with the Republicans. If he tries his “I won” line again, Republicans can answer “So did we.”
Jeffrey Goldberg asks: “Is Obama anti-Israel”
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-06/is-barack-obama-anti-israel