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by Paul R. Hollrah, Advisor to Lincoln Heritage Institute
Yes, I’ll admit, I’ve been wrong about Israel. For many years I’ve stood behind the proposition that the United States was wrong to go to the mat for Israel because we had no strategic interest at stake in that little strip of land along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
It’s true. Israel contains no strategic land mass, no strategic sea lanes, no strategic air space, and no strategic minerals that are of importance to American military or economic security. And if it is true that the only purpose of American foreign policy is to support and advance our own national self-interest, then support for Israel would be a very difficult proposition to sell.
And since American Jews have voted overwhelmingly for liberals and Democrats since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, the notion that Republican presidents should be just as supportive of Israel as Democratic presidents would be an even tougher sell.
But, clearly, there is now much more to it than a straightforward analysis of what our national interests may or may not be. We are now engaged in a war for our very survival and Israel, that tiny little strip of land, is now our most important strategic ally. And it’s not because we want it that way, it’s because a lunatic leader in Tehran has declared the United States and Israel to be the principal enemies of Islam and Israel is at the top of his target list.
That one fact alone binds us and our fate to that tiny little country in a way that no negotiated treaty or mutual defense pact ever could. The Iranian madman, Ahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said many times that Israel will be wiped off the map.
Such insane ranting, under other circumstances, could be taken with a grain of salt. But this is a man who thumbs his nose at the civilized world as he pushes toward the development of nuclear weapons. President Bush has said, quite pointedly and unambiguously, that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, or even the knowledge of how to build them.
Israel, strategically, has been very quiet as the question of their right to exist has bounced back and forth between Washington and Tehran. But there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the motto of the Israelis at this point in time is, “Walk softly, but carry a 50 megaton stick.”
Israel has nuclear weapons. We know that. And when Israeli military leaders have been questioned about their ability to deliver a nuclear bomb to Tehran – in other words, how far outside Israel’s borders could their aircraft fly? They’ve responded, cryptically, “Far enough.”
As Charles Krauthammer tells us in his starkly troubling column, Israel in the Crosshairs, “The establishment of Israel was a Jewish declaration to a world that had allowed the Holocaust to happen – after Hitler had made his intentions perfectly clear – that the Jews would henceforth resort to self-protection and self-reliance. And so they have, building a Jewish army, the first in 2,000 years, that prevailed in three great wars of survival (1948-49, 1967, and 1973).
“Former (Iranian) President Hashemi Rafsanjani, the presumed moderate (in Tehran), has explained that, ‘The use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.’ The logic is impeccable, the intention clear: A nuclear attack would effectively destroy tiny Israel, while any retaliation launched by a dying Israel would have no major effect on an Islamic civilization of a billion people stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.”
That, presumably, would be our job. We will then kill more people in a matter of days than we did in all of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
There are no good or easy choices here. Once the nuclear rabbit was out of the hat it was only
a matter of time before that terrible weapon fell into the hands of some really crazy people. We have tried for many years to pretend as if that would never happen, but here we are. We are but the blink of an eye away from that terrible prospect and we’re not ready for it. We still have many millions of leftists here and in Europe who have yet to take the Islamic nuclear threat seriously, or who are content to merely play politics with the War on Terror.
If Israel is forced to strike the first blow we will all be in the soup. We’d better be ready. But in the meantime, thank God for Israel.
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