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Spengler: Israel's Choices and America's Failure
He opens with:
A number of commentators have drawn a parallel between Israel's national elections on Tuesday and the formation of a national unity government just prior to Israel's preemptive attack on Egypt in June 1967. Despite stern warnings to the contrary from the Johnson administration and being at mortal risk, Israel won the Six-Day War. The decision to strike was preceded by weeks of anguished debate. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to form the equivalent of a national unity government after the elections, with the moral authority to strike Iran.

A great gulf is fixed, though, between the Cold War environment of 1967, when the U.S. feared an escalation of a Middle East conflict into a global confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the world of 2013, where America's competitors have a marginal role in the Middle East. The Johnson administration feared that Israel might upset its Cold War calculus and give advantage to Russia. To some extent those fears were realized (Egypt's turn toward Russia culminated in the 1973 attack on Israel), but the advantage that America drew from its alliance with the region's strongest power more than outweighed other considerations. What does the Obama administration have to lose from an Israeli strike on Iran today? Nothing, it would appear, except its own illusions. It is much easier for Israel to disregard American warnings today than it was in 1967. Lyndon Johnson was genuinely sympathetic to Israel but concerned about spillover into the Cold War. Obama has nothing to lose but his illusions.
And then there's this delicious paragraph near the end:
While the Obama White House fiddles with utopian fantasies, the Middle East burns. Israel has a clearer shot at Iran than at any time in the past ten years. With the Assad regime holding on by its fingernails, the likelihood of retaliation from Syria is nil. Hezbollah's capacity and willingness to attack Israel with its substantial missile capacity is also limited by Assad's distress. The risk of war with Syria was always a limiting factor in Israel's capacity to reduce Hezbollah. With Assad weakened, Hezbollah is on its own. As for Egypt: I doubt if its army has enough gasoline to move a division of tanks to the Israeli border.
Posted by: trailing wife 2013-01-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=360937