White House Confirms that Israel Destroyed North Korean-equipped Nuclear Weapons Facility in Syria Last September

The truth finally did out, and now we no longer have to ferret it out from Syrian denials, as Dry Bones recommended back on September 24, 2007.

As reported in this blog in September and October 2007, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force, guided by Israeli commandos on the ground in Syria, destroyed a Syrian nuclear weapons facility under construction, which had been equipped and manned by North Korea.

At the time, some analysts, notably Obama campaign advisor Joseph Cirincione, questioned whether the destroyed structure actually had been a nuclear weapons facility. "This story is nonsense," Obama's adviser on nuclear threats told Foreign Policy magazine's blog. [For more on this angle, see Power Line.]

Today, the White House Press Secretary announced:

"Until Sept. 6, 2007, the Syrian regime was building a covert nuclear reactor in its eastern desert capable of producing plutonium. We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria’s covert nuclear activities. We have good reason to believe that reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year, was not intended for peaceful purposes. Carefully hidden from view, the reactor was not configured for such purposes. In defiance of its international obligations, Syria did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the construction of the reactor, and, after it was destroyed, the regime moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence. This cover-up only served to reinforce our confidence that this reactor was not intended for peaceful activities."

The Wall Street Journal was not impressed by the White House action. In a scathing editorial, the Journal questioned the commitment of the Bush Administration to stopping North Korean nuclear weapons development, and the proliferation of North Korean designed weapons programs. The editorial reads in part:

"Everyone who has looked at the incident has suspected as much [that Israel had destroyed a nuclear facility sold to Syria by North Korea], despite official refusals to talk about it. But the Administration's acknowledgment of it, even in classified briefings, makes its current stance toward North Korea seem odder than ever.

"The State Department has already given up on holding North Korea to its promise to disclose all of its nuclear activities. But now it appears that Foggy Bottom and President Bush are prepared to forgive North Korea for telling what the U.S. now agrees were lies about the North's nuclear proliferation to a Middle Eastern autocrat who is an enemy of America. At the same time, Bush Administration officials are saying that it is good policy to trust Kim Jong Il's declarations on his stockpiles of plutonium.

"So: Israel had to risk war with Syria to destroy a nuclear facility built with the help of lying North Koreans. But no worries, the U.S. says it can still trust North Korea to tell the truth about its current programs. This makes us wonder if the unofficial U.S. nonproliferation policy is to have Israel bomb every plutonium facility that the North Koreans decide to sell."

What is undoubtedly true is that the United State and the Western world owes another debt of gratitude to Israel, for stopping a nascent nuclear weapons program in Syria, just as it destroyed the Osirak nuclear plant in Saddam Hussein's Iraq on June 7, 1981. For that raid, Israel received only international condemnation, even from the Reagan Administration. That condemnation only changed to grudging thanks upon the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War.

Israel's reward this time probably will be unrelenting pressure to make strategically damaging concessions to the Palestinian Authority in a misguided Bush Administration effort to earn its legacy through a Middle East peace agreement, the same shoals on which the Clinton Administration ran aground in its final months. It is both noteworthy and disheartening that the White House press statement failed to mention just how the Syrian nuclear facility was "damaged beyond repair on September 6 of last year." While the optimist in me wants to think that was White House cover for a still top-secret Israeli military action, the pessimist believes that for Israel, no good deed goes unpunished.

Syria Pursues Nuclear Weapons

Caroline Glick, the Middle East Fellow at Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, writes in the Jerusalem Post that, according to Kuwaiti press reports, Syria is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program, which it began in September 2004. According to Ms. Glick:

The Kuwaiti report maintains that the Syrian nuclear program relies "on equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday and Qusai… transfer[red] to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003." The report also asserts that the Syrian nuclear program is supported by the Iranians who are running the program, together with Iraqi nuclear scientists and Muslim nuclear specialists from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.

The program "was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program after it was wholly transferred to Syria."

This report echoes warnings expressed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq that suspicious convoys of trucks were traveling from Iraq to Syria. Sharon's warnings were later supported by statements from former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who said last year that Iraq had moved its unconventional arsenals to Syria in the lead-up to the invasion.

Fortunately, we now have Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to lead us in confronting this latest WMD threat, to say nothing of the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea and Iran. Or perhaps not. Ms. Glick writes, "Iran, North Korea and al-Qaida have all been quick to interpret the Democratic victory in last Tuesday's Congressional elections as a sign that the US has chosen to turn its back on the threat they pose to America."

Surprise, surprise. Who wudda thunk it?

Is North Korea Already Cheating on the Six-Party Nuclear Pact, in Syria?

The fallout continued (if you'll excuse the expression) this past week, from the Israeli airstrike on an alleged Syrian nuclear weapons development facility, apparently equipped and partially manned by North Koreans. First, Fox News reported that it had obtained a document in which a high-ranking Syrian official had admitted that Israel had struck a nuclear facility under construction. Syria disavowed the document.

Nonetheless, the Syrian official news agency reported today that a high-level North Korean delegation was visiting Damascus this week, to discuss ways of further developing relations between the two rogue nations. Since North Korea is bereft of money, agricultural exports (with much of its population suffering from malnutrition), any other non-military export goods, and indeed anything else that it could offer Syria other than expertise on weapons of mass destruction and their missile delivery systems, it is hard to imagine what such cooperation could involve other than assistance in nuclear, biological and conventional weapons programs.

Throughout the weeks since the Israeli airstrike, the U.S. government has selectively leaked reports to U.S. media, indicating that the target of the Israeli raid indeed was a Syrian nuclear facility, which was under development with North Korean assistance. The Washington Post actually broke that story on September 13. The New York Times followed with a similar report on October 14, which it attributed to "American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports."

In a column unfortunately available only to subscribers, in the Wall Street Journal Online, two members of Congress, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), urged the Bush Administration to be more forthcoming with the American people on what U.S. intelligence knows concerning the North Korean-Syrian nuclear relationship. Representative Hoekstra is the senior Republican member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, while Representative Ros-Lehtinen is the ranking member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. They wrote that they were privy to information that they themselves could not disclose due to its classified nature.

David Wirtschafter, M.D., a personal friend who closely follows this story, speculated that what Hoekstra and Ros-Lehtinen were urging the White House to reveal is the full extent of North Korean violations of its non-proliferation treaty obligations. If the full story were known, he suggests, the Administration would lose political support for one of its few acknowledged foreign policy accomplishments, the October 3, 2007 "Agreement" reached with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-il (pictured above left) to dismantle its nuclear facilities, produced by the Six-Party talks involving the U.S., Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan. That political support is crucial to the Six-Party agreement, because part of the deal requires millions of dollars of energy, economic and humanitarian assistance to North Korea, the cost of which will have to be borne by U.S. taxpayers.

In a previous post on the Hedgehog Blog, I expressed concern that, under pressure to establish a positive foreign policy legacy in the waning days of the George W. Bush Presidency, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was morphing into Madeleine Albright, the Secrtary of State in the last years of the Bill Clinton Administration. That post concerned the delusions surrounding the regional conference on Israeli-Palestinian peace, originally slated for November in Annapolis, Maryland. However, what typified the Clinton-Albright approach to foreign policy, and the attitude that I fear has now been adopted by the George W. Bush Administration, is the quest for paper agreements that earn political points and international acclaim, but in truth have no substance, and are immediately violated by the "other side." That was the true nature of the Oslo Accords and the October 1994 North Korea-U.S. Joint Framework for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, both of which were touted with great hoopla by the Clinton Administration, and both of which turned out to be worthless due to the bad faith of the Palestinian Authority, in the former case, and North Korea in the latter.

The latter treaty is especially germane to the current situation, because in 2002 North Korea acknowledged that for years it had pursued a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons purposes, in violation of its treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (to which it is a party), the 1992 North Korea-South Korea Denuclearization Declaration and the 1994 accord. Are Representatives Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen trying to warn us that history is repeating itself?

Obama Administration Blocks Visas for Israeli Nuclear Scientists, As Egypt and Turkey Push for Inspection of Israeli Nuclear Plant

The Israeli newspaper Maariv has reported that the Obama Administration had denied visas to visit the United States to some Israeli nuclear scientists employed at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility (see photo). According to Maariv: “… workers at the Dimona reactor who submitted visa requests to visit the United States for ongoing university education in Physics, Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering — have all been rejected, specifically because of their association with the Dimona reactor. This is a new policy decision of the Obama administration, since there never used to be an issue with the reactor’s workers from study in the USA, and till recently, they received visas and studied in the USA.” [Source: Roger L. Simon at Pajamas Media]

In what the Kosher Hedgehog believes to be a related story, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu recently cancelled a planned trip to the United States for President Obama's summit on nuclear security summit opening tomorrow. Netanyahu decided to instead send a deputy prime minister to the summit when he learned that Egypt and Turkey planned to raise the issue of Israel's assumed nuclear weapons arsenal at the summit and to demand that Israel sign the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty. By not signing that treaty, Israel has avoided treaty obligations to renounce nuclear arms and admit international inspectors to its Dimona reactor, which experts believe has produced plutonium for between 80 and 200 warheads.

One might speculate whether the US denial of visas to Israeli scientists employed at Dimona is intended to subtly encourage the move by Egypt and Turkey to raise the subject of the Dimona nuclear plant at the nuclear security summit. Egypt has always made an issue of the Dimona plant, since the possibilty of Israeli nuclear weapons has been a continuing strategic deterrent to Arab aggression against Israel. At one time, Turkey had a close military strategic relationship with Israel, to the point of conducting regular joint military exercises, directed primarily at a perceived common threat from Syria. However, in recent years, the current Islamist govenment in Turkey now weakened those ties in favor of closer relations with Iran (the patron state of the Syrian regime). Just last week Israeli-Turkish relations further chilled when, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Israelas "the principal threat to peace" in the Middle East.

The action by the Obama Administration to deny visas to Dimona scientists can only encourage the Egyptian-Turkish initiative, and may even be a subtle signal by the Obama Administration that it approves the effort to open up the Israeli nuclear program to international inspection. In doing so, the Obama Administration would be buying into the argument heard in Europe and the Islamic world that the US has treated Iran and North Korea according to a double standard, trying to curtail nuclear weapons development in those nations while ignoring the possible existence of a nuclear arsenal in Israel. Previous adminstrations answered such concerns in the manner exemplified by John Bolton in October 2003, when the then under secretary of state for arms control responded to a challenge from London journalists regarding an American double standard by saying, "The issue for the US is what poses a threat to the US." Under the current administration, however, as demonstrated by recent very public diplomatic flaps, Israel is the issue for the US.

Will It Take an Armed Attack to Stop Iran's Nuclear Program--and By Whom, the U.S. or Israel?

My good friend, and Lieberman Democrat, Paul Kujawsky, is ready for the United States to go to war to stop Iran's nuclear program. He has written a column explaining why, which we are publishing below. However, for reasons that I will explain in my commentary following his article, a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will not happen. What may well happen instead is described in my comments. With that teaser of an introduction, here is Paul's column:

IRAN AND "WAR AS A LAST RESORT"
by Paul Kujawsky

What could possibly be wrong with the idea of "war only as a last resort"? Who would be so militaristic, so fiendishly bloodthirsty as to disagree? Actually, it turns out that there are at least two good reasons to quibble with this formulation.
First, at least some of the people who deploy this expression don't really mean it. For them, the time for last resorts never arrives. Another round of negotiations, back to the Security Council, more time for sanctions to work—the answer to the question, "Are we there yet?" is always, "No." It's an exercise in disingenuousness by wolves in sheep's clothing—that is, pacifists in realists' clothing.

Second, it's said that timing is everything in comedy. The same is true in war. It's possible to wait too long to resort to the "last resort." After all, the other side generally is not standing around idly shooting the breeze—they're preparing for combat.

Iran is the urgent example. As the West quarrels about watered-down Security Council resolutions while offering more and more political and economic incentives to the mullahs, they press ahead with their decades-old aim of acquiring nuclear weapons. They are close—very close. A war to prevent the Islamists of Tehran from getting nuclear missiles would be quite different (and more favorable for us) than armed conflict after Iran becomes a nuclear power.

Of course, there are objections. The decision to strike Iran would be divisive at home and condemned abroad. Some will decry the lack of domestic support. Others will say that the United States must not initiate military action without U.N. approval. Europe will be horrified; Russia and China will scowl.

All these points are true. But these are just different ways of expressing the paralysis of "last resortism." In an ideal world we could take more time to persuade the American people, convince or cajole the rest of the world. But in an ideal world implacably hostile, genocidal/suicidal Islamists would not be stretching out their hands to grasp the most destructive weapons in the history of humanity. In our non-ideal, actual world, we can’t wait too long.

Iran will fight back. They can do a lot of damage. Through its leading role in the international Islamist conspiracy, it will try to damage our interests throughout the world, no doubt with some success. Again, timing matters. The mullahs are somewhat constrained by the threat of American or Israeli military action against their nuclear and other facilities. If we wait and they get nuclear weapons, what will constrain them?

War is unutterably, incalculably dismal. But the time for last resorts has probably come. Remember: Iran is already waging war against America and its allies. Iran supplies the insurgents who are killing American soldiers in Iraq. It plays a central role in the Islamist war against liberalism and democracy. The reason this isn’t actually a "war" is simply because "war" requires fighting back. What we have now, basically, is more-or-less unopposed Iranian aggression. How much worse will our position be, facing a nuclear-armed, bellicose Iran?

The Kosher Hedgehog comments: I am not certain that I disagree with Paul over the necessity of armed confrontation with Iran to stop its nuclear program; so much as I believe that the United States will not act on that necessity. It will not do so for the following reasons:

1. The George W. Bush Administration has neither the time, nor the political power to order an attack on Iran. Only some five months remain before the inaugeration of a new President. The initiation of armed conflict with Iraq would result immediately in the introduction of impeachment articles in the House of Representatives. President Bush does not want to spend the rest of his term in office defending against impeachment, or engaged in a new armed conflict. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said as much today when she gave Iran two weeks to respond to the latest European offer in the negotiations to halt Iran's nuclear program, or else the U.S. would ... seek new sanctions. It is Secretary Rice and her faction in favor of diplomacy that currently have the ear of the White House, not the more hawkish advisors lead by Vice President Cheney.

2. There is no possibility of any significant international support for an attack on Iran. Russia and China would block any Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. Indeed, in the event of an actual attack, they would exert every means short of a military confrontation with the U.S. to actively support Iran. France and Italy, which both have large investments in Iran, have been reluctant to support even meaningful sanctions, much less military action. As mentioned in the Martin Peretz column described below, Italy, led by a stalwart friend of the U.S., Silvio Berlusconi, just announced the construction of a major Fiat plant in Iran. The negative political reaction in Great Britain, now led by Gordon Brown, rather than Tony Blair, would probably lead to the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan at a time when they are most sorely needed. Of course, the reaction of the Islamic world to another American armed attack on a Moslem nation can be predicted.

3. The U.S. military is overstretched. War with Iran would not only require the the forces directly engaged in military action against Iran; it would worsen the situation in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters as well. Iran is in a geographical and strategic position to cause a great deal of trouble in both places. According to the reports that I have seen, our joint chiefs of staff have warned the Bush Administration about the dire consequences of an armed conflict with Iran.

4. The oil markets, just showing signs of stabilizing, would be thrown into chaos. Iran would try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the choke-point through which oil tankers not only from Iran, but from Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bharan, Qatar and even some Saudi fields must pass. The mere threat of such a closure would send oil prices spiraling wildly upward, and deal yet another blow to the already reeling U.S. economy.

5. If the next President is Barack Obama, there is no doubt that the U.S. will concentrate on diplomacy rather than armed force to try to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Even if John McCain is the next President, he first will have to take some months to organize his administration, and he then probably will try to show a "new direction" from the Bush Administration by pursuing diplomatic alternatives first. He will not risk being parodied as a President eager to bring into fruition his joke of "Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran."

So there will be no attack by the U.S. Our leaders will determine that we cannot afford war with Iran, even though it may well be true that we can't afford to put off that war either. More time will pass. Iran will come ever closer to realizing its ambitions to have nuclear weapons. And then, the one nation that does not have the luxury of waiting and seeing, the one country to whom Iran poses an existential threat--and to whom the Iranians have expressly declared that they pose an existential threat--will act because it believes that it has no choice but to act.

That nation is Israel, as Martin Peretz recently observed in his blog column at The New Republic online. If Israel attacks Iranian nuclear facilities, my friends, all bets are off. All of the chaos that I have previously described will occur, and more. Iran has already declared that it will retaliate on European and American targets, not just against Israel. All of Europe, Russia, China, and the Islamic nations will join in condemnation of Israel, and it will be an open question whether the United States will go along as well. (Let us not forget that the Reagan Administration joined in the condemnation of Israel's destruction of the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor, under development by Saddam Hussein, in 1981.) It would not be entirely surprising to see the U.S. support, or at least not veto, a United Nations Security Counsel resolution condemning. Iran and its surrogates--Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria--would probably launch military strikes of one sort or another at Israel. Indeed, it might well be the entire world against Israel.

(I leave it to our readers to ask themselves if such a scenario sounds at all familiar to them; if they may have read about something like it somewhere.)

Mark Steyn Assesses the ISG Report; How Should Israelis Feel About Current Events?

has read the ISG (which he presumes to stand for "Illustrious Senior's Group"), and he was not impressed. Please read his entire Dec. 10, 2006 column in the Chicago Sun-Times. Here are some apertifs:

After noting that the ISG report recommends the formation of a multi-national Iraq Support Group, whose members would include Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, the Gulf States, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Counsel (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia), the European Union and a special envoy appointed by the U.N. Secretary General, Steyn observes:

Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker's "Support Group," relax, it's a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions -- return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it's in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That's what Hollywood would call "high concept."

On the ISG's recommendation to work cooperatively with Syria and Iran:

The Surrender Gran'pas assert that Iran and Syria have "an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." This, to put it mildly, is news to the Iranians and Syrians, who have concluded that what's in their interest is much more chaos in Iraq.

What Steyn brings out humorously is tragically not really very funny. Consider how Israelis should view the events of the past week. After Syria and Iran have armed and financed Hezbollah, first to attack Israel and now to overthrow the government of Lebanon; after Syria and Iran have armed, trained, financed and sheltered the insurgents--both Sunni and Shiia--that foment unrest in Iraq and murder U.S. and allied troops and civilians; after Syria and Iran do everything in their power to defy and defeat the U.S.; the Iraq Study Group advocates dialogue with them, cooperation with them, negotiation with them; and indicates that the price for this dialogue is Israeli return of the Golan Heights and settling "the Palestinian right of return."

On that last point, Steyn notes:

And, incidentally, how did that phrase -- "the right of return" -- get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I'm not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker's post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it's striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.

To continue our effort to empathize with Israelis' reactions to the current events, consider that in the same week, Robert Gates, in his Senate confirmation hearings to be the next Secretary of Defense, all but rules out the use of force to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. One might readily interpret his testimony to be a policy declaration from the George W. Bush Administration that if military force is the only way to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel is on its own. Meanwhile, in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosts a Holocaust deniers conference, at which he repeats his vow that the demise of Israel is at hand.

In the same week, a former U.S. President and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, whom the international community, if not many Americans, hold in high regard, publishes a virulently anti-Israel book outrageously entitled, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. It is filled with half-truths and outright falsehoods, but is highly acclaimed by academia and the media elites, and becomes a best seller. President Carter, in defense of his book, repeats the charge that is currently so popular with American scholars and enemies of Israel, that the American Jewish community, lead by the American Israel Political Action Committee, has suppressed open political debate in our country about the Middle East. In a column in the Los Angeles Times, Carter writes:

For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

[Apparently President Carter does not regularly read the Los Angeles Times, which fills its news pages and op-ed section with articles and columns critical of Israel.]

In the face of all of this, if you were an Israeli, how would you feel?

TRUCE OR CONSEQUENCES?

Dry Bones shares my suspicions about the U.N. Security Council ceasefire resolution. The best that I can say about the situation is that it may never go into effect. If it does go into effect, and Israeli troops actually withdraw, neither the Lebanese Army nor the international forces (should they ever show up on the scene) will prevent Hezbollah from returning to their strongholds. Iran and Syria will quickly resupply all the missiles that have either been detroyed or launched at Israel.

On Friday night, at an "Oneg Shabat," I started to tell my friend Yossi, a native-born Israeli, that I had called on my blog for the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Before I could finish, he told me that in his view Olmert was the greatest Prime Minister in Israel's history. In Yossi's view, Olmert agreed to the ceasefire to save the lives of Israeli soldiers, because the IDF was not prepared to face the tactics and anti-tank weapons of Hezbollah. Yossi bet me lunch that in six weeks Hezbollah will either have disarmed or, having been absorbed into the Lebanese Army, would no longer present a threat to Israel. I very much hope to lose the bet, even though Yossi is a big eater and it will cost me. Sadly, I do not expect to lose the bet.

I should also add that Yossi supported the Oslo Accords and the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, and indeed still defends both descisions. Please understand, my friend Yossi is a very intelligent person. He works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his work helps guide NASA interplanetary missions across space. He is quite literally a rocket scientist. So I guess that one can say, "Politics is not rocket science," but the meaning is the opposite of the conventional one.

Although this is a sad and depressing time, I do not believe that Hamas and Hezbollah will ultimately prevail. As reported in this story in the Jerusalem Post, the infamous Arab street already is trumpeting the ceasefire as the miliary defeat of Israel at the hands of the Hezbollah. At some point soon, having deluded themselves that they have actually defeated Israel on the battlefield (rather than in the world media and the halls of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, the U.N. and the U.S. State Department), the Arabs and Iran will try to press further against what they perceive is a wounded and weakened Israel, and move in for the kill. When Israel's citizens finally realize that they have no choice but to fight or be conquered, they will choose to fight, and they will choose a government who is willing to lead that fight to the end.

That time may come sooner than one would expect. Yoni reports that Syria has begun removing removing land mines located in the zone between the Syrian and Israeli lines on the Golan Heights and has moved a tank formation into the area. There would be no defensive reason to remove those land mines; indeed, if Syria feared an Israeli attack, it would want them in place. However, if Syria is contemplating an attack to try to recapture the Golan Heights, it would have to clear the mines to allow its armor, vehicles and troops to pass through. I would hate to be a Syrian tank crew in such an assault; the Israeli Air Force would very quickly turn the tank column into a smoking junkyard. For that reason alone, such an attack would seem to be pure folly.

But perhaps Syria does not plan to act alone. The repeated announcements from Iranian President Ahmadinejad that Iran will respond to the U.S. concerning its nuclear program on August 22 has prompted Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis to speculate on what might be the significance of that date:

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

Is Syria therefore planning an assault across the Golan Heights to coincide with some sort of Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, perhaps by missile, or perhaps a small atomic device or "dirty bomb" to be set off by a suicide jihadist already inside Israel? One hopes that Israel's security and military leaders have given adequate attention to the possibility.

The Consequences of Leading from Behind

Here are some links for articles that are like straws in the wind. As Mr. Dylan wrote, "You don't need a weathervane to tell which way the wind blows."

In a column entitled "Wistful in Jerusalem," Elliott Abrams writes in The Weekly Standard about the current mood in Israel, as it witnesses the fecklessness of the United States, Europe and the Arab world in the face of the continuing massacres by Syria of its own citizens. A key quote:

They look north to Syria and see the savagery, the massacres, the now over 14,000 dead, and the world doing absolutely nothing. "You get no help in this region if you are weak," one IDF general said to me. "It is a reminder to us of just what would have happened to us and could still if we were not strong enough to defend ourselves. But now we watch as these women and children are slaughtered and no one acts to save them. We can't, for all the obvious reasons; it isn't up to us, it's up to the Arabs and to Europe and to you. And you do nothing."

Do you think that this outlook may have some effect on whether Israel will be content to rely on the United States and Europe to negotiate an end to the Iranian nuclear weapons program?

Along the same lines we have a recent column about President Obama's Middle East policy efforts by Sarah Honig in the Jerusalem Post. Ms. Honig begins:

Word is that US President Barrack Obama, remarkably free from introspection and unencumbered by healthy hints of self-doubt, assiduously attributes Israeli mistrust of him to his eminently Muslim middle name. For him that encapsulates it all.

Such simplistic one-dimensional explanations typify his neophyte missteps on the treacherous turfs of foreign-policy. Obama botches things up because of his predilection for facile grand gestures, which, alas, can’t alter intricate realities. He hasn’t got an elementary handle on our Israeli outlook and is likewise unable to navigate the tempestuous Islamic sea that swirls ominously around us.

He doesn’t get us and he doesn’t get them.

Ms. Honig continues with a detailed and devastating critique of President Obama's naive assumptions about both Israel and the Islamic world, and the consequences that we have seen over the past 4 years.

Then there are the ominous stories on the news page. The Jerusalem Post reports that Palestinian terrorists launched an attack from Sinai that killed an Israeli construction worker, fire over 40 rockets and mortar shells into Israel (including one Kassam missile that injured 4 Israeli border policemen near the major city of Ashkelon) and, most ominously, Hamas takes public credit for launching 10 of the rockets. Until now Hamas denied responsibility for rockets and artillery shells fired at Southern Israel from Gaza and Sinai. One hopes that someone in Washington, D.C. is paying attention.

Finally, there is the curious incident of the report by the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars, also carried by two news outlets linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, that Iran, Syria, Russia and China are planning to hold joint military exercises in Syria. According to one Arabic language report in the Syrian media outlet ShamLife (which may be a particularly apt name), the exercises, set to begin in about a month, were "The largest military exercise in the Middle East - Russia, Syria, China and Iran in 'World War III rehearsal'." According to the Jerusalem Post:

ShamLife said "sources" had confirmed previous leaks, and that preparations for the exercise were being carried out at an "accelerated pace."

According to ShamLife, China had gained Egyptian approval to allow 12 Chinese ships carrying military equipment to pass through the Suez Canal, and that these vessels would reach the Syrian ports of Tartous and Latakia in two weeks' time.

ShamLife said Syrian air defense missiles and its coastal defense would be put to the test in the military exercises, and that 90,000 troops from the four countries would be involved in the war games along with 400 aircraft and 1,000 tanks and "hundreds of rockets."

Both Russia and Syria have now officially denied the report. Maybe it was all a clumsy hoax attempted by the Iranians. Or more hopefully, perhaps this is a case where President Obama has exercised leadership, as he met with both Russian Prime Minister Putin and Chinese President Hu JinTao in recent days at the G-20 summit.

As I said, all straws in the winds. But it does make me long for the day when a certain "cowboy" from Texas was disliked and ridiculed in foreign capitals, but the United States was feared and respected by its enemies. Perhaps a certain patrician former Governor of Massachusetts will be able to help our nation regain that respect.

Is Israel's Way Out The West's Way Out Also?

Daniel Goldenhagen, "a member of Harvard University's Center for European Studies and the author of 'Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,'" has a compelling piece in today's L.A. Times: "Israel's Way Out."
Excerpt:

The sixth option is to compel Hezbollah's suppliers and patrons — Syria and Iran — to end the terror. Neither country wishes a war with militarily superior Israel (Syria's saber rattling notwithstanding). If every Hezbollah missile into Israel produced Israeli retaliation against Syria, and possibly Iran (including its nuclear production sites), Syria and Iran would be forced to make Hezbollah stop. Obviously, this is a last-ditch option. It would escalate the conflict and increase international pressure on Israel to desist.

All of Israel's strategic choices are bad or ineffective or undesirable. And yet this last option would be the most likely to reestablish the deterrence critical to Israel's long-term survival — and to peace in the region — by demonstrating Israel's enduring power to compel an end of attacks. And it might prevent still more massive devastation of Lebanon.

And then there's this:

A nuclear Iran, sharing Hezbollah's and Hamas' enmity for Israel's very existence, is a foe with a million times the wealth and destructive might to found, fund and supply many more Hezbollahs against many more enemies, including the hated West.

Israel's political Islamic enemies are studying and rejoicing over the new geostrategic situation. These totalitarians' ultimate targets — all "infidels," especially here and in Europe — should study it as well, be sobered and realize that Israel, in fighting this war in its self-defense, to reestablish a geostrategic balance, and for its long-term survival, is ultimately fighting for them as well.

It's not just about Israel, folks.

Why Israel Will Not Attack Iranian Nukes This Year

The news has been full of threats by the Iranian government to massively retaliate against the United States, Israel and even European nations if Israel or the United States attacks Iranian nuclear facilities. Last Thursday, July 3, Omar Fadhil, the creator of the "Iraq the Model" blog, posted a column at Pajamas Media, entitled "Iran and the Coming War." Noting the increasing likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear weapons program, Fadhil wrote, "The strange thing is that Iran has been directing most of its recent rhetoric not against the most likely attacker — Israel — but against the United States."



Fadhil is of the opinion --and I think that he is correct--that Iran is first using threats against the United States to try to persuade the U.S. to restrain Israel from attacking Iran. If that fails, Iran's goal is to drag the United States into an expanded regional war. Portraying to the world that its opponent in the war is not tiny Israel, but the Great Satan itself, would be an essential means of saving face for the Iranian regime, whose image to its people would be severely damaged if a small state such as Israel were to deal severe blows to its war machine.



The Iranians would therefore allege that U.S. warplanes or missiles participated in the attack, or that the U.S. had provided logistical support to the Israelis. Those allegations would not be groundless. While I believe that Israel has reserved to itself the right to act unilaterally against Iran, if it believes it has no alternative in the face of the existential threat posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, I also believe that it is highly unlikely that Israel would proceed with an attack against Iran without at least the tacit approval, if not the active assistance, of the United States. A glance at a map of the Middle East demonstrates why.





As the viewer will note, any airstrike on Iranian targets launched by Israel almost certainly must pass through Iraqi airspace, and Iraqi airspace is controlled by the United States. It would be folly for Israel to send fighter-bombers into Iraq without first notifying the U.S. that they were coming. To do otherwise would risk an accidental confrontation between Israeli and American warplanes, when the Americans scrambled to intercept unidentified aircraft entering Iraq from Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

Those facts also persuade me that Fadhil is wrong in one major respect--an Israeli airstrike is unlikely this year. The Administration of George W. Bush does not have the political capital to withstand the storm of Democratic Party protest that would erupt in the event of an attack on Iran. The few remaining months of the Bush Administration would be spent fending off impeachment resolutions in Congress. The resulting political and military chaos would rock the oil markets and further destabilize the U.S. economy. The chance of John McCain being elected President would evaporate. For all of those reasons, the Bush Administration would reject any Israeli plan to strike at Iran this year. That is not my view alone--a leading American defense analyst at ABC News, speaking to Israeli defense experts, recently concurred that the U.S. would not give the go-ahead to an Israeli attack plan against Iran.

Looking to the future, if Senator Obama is elected President, he is most likely going to put the kabosh on any Israeli request for approval or support of an attack on Iranian nuclear sites. Only if John McCain is the next President is there any likelihood that the U.S. would go along with an Israeli attack. For better or, probably, for worse, the United States and even Israel will reconcile themselves to the realty of a nuclear-armed Iran, and endeavor to use deterrence and diplomacy to protect the Jewish State and the United States from atomic attack.

Sunday Times: Israeli Raid on Syria Destroyed North Korean Nuclear Equipment

The Sunday Times reports that last week's Israeli air strike in Syria destroyed a shipment of North Korean nuclear equipment. If so, kudos not only to the Israeli Air Force, but to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

However, neither the Israelis, nor the Syrians are talking for the record. Previously CNN reported that this same raid had targeted weapons shipments from Iran, as noted here by The Hedgehog Blog. Evidence for that version of the raid's target may be found in the fact that, according to the Sunday Times story, this weekend President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent Ali Akbar Mehrabian, his nephew, to Syria to assess the damage.

Whatever the true target, as the Sunday Times article concludes, "The new 'axis of evil' may have lost one of its spokes."

Recognizing the Axis of Evil

On January 29, 2002, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush famously identified North Korea, Iraq and Iran as members of an "axis of evil." President Bush said, "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."

At the time some of the President's critics challenged his description of North Korea, Iraq and Iran, on the grounds that those nations were not allied with one another, and indeed, in the case of Iraq and Iran, were enemies. However, according to Caroline Glick, writing in the Jerusalem Post, that criticism is incorrect, as demonstrated by the Israeli air force strike into Syria last week that, according to the Sunday Times, destroyed a North Korean-supplied and Iranian-financed nuclear weapons facility. (Of course, Iraq is no longer a charter member of the axis of evil, thanks to the allied armed forces that overthrew his regime. "Baby Assad" of Syria now wears the mantle of his late and unlamented fellow Baathist dictator.) Ms. Glick writes:

What the raid exposed is that the free world faces a cohesive alliance of enemy forces that collaborate closely in their joint and separate offensives against their common foes. Whether or not it is called the axis of evil, after the IAF raid it is undeniable that its members - North Korea, Iran and Syria - collaborate closely in their joint war.

I can already anticipate the response of Bush haters and critics of the Iraq War: The cooperation of Syria, Iran and North Korea is the product of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime. Not so, as Ms. Glick explains:

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, this is not a temporary alliance of convenience among three otherwise unrelated states. It is a strategic alignment of three regimes that have been acting in tandem on multiple levels for decades. Their collaborative operations have served two primary functions. First they cooperate in perpetuating their holds on power. This they do primarily through criminal enterprises. Second, they work together to wage war against their common foes. The second objective is advanced primarily through the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, all three regimes view diplomatic exchanges with their enemies not as a means to solve their disagreements with them, but as a means to gain advantage by forcing US, Israeli and international concessions that legitimize their regimes and enable them to continue to conduct their war.

TIES BETWEEN the countries have been developing since the 1980s. That cooperation blossomed into a full-scale alliance during the 1990s. This is notable because the 1990s marked the period when both US and Israeli foreign policies centered on repeated attempts to appease all three governments.

This is an important column. Please give it the attention it deserves. One only hopes that it is read by a Democrat or two.

Hezbollah, Syria and Iran Plan Takeover of Lebanon--Do You Trust the Democrats to Stop Them?

This man wants to take over Lebanon. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said yesterday that there is "mounting evidence" that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah "are preparing plans to topple Lebanon's democratically elected government." As reported here by AP:

"Hezbollah has 11 legislators in Parliament and has been increasingly aggressive in its political plays. The threat Tuesday from its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, racheted up tensions between pro-Syrian and pro-Western groups.

"Nasrallah warned of street protests if Prime Minister Fuad Saniora did not accept his group's demands for a "national unity" Cabinet, in which Hezbollah and its allies would have a veto on key decisions. Nasrallah set a deadline of Nov. 13."

The threats from Nasrallah are just one symptom of the crisis brewing in Lebanon. Although Prime Minister Saniora has denied Israel's claims that Syria is rearming Hezbollah, now even the U.N. admits that Israel is correct. The AP story relates that U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said he was told by Lebanese officials that arms were still flowing from Syria to Lebanon in violation of a U.N. embargo.

The fact that Hezbollah is both rearming and rebuilding its fortifications in South Lebanon despite the presence of Lebanese Army and UN troops should come as no surprise. Israel National News reports that the German newspaper Der Spiegel discovered that the UNIFIL forces do not patrol at night, leaving Hezbollah militias free to work without interference at rebuiding its infrastructure.

Also in the news, Iran test-fired dozens of new missiles today, including the Shahab 3, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting Israel or, for that matter, U.S. positions in Iraq.

Given these mounting threats, which the United States must deal with over the next two years, do you want the Democrats in control of Congress?

Arab League Confrontation with Assad May Bring U.S., Israel into Conflict with Iran

A Jewish proverb holds that since the destruction of the first Temple, prophecy has been given only to fools and children. With that caveat, the Kosher Hedgehog calls his readers' attention to an ominous development on the international scene, which could lead to a confrontation of the United States with Iran, in which the Arab League would back the U.S. in an alliance of strange bedfellows with Israel.

The Arab League is reconvening after the Syrian government failed to keep its agreement, reached last week in negotiations with the Arab League, to refrain from killing anti-government demonstrators. Instead, Syrian forces murdered 13 protesters today on the Id-Al Adhar Islamic holiday.

Today's Jerusalem Post quotes Mideast analyst Walid Phares as observing, "The Arab League has the intentions to support the uprising in Syria but needs a US commitment to support them if Iran retaliates." Unlike most Arab states, Syria is allied with Iran, as the photo above of Syrian President Assad meeting with Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei depicts.

Now here is the "prophecy." The Kosher Hedgehog believes that Iranian retaliation most likely would be directed, in the first instance, not at any Arab League nation, but rather at Israel. Here is one scenario: The Arab League enters into open support of Syrian rebels. To counter that pressure, Iran turns loose Hezbollah and Hamas to launch rocket and missile attacks against Israel. Such a move effectively dares the Arab League to publicly oppose Iranian and Syrian proxies when they launch attacks on Israel.

Israel is in no mood to placidly sit back and do nothing and absorb rocket and missile attacks as it did at the behest of the United States during the first Gulf War, when the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq launched missiles at Israel. For one thing, Israel does not trust the government of President Barack Obama to effectively defend it against Iran, in the manner that President George H.W. Bush defended Israel against Iraq, when the U.S. and its allies dispatched their forces to liberate Kuwait and launched air strikes on Iraq, and the U.S. sent Patriot anti-missile equipment and crews to Israel. Of course, President Bush's primary objective was to liberate Kuwait, and his principal concern in the wake of Iraqi missile attacks on Israel was to prevent Israeli military retaliation against Iraq that might drive Arab nations out of the anti-Hussein coalition. Nonetheless, regardless of the motives of U.S. actions, Israel knew that the might of the U.S. armed forces would be unleashed against Saddam Hussein, while now an American attack on Iran is far from a foregone conclusion.

Second, the people of Israel are far more vulnerable today to deadly attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza than they were to Iraqi missiles in the first Gulf War.

Finally, Israel is itching for diplomatic cover for an attempt to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, which pose an existential threat to Israel. The Israeli government might consider an Iranian-directed attack by Hamas and Hezbollah to present that opportunity. Yes, Israel would endure international condemnation, joined in publicly and vociferously by the Arab Gulf States. Secretly, however, those same Arab States would be delighted, and might even lend covert support to an Israeli attack. For example, Saudi Arabia might turn a blind radar eye to overflights by Israeli fighter-bombers and refueling of those aircraft in Saudi airspace.

Of course, the better strategic alternative would be for the United States to lead a sustained international campaign to dismantle the Iranian nuclear weapons program, by military force if necessary. But I have no confidence that the Obama Administration would lead such a campaign, and, sadly, I suspect that the government of Israel shares my view.

So Just What Happened in Syria?

Dry Bones explains how to ferret out the truth:

Syrian denials, and North Korean indignation. Listeners to Hugh Hewitt may have hear Yoni Tidi disclose today that Israeli commandos, disguised as Syrian soldiers, seized some fissionable materials from the secret Syrian installation, which Israeli scientists established were of North Korean origin. Samples were sent to the U.S., which confirmed the provenance of the materials, and gave the go-ahead for the Israeli air strike.

One suspects that North Korea, having agreed in multi-lateral negotiations, out of economic desperation, to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, but as always desperate for cash, negotiated a deal with the Syrian regime to sell Syria its stockpile of fissionable uranium and equipment for weapons facilities. One further suspects that Iran bankrolled the transaction, hoping to thereby boost its own nuclear weapons program.

The Anti-Dean: The Wall Street Journal Gets It Right

As noted below, Howard Dean almost infallibly gets it wrong. ("Infallibly gets it wrong" admittedly is technically an oxymoron, but appropriate in Dean's case.) In contrast, the Wall Street Journal--the anti-Dean--almost always gets it right. (It is noteworthy that a liberal columnist in today's Los Angeles Times, in listing the political crimes of Joe Lieberman, cited as one of his offenses that he has published opinion pieces in "the ultraconservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages." Heavens, what next?)

Today's lead editorial in the WSJ.com Opinion Journal, entitled "Iran's First Strike", is no exception. WSJ sets out the evidence that the Hamas attack on Israel in the south and the Hezbollah attack on Israel in the north were coordinated by Iran, with the active assistance of its Syrian ally. As WSJ notes, its analysis is shared by Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who recently told al-Arabiya television that "What is happening in Lebanon is part of the struggle between Syria and Iran on the one side and Israel on the other." And: "Iran is saying to the U.S.: '[If] you want to fight in the Gulf or hit our nuclear facilities, we will hurt you in your home, in Israel.' "

The Journal then observes:

The question going forward is whether the Bush Administration will acknowledge this Lebanon conflict as the strategic threat it is and fight back accordingly. That means at a minimum allowing our ally in the region, Israel, the time and diplomatic support to deal Iran's Hezbollah proxies a heavy blow. Israel has already cut off supply lines from Syria by land and air. And now it is working systematically to destroy the military force that Hezbollah has accumulated, especially its missiles, which now include radars that can hit a warship and perhaps have the range to reach Tel Aviv.

If, as we believe, Iran did coordinate the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks as a challenge to the United States and Israel, the results have not been the capitulation that Iran had hoped for. As The Hedgehog Blog noted on Sunday, after the ferocious Israeli reaction, Iran made an abrupt and startling turn-around from its previous refusal to negotiate giving up its nuclear program. Jules Crittenden, a columnist for the Boston Herald, concurs with our cause-and-effect analysis in this piece.

Rumsfeld's Critics Hated Him as a Foreign Policy Realist and Hate Him Now as a Neo-Con

The famous photograph at the right was taken on December 20, 1983. As recounted by Michael Rubin of The American Enterprise Institute, in today's WSJ.com OpinionJournal, it shows Donald Rumsfeld, then the Reagan Administration's Middle East envoy, meeting with Saddam Hussein in Bagdad. Concerned about countering growing Iranian influence in the region, under the aegis of the Ayatollah Khomeini regime, President Reagan sought to restore long-severed diplomatic relations with Hussein's Iraq. Although the United States intelligence was already aware that Hussein had used chemical weapons, Rumsfeld did not broach the subject with Hussein, in a triumph of the outlook commonly known as foreign policy realism. Rubin relates the long-term result of this policy:

"Iran and Iraq would fight for five more years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead on the battlefield. Then, two years after a ceasefire ended the war, Saddam invaded Kuwait. In subsequent years, he would subsidize waves of Palestinian suicide-bombers, effectively ending the Oslo peace process. Saddam's career is a model of realist blowback."

Fast forward to November 2006. By invading Iraq, President George W. Bush, with Donald Rumsfeld as his Secretary of Defense, had implemented a neoconservative policy of regime change in Iraq that was anathema to the foreign policy realists and many traditional conservatives (e.g., George Will). Now, following the GOP losses in the midterm Congressional elections, Rumsfeld has resigned. His resignation is cheered not only by the foreign policy realists on the right, but by the so-called progressives on the left, who welcome the re-ascendency of the archetypal foreign policy realist,James Baker. Rumors abound that the report of the Baker-Hamilton Commission will advocate a realpolitik accommodation with Iran and Syria in order to allow the U.S. to extract itself from Iraq. The very progressives who pilloried Rumsfeld, when he was in the realist camp in the 1980's, for turning a blind eye to Hussein's chemical weapon program now are urging the same policy toward Iran, which is rushing toward the development of nuclear weapons, and Syria, whose agents were captured in September 2004 by Jordanian security trying to smuggle 20 tons of chemical weapons into Jordan for attacks on Amman.

According to Rubin, this is a glaring inconsistency fueled by, among other factors, a personal hatred of Don Rumsfeld by the left: "Today, progressivism places personal vendetta above principle. Mr. Rumsfeld is bad, Mr. Baker is good, and consistency irrelevant." Rumsfeld could be excused for thinking, "I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't."

I disagree with Rubin in one significant respect. The failure of Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration in Iraq has not been the decision to invade Iraq and overturn the Hussein regime. Their tragic shortcoming was the failure to properly appreciate the difficulty of midwifing a democratic regime in a totalitarian society. The Bush Administration should have devoted far more pre-war planning for the post-invasion period, listened to cautionary reports from the State Department, and committed many thousands more troops for police and security duty during the occupation. They should have prepared the American public in advance of the war for the necessity of a lengthy occupation, a significant troop commitment, and the likelihood of a low-intensity insurgency. In light of the wars and genocides that have plagued Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Kosovo since the collapse of Tito's Yugoslavia, and the skepticism regarding the difficulty of nation building expressed by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice during the 2000 Presidential campaign, their lack of foresight on this point is truly disappointing.

The intervening event of the 9/11 attacks offers no excuse--9/11 may have demonstrated the necessity of removal of rogue regimes that might pursue WMD; it did not justify poor planning and implementation of regime change.

This is not mere 20-20 hindsight. The hope for setting our Iraq policy aright and still salvaging a positive result from the invasion of Iraq lies in now doing what is necessary to restore security and stop the mounting civil strife. That may well require more troops, not less, and certainly not the staged withdrawal advocated by many Democrats. (See "Democratic lawmakers will seek a phased withdrawal from Iraq"
in today's LA Times.)

In summary, I believe that the criticism of the handling of the post-invasion period by Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration is well-justified, completely apart from the obvious animus displayed toward them by the Left and MSM. However, that does not negate the warning posed by Mr. Rubin of the dangers of a realpolitik embrace of Iran and Syria.

Syrian Nuke Plant Struck by Israel Resembles North Korean Facility

From AP and the Jerusalem Post:

Commercial satellite images show construction in eastern Syria that resembles the early stages of a small, North Korean-model nuclear reactor, independent experts said in a report Wednesday, speculating that it was the site hit last month in an Israeli airstrike.

The photos, taken nearly a month before the Sept. 6 strike, show a tall box-like building near the Euphrates River that the report said was similar in shape to a North Korean 5-megawatt reactor building in Yongbyon.

Once again, as was the case with Israel's destruction of Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor, the U.S. and the Free World owe a debt of gratitude to the Israeli Air Force.

Obama Administration and Iran--A Purimspiel

Dare we add that the civilized world, led by the United States, appears to be failing the test?

Some 2433 years ago, King Achashverosh, Ruler of the Persian Empire, comprising 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia, was persuaded by his Grand Vizier, Haman, to issue a decree of extermination against the Jews. The entire Jewish world population at the time resided under his rule. As related in Megillat Esther, the Book of Esther, neither Achashverosh, nor Haman knew that Queen Esther herself was a Jew, the niece (and according to Jewish tradition the wife) of Mordechai, the leader of Persia's Jewish community. In an incredible turnabout of events, (clearly orchestrated by divine will, although the Book of Esther is the only book of the Bible in which no mention of God occurs), Esther and Mordechai foil the plan to exterminate their people, Haman is hung on the very gallows he built for Mordechai, and the Jews take arms and destroy their enemies on the day that Haman had chosen by casting lots ("purim") for the genocide of the Jews. On Saturday night and Sunday Jews around the world will celebrate Purim by reading and hearing the Book of Esther, making gifts of money to the poor, sending gifts of food to their neighbors, and feasting.

One month later we will read the Pesach (Passover) hagadah at our seders. The hagadah tells us that Pharoah and Haman were not isolated incidents, but rather "in every generation [our enemies] have risen up to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, has saved us from their hands." Certainly today as well the Jewish people have no dearth of enemies who wish to destroy them. Foremost of these is the Iranian Islamic regime led by the Achashverosh and Haman of our time, supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who only this week regaled his hosts in Damascus, Syria with a description of a new Middle East without Israel.

In response, as recounted in today's Jewish Daily Forward, the Obama Administration is pressuring Israel to refrain from military attacks against Iranian nuclear weapons development facilities, even while it has once again extended its deadline for implementing stronger economic sanctions against Iran.

One custom of Purim is to put on "Purimspiels," farcical plays. The feckless efforts of the Obama Administration to curb the Iranian nuclear program would be a fitting subject for a Purimspiel, except that the situation is too dire to be funny.

When Mordechai told Esther she must go to King Achashverosh and beg for her people's lives, she hesitated. The King had secluded himself in his inner court, and had not called her into his presence for 30 days. For anyone, even the Queen, to come before him in the inner court without having been summoned, "there is one law for him ... that he is put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter."

The Obama Administration would do well to heed Mordechai's response to Esther: "If you remain silent at this time, then relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from some other place, but you and your father's house will perish; and who knows whether if it was not for a time like this that you came to power?"

Happy Purim!

Krauthammer on Obama's Foreign Policy Gaffe; The Kosher Hedgehog on the President's Role in Foreign Policy

Charles Krauthammer's column today in Real Clear Politics is a must-read. He deals with Senator Barack Obama's adamant refusal to backtrack on his incredible blunder on foreign policy, his statement in a Democratic debate back on July 23 that he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers without preconditions. As Krauthammer notes, Senator Obama has only plunged deeper into the Big Muddy River when he should have waded back ashore. Or, as Krauthammer more articulately writes, "What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity."

I differ from both Senator Obama's defenders and detractors over what is the real issue. It is certainly not, as Senator Obama would have it, whether the United States should talk with its enemies. It is not, as some of his critics on the right would have it, that the United States must never negotiate with the sponsors of terrorism. The George W. Bush Administration participates in ongoing multilateral negotiations with both Iran and North Korea, regarding their nuclear programs. The United States has diplomatic relations with both Syria and Venezuela, and no doubt has ongoing back-channel discussions with Cuba and Iran. There is no lack of talking, although a perceptible lack of progress on many important issues.

Rather, I believe that the question put to Senator Obama by his interlocutor at the CNN You Tube debate, as well as Senator Obama's response, showed astonishing naivete, perhaps ignorance, over how foreign policy should be conducted by a President of the United States. The question was "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"

The President of the United States does not single-handedly conduct foreign policy. That is why his cabinet includes a Secretary of State, who in turn presides over the State Department. It is absurd to propose that the President would commit his time and prestige to meet with any foreign head of state, even an ally, but all the more so an adversary, without prior discussions that indicate at the very least reason to expect progress on substantive issues, if not an actual agreement. More often, summits follow actual diplomatic progress at lower levels that have already produced a significant agreement, with the meeting of the heads of state representing a ceremonial culmination of discussion, not their initiation.

When a U.S. President commits too much of his personal time to negotiations, the results are usually disastrous. We need look no farther back than the 2000 Camp David negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yassir Arafat was not ready to commit to an agreement with Israel. He did not want a summit meeting with President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Negotiations at lower levels than heads of state no doubt would have revealed that fact (and perhaps did). Nonetheless, President Bill Clinton practically strong-armed the Palestinian Authority and Israel into a last-ditch summit to reach a final status agreement during his final months in office. The failure of those talks probably produced more bloodshed than had they never taken place at all. Stung and embarrassed when he was justifiably blamed for the failure of the talks, Arafat responded by initiating the so-called "Al Aksa Intifada," using Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount as an excuse. His objective, which he spectacularly achieved, was to divert world attention away from his own and Palestinian intrangience, and toward the "brutality" of the Israeli self-defensive response that he knew would follow the initiation of armed attacks on Israelis.

Senator Obama likes to describe the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administration as "cowboy diplomacy." However, that description far better fits a situation where a U.S. President stakes his personal prestige, and that of the United States, on the successful outcome of negotiations in which the President personally participates. To do so without prior lower level discussions indicating a likelihood of tangible results, i.e., "preconditions," is folly. That was the folly of President Clinton at Camp David. That would be the folly of a President Obama if he were to seriously pursue his own foreign policy born of misstatement. Let us hope that the American electorate deprives him of that opportunity.