Yesterday on his nationally syndicated Morning in America radio program Bill Bennett interviewed the well known writer on military affairs, Bing West. West is a former Marine and former Ass’t Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The interview began as an analysis of what progress if any is being made in Afghanistan, but over its half hour became more wide ranging. Around the 19 minute range West was speaking of the near certainty that if Iran developed a nuclear weapon then within 5 years Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt–one of the above or all three–would also acquire nuclear weapons and the Middle East would devolve into a balance of terror. This, of course, is exactly the development that was feared when Israel first insisted on acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, although West did not discuss that aspect of the issue.
In that context, Bennett offered the following comment:
"I heard someone say the other day–maybe Seth [Leibsohn] recalls it, it was, ‘If there’s a second term for Barack Obama, there won’t be a state of Israel at the end of that second term.’"
[Seth Leibsohn is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, executive director of Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, and producer of Bill Bennett’s Morning In America]
Bennett attributes the words to someone else, but he cites the view as if he thinks it really makes sense. He doesn’t even present this inflammatory view as a question–he simply tosses it out as a comment in the flow of the conversation. West responded, "Well, I can’t get into predictions, but…" and then goes on to talk about how scary the future will be. In other words, West lets Bennett’s comment go without challenge!
But Bennett, like so many other Neocons, is part of a campaign to raise the level of hysteria concerning a supposedly imminent threat to Israel’s very existence to ever higher levels. It is a determined campaign to portray Israel as on the very brink of annihilation, based on the claim that Iranians are so insane that they don’t care about their own survival–that they will truly be content to go out in a blaze of Islamic glory, as long as they take the "Zionist entity" with them. The only alternative, as Bennett not so subtly hints, is regime change in the US to a regime that buys into the hysteria–or at least into Neocon goals. For a far more measured take on this whole situation I highly recommend the analysis of the Israeli political scientist Ariel Ilan Roth (Associate Director of National Security Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences): The Root of All Fears: Why Is Israel So Afraid of Iranian Nukes? Read Roth’s analysis. Do not wait for him to be invited to speak on Bennett’s radio show. But maybe it would be a good idea to contact Bennett and urge him to have Roth on.
(Full disclosure: I too favor regime change in America, but not a return to the Neocon past.)
Mark Wauck blogs here.
[Update: This post carried the wrong byline for over an hour. I apologize for the mistake—Weiss. And I had a headline that said "Tonto" not sidekick. Racist. More apologies.]
