Bill Kristol
One of the lingering controversies of the Iraq war is how beneficial it was to Israel, and whether those benefits were considered by the war’s promoters. Some grist for the mill: A JPost analysis by Yaakov Katz says that the American withdrawal from Iraq has created a security concern for Israel, on the “Eastern Front.”
Then head of the IDF Planning Directorate Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, the author of the multi-year plan, explained that as long as the US remains in Iraq, Israel has little to be concerned about in terms of a military threat from that country. But, he said, who knows what will happen when America leaves.
Today, Nehushtan is commander of the Israel Air Force and in April, he will step down after a four-year term, leaving behind a force that might not only have to deal with Iran’s nuclear program but also with a potential future threat from Iraq….
The second concern is the possibility that Israel will once again have to take into consideration what is referred to in the IDF as the “Eastern Front,” another term for Iraq as a military threat. Iraq was in fact the primary threat that the IDF believed it faced until the mid-1990s following the First Gulf War, when Israel began to shift its focus to the evolving missile and nuclear threat in Iran.
While Iraq is not believed to be strong militarily today, that could and is already beginning to change. By 2015, Iraq will take receipt of 18 F-16 fighter jets. Israel, for its part, is not actively lobbying Washington against the deal as part of an understanding that it is in the US interest to bolster the Iraqi government
Well– the neoconservatives also wanted the U.S. to stay in Iraq forever. From Ali Gharib at ThinkProgress in September. Emphasis his.
[Bill] Kristol’s new “letterhead organization” — the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) — released a letter yesterday about the Obama administration’s reported plan to drop troop levels in Iraq to a mere several thousand.
After lauding U.S. efforts in Iraq so far, the FPI letter, signed by 40 mostly-neoconservative analysts, said:
“We are thus gravely concerned about recent news reports suggesting that the White House is considering leaving only a residual force of 4,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of this year. This number is significantly smaller than what U.S. military commanders on the ground have reportedly recommended and would limit our ability to ensure that Iraq remains stable and free from significant foreign influence in the years to come.”
Well, does Kristol have any kids or grandchildren? Send them to Iraq if he is so worried….
larry wilkerson on the “end” of the Iraq war…..his final line about the neo-cons should be repeated over and over and over and over…. “THEY aren’t willing to fight themselves, against Iran…”
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7736
Kristol is out of luck, it’s a done deal. We are out of Iraq, except for Hillary’s vanity Marshall Plan. Which I am sure will be full of meddling intrigue but without any success.
The Shiites and Sunnis are at it again and another 8 years of US troops isn’t going to stop them. Which ever side is strongest and last the longest will rule.
Yes, the USA is out of Iraq — and leaves no other target for Iran (to retaliate against) and for insurgents (to attack) than the biggest embassy in the world, a city-sized embassy full of Blakwater-type mercenaries (armed “contractors”).
Too bad for Israel (who’d hoped the USA would neutralize the “threat” from the Eastern Front and for the neocons (is there a difference in concerns?).
an article in today’s LA Times (“Used and left behind in Iraq”) about iraqi interpreters facing death threats, supposedly from al qaeda) while waiting for visas to escape to america. what did they expect, that in exchange for their treachery in serving the conqueror that their fellow iraqis would honor them? didn’t they know, after that last helicopter took off from saigon’s u.s. embassy, what happened to those vietnamese who had worked for the u.s invaders? reeducation camps, that’s what.
Interesting post because it prompts a question–a ‘what if’ question of the kind that historians always tell us are invalid but are fun to speculate about anyway.
Namely, What would life be like for Israelis/Jews today had the Zionists gone to Madagascar rather than the middle east?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that 1948 Israel is only the last of the crusader kingdoms. It will never cease being fortress Israel because it has too many enemies. Neither the one-state nor the two-state solution will likely save it in the long run, and history shows that crusader kingdoms only last c. 80 years. So give the old girl another couple of decades at most.
Meanwhile suppose the Zionists had gone to Madagascar. It seems like that’s been a pretty peaceful place since 1948, and its being a island must give its population a measure of security that no country in the middle east can ever feel.