Israel to our rescue???

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The WALTHER REPORT

By Tony Walther

It looks as though Israel is shaping up to be our proxy in taking care of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. We will stand by and let Israel do our dirty work. We’ll reap the security benefits without taking the brunt of the blame.

There was even, so far as can be told as of this writing, a false report in the last 24 hours that Israel had already struck, causing oil prices to go up (anything causes them to move up now).

But all the news and news blogs are pointing to a strike by Israel, with or without our acquiescence.

And a line out of the Drudge Report caught my eye. John Bolton, our former representative in the UN, opined that if Israel were to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Arab world would publicly denounce the attack, but would privately be pleased. Iran is Persian, not Arab, and the Arab world is probably uncomfortable with the idea of a new Persian empire. Iran already has heavy influence in Iraq.

Mideast politics are complicated what with all the warring factions, but I have read that in general, in that part of the world, folks tend to respect power. Now the U.S. has certainly tried to project power there over the past eight years, but the ham-handed approach by our leaders (not talking about our troops over there) has at times been less than impressive or successful (and now one blog headline says Bush has no post surge strategy. I could believe that. He and his administration have had no strategy whatsoever, as far as I can tell).

The famous quote from a U.S. military officer in Vietnam was: “We had to destroy the village to save it.” And isn’t that what we did in Iraq? Destroyed it to save it.

Anyway, it seems to me now that some type of dialogue with Iran is in order. Maybe to save face for both sides it needs to be done in private (and I am no fan of secret deals. We secretly gave away the store in Vietnam, Reagan reportedly made a secret deal with Iran to make Jimmy Carter look bad, and we essentially gave away eastern Europe in World War II to the communists).

While we need to break our dependence on foreign oil, Iran does have one heck of a lot of oil we could use in the meantime. I’ve heard reports that the Iranian people tend to like the U.S. It’s their fundamentalist Islamic government that hates us. I’m not even sure if they hate us really. It’s more of a power game. In that part of the world you sometimes gain power by hating the U.S.

Existing Middle East governments always walk a tightrope between relations with the U.S. and internal threats from their own insurgents.

We really would do better to stop trying to play God by trying to shape the Middle East in our own image. The Middle East will be the Middle East.

Seems to me that we would do better by being publicly neutral, but privately cautious and watchful.

Barack Obama may have been tripped up way back in one of those so-called debates when he said he would be willing to talk to Iran (didn’t sound good at the time to many). I wrote recently that I would not be comfortable with him coming back from Iran Neville Chamberlain style and saying we would have “pace in our time.” But I have seen the indication from him that he only meant that he would give dialogue a shot before taking a shot, militarily.

I’m probably wandering here from the main thesis of all of this, whatever it is, but in the interest of fair play, I’ll note that John McCain seems to just want a military victory and he does not want to talk to Iran because its president (and I don’t want to look up how to spell his name; he’s not worth it) has vowed to destroy Israel and denies the Holocaust ever took place. True, I don’t think even Obama wants to talk to that goof ball. But Iran is really run by religious leaders. We just need to talk to the folks who are actually in charge.

While McCain’s steadfast support of something that seems hopeless most of the time (the war) gives me problems, I have to think that if he were president he’d be more pragmatic about everything and maybe get the job done (and that was not an endorsement of him).

However, I don’t see Obama as a peacenik really. He has called for going after Al-Qaeda in Pakistan if necessary. And he’s also talked about paying more attention to the almost forgotten (until recently) job in Afghanistan.

While in sports they often say that the best defense is an offense, I’m not so sure that such holds true in U.S. foreign relations. Sports is a game. Our relations with the rest of the world may be played like a game, but it is for real. We need a strong defense and an offense that is ready to roll at anytime. But we don’t need to be looking for fights. We need to take care of things here at home: the energy crisis, the economy, affordable healthcare, and the threat of our own internal breakdown in our own society (the last is really another blog subject, but I thought I’d mention it).

And another thing, I’m not so sure that we should sit here all comfortable waiting for the Israelis to do our bidding. I think we would end up taking the blame. I’d rather be blamed for something I did than something someone else did. Israel is so strong for two reasons. It has resolve. And it has us.

You see, I didn’t suggest a terribly coherent plan in all of this. I’m not running for president. I’m looking for a leader who can come up with a coherent plan or is willing to listen to wise counsel and not just surround himself with yes men or take his cues from the likes of Uncle Dick Cheney.

As daunting as the challenges that face us are, life is full of new beginnings. We need a renaissance.