Netanyahu Needs To Hear What The US Public Is Saying: 'No more wars...'
The spat between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama over Iran shows how out-of-touch Israel's leader is with world opinion.
By Amir Oren | Nov. 17, 2013
Here’s a statistic from an official Pentagon presentation, recently revealed at a security industry conference in Augusta, Georgia. The subject was American military interventions since the end of World War II. The figures: 44 interventions – one a year – between 1945 and 1989; and another 100 – three to four a year – since the end of the Cold War.
The world has become wilder, with more American raids and invasions, since the disintegration of the bipolar American-Soviet structure. The trend is toward longer interventions, which require maintenance of ground forces – that is, a long, costly investment from a cavernous-bottomed barrel.
That is the backdrop for an important and frank statement made by a senior American official, in the current context of the dispute between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the emerging agreement between the six world powers and Iran. Last Thursday, speaking at another security conference, this time in Washington, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel summed up the American public’s position as it is reflected in opinion polls: “No more wars, no more Middle East.” They don’t want to spill any more blood or money into the quicksand of countries in the same region as Afghanistan and Iraq.
The public, said former senator Hagel, is at the foundation of democracy. The public decides because Congress – a partner as strong as the president – must constantly heed the desires of the voters. Especially the House of Representatives, which stands for election every two years. None of its members is so invulnerable as to buck the spirit of the times.
Without willingness to put boots on the ground – not a commando force to kill Osama bin Laden that performs its task and takes quickly to the air, but divisions that get bogged down and bloodied – no regime can be toppled. Prudent planners don’t talk about air operations before they have the general outlines of the boots on the ground operation.
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