The feeble and mindless approach to dealing with Iran by Gates and his ilk put America in grave danger. These are people who perversely believe that a preemptive strike on Iran by Israel is more dangerous than an Iran with nuclear weapons. They obviously didn’t learn from the example of Iraq. If Israel had been intimidated into backing off from bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, as many in the U.S. defense and foreign policy establishment wanted, saddam hussein would have had nuclear weapons when he invaded Kuwait. Cheney learned that lesson which is why he thanked Israel back in 1991 and favored bombing Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007.
Gates and Netanyahu
By Elliot Abrams, Pressure points, CFR
While I’ve been out of the country a small tempest has, I see, developed about former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ views of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Jeffrey Goldberg reported this:
“Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank.”
In Israel, where of course this is big news, critics of Netanyahu have blamed him for sparking such criticism from Gates. Even in the United States, it has been Netanyahu who is blamed for evoking such an attitude from Gates.
I beg to differ, for in my experience Secretary Gates held this exact view in 2007 and expressed it then. As former Vice President Dick Cheney’s new memoir recounts in some detail, there were in the spring and summer of that year, drawn-out considerations over what to do about the then-recently discovered Syrian nuclear reactor. There were endless discussions between Israeli and U.S. officials, and meeting after meeting inside the U.S. government. I participated in most of them.
Cheney notes that he favored a U.S. bombing of the reactor, and was alone in this view. That is my memory as well. I was alone in favoring an Israeli strike, for I thought it would be useful to restore some of the credibility they had lost in the Lebanon War of 2006. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Gates favored a diplomatic route, taking the Syrians first to the International Atomic Energy Agency and then to the U.N. Security Council to demand that they take the reactor apart. Cheney believed, and I agreed, that this was folly: The Syrians could drag that out for years while they finished construction of the reactor. When had the U.N. ever forced a rogue state to give up its nuclear program? Cheney asked. Moreover, once the Syrians found out that we knew about the reactor our military options would be gone: For example, in Saddam Hussein’s style they could put a kindergarten or hospital at the site and prevent a strike — once the reactor was “hot,” a strike would have dangerous repercussions for many surrounding miles.
In the end, the president was persuaded to try the diplomatic route and told then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this. Olmert immediately responded that this would not work, and that if we would not bomb the reactor he would. He reminded the president that he had, from the beginning, said it had to be destroyed one way or another. President George W. Bush was instantly and thereafter fine with that decision, ordering that nothing be said or done that might compromise Israel’s plans.
In our internal discussions Gates had been firmly in favor of the diplomatic option. Of course, during our discussions the question arose of what to do if Israel disagreed — as in the end it did. Gates was firm, as I recall him: Israel was ungrateful and its policies were at times putting our own interests at risk. We needed to be tough as nails and tell them our interests came first and their actions would threaten the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Fortunately his policy recommendations were not accepted by Bush, who understood that Israeli action against the reactor would advance rather than harm U.S. interests.
This story is worth telling for only one reason: That somehow it is now being “explained” that the Gates view of Israel is new and has been provoked by recent Israeli actions and by Netanyahu. Not so. Gates expressed essentially similar views in the Olmert days. Then, as now, he was wrong, but back then there was a different president who could listen to his honest and candid advice on how to protect U.S. interests and how to handle Israel — and firmly reject it.
Gates presided over years of steadily improving U.S.-Israel military cooperation under both Bush and President Barack Obama. He should get real credit for this, as should the officers who have served as chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last decade, Gen. Richard Myers, Gen. Peter Pace, and Adm. Mike Mullen, and as should above all the two presidents they served. But his views about the Israelis being “ungrateful” are not new and should not, in fairness, be attributed to recent developments, or blamed on Netanyahu.
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