President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walk along the Colonnade, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, back to the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah D. Craighead)
At The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan cautions against America giving up the right to avoid war by ceding control to another country, namely Israel. Buchanan is worried that Israel’s desire to fight Iran could pull the United States into a war that wouldn’t benefit America in any way. He writes (abridged):
President Donald Trump, who canceled a missile strike on Iran after the shoot-down of a U.S. Predator drone to avoid killing Iranians, may not want a war. But the same cannot be said of Bibi Netanyahu.
Saturday, Israel launched a night attack on a village south of Damascus to abort what Israel claims was a plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force to fly “killer drones” into Israel, an act of war.
Sunday, two Israeli drones crashed outside the media offices of Hezbollah in Beirut. Israel then attacked a base camp of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in north Lebanon.
Monday, Israel admitted to a strike on Iranian-backed militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. And Israel does not deny responsibility for last month’s attacks on munitions dumps and bases of pro-Iran militias in Iraq.
Israel has also confirmed that, during Syria’s civil war, it conducted hundreds of strikes against pro-Iranian militias and ammunition depots to prevent the transfer of missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s widening of Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies into Lebanon and Iraq—and perhaps beyond—and his acknowledgment of that wider war raise questions for both nations.
Israel today has on and near her borders hostile populations in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq. Tens of millions of Muslims see her as an enemy to be expelled from the region.
While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are temporary allies as long as the foe is Iran.
As for America, have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?
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