The reviled Jew, saving the world from its own stupidity

Saul Singer originally wrote this powerful editorial for the Jerusalem Post:

What a perfect arrangement: The only country that every country has a right to condemn can be relied upon to do the world's dirty work. This is the underlying mindset as the West contemplates a nuclear Iran. When push comes to shove, the Israeli air force will take care of the problem, so the world can go into spasms of righteous indignation while enjoying the fireworks. There are, however, a number of flies in the ointment of this convenient scenario. Journalists and policymakers, like generals, tend to fight the last war, so everyone has in mind the 1981 Osirak operation, where Israel dealt a fatal blow to Saddam Hussein's dreams of mass destruction by destroying his nuclear reactor. But the Iranians are not idiots, and they have taken into account the possibility of an Israeli air strike in designing their program. A new report by the U.S. Army War College, with a chapter on Israel drafted by former IDF Brig.-Gen. Shlomo Brom, finds that Israel cannot launch a sustained air campaign that will reliably destroy a series of hardened, well-defended, and dispersed targets. In order to avoid the airspace of intermediate countries, Israeli aircraft would have to fly more than 900 miles — refueling over the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. But let's say, by some miracle, it could be done. And let's even say, as Brom speculates, that Iran would not be able to tell Hezbollah to launch the thousands of missiles pointed at Israel's north because Israel would retaliate against Syria, possibly toppling that regime. Still, the question remains, why is little Israel being left to fight the world's war? The answer is not just that life's unfair. The real answer is that the enlightened post-modern European refusal to lift a finger — let alone a gun — to defend itself is consigning us all to a dark age of terrorism and war. The irony here is that it is precisely those who claim to believe mot in a borderless world ruled by international law who are ushering in a new Hobbesian era.

Singer goes on to explain how Europe has perverted original UN documents to ignore the UN's mandate to prevent precisely the type of situation that has now arisen in Iran. I will say, though, that I suspect two other factors driving both Europe's and (sad to say) America's grotesque passivity in the face of the Iranian nuclear nightmare: (1) A belief that, because Israel is so reviled anyway, she won't worry about winning popularity contests when she makes a decision to attack Iran's nuclear storehouses; and (2) a belief that, while the situation is harder than it was in 1981, Israel is probably the only country that can actually carry out a mission like this successfully. With no respect at all for Europe's limited forces, and with all due respect to Americva's wonderful forces, the fact remains that Israel has an astonishing record of success with this type of strike activity (witness the famous 1981 attack on Iraq and the amazing Entebbe raid). Whether Israel still has that exceptional military brilliance and discipline remains to be seen....