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Compare and contrast, administration policy toward Israel in
time of war.
Compare and contrast, the Nixon administration in 1973 and
the Obama administration in 2014.
Arnold Steinberg summarized what happened in 1973:
To this
day, few Jews recognize that at Israel’s greatest time of existential threat —
the 1973 surprise attack known as the Yom Kippur War — Republican Richard
Nixon saved Israel: his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir
called in the middle of the night; Nixon unilaterally overruled the Pentagon to
airlift massive military supplies to our beleaguered ally.
Now, the situation is reversed. The Pentagon was providing
Israel with the arms that it needed to defend itself. The White House and the
State Department were unhappy and decided that further sales of Hellfire
missiles would require their approval.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:
Then
the officials learned that, in addition to asking for tank shells and other
munitions, Israel had submitted a request through military-to-military channels
for a large number of Hellfire missiles, according to Israeli and American
officials.
The
Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, was about to release
an initial batch of the Hellfires, according to Israeli and congressional
officials. It was immediately put on hold by the Pentagon, and top officials at
the White House instructed the DSCA, the U.S. military's European Command and
other agencies to consult with policy makers at the White House and the State
Department before approving any additional requests.
A
senior Obama administration official said the weapons transfers shouldn't have
been a routine "check-the-box approval" process, given the context.
The official said the decision to scrutinize future transfers at the highest
levels amounted to "the United States saying 'The buck stops here. Wait a
second…It's not OK anymore.' "
And…
The
White House and State Department have sought to regain greater control over
U.S.-Israeli policy. They decided to require White House and State Department
approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel, officials say.
Instead
of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case is now subject to
review—slowing the approval process and signaling to Israel that military
assistance once taken for granted is now under closer scrutiny.
1 comment:
Nixon gave ammunition to a sovereign state that was under attack by almost all its geographic neighbors, an attack based on the idea that it had no right to exist. Thus, it was an existential threat, in 1973 and every other time.
Barack Obama refuses to support this same State of Israel with promises of ammunition re-supply, while his administrative departments (war-weary agencies like the Postal Service,Social Security and Health & Human Services, to name a few) purchase billions and billions of rounds of small arms ammunition in a form (hollow point bullets) that violates international laws of war, including the Hague Convention of 1899, which NATO members still follow.
Who would up you say are Obama's enemies?
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