Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in
Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2015. In a speech that stirred political intrigue
in two countries, Netanyahu told Congress that negotiations underway between
Iran and the U.S. would "all but guarantee" that Tehran will get
nuclear weapons, a step that the world must avoid at all costs. (AP Photo/J.
Scott Applewhite) (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress was notable in two
respects. Queen Esther got her first standing O in 2,500 years. And President
Obama came up empty in his
campaign to preemptively undermine Netanyahu
before the Israeli prime minister could present
his case on the Iran
negotiations.
On the contrary. The steady stream of slights
and insults turned an irritant into an international event and vastly increased
the speech’s audience and reach. Instead of dramatically unveiling an Iranian
nuclear deal as a fait accompli, Obama must now first defend his Iranian
diplomacy.
In particular, argues
The Post, he must defend its fundamental premise. It had been the
policy of every president since 1979 that Islamist Iran must be sanctioned and
contained. Obama, however, is betting instead on detente to tame Iran’s
aggressive behavior and nuclear ambitions.
For six years, Obama has
offered the mullahs an
extended hand. He has imagined that with Kissingerian brilliance he would turn
the Khamenei regime into a de facto U.S. ally in pacifying the Middle East. For
his pains, Obama has been rewarded with an Iran that has ramped up its
aggressiveness in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, and brazenly defied the
world on uranium enrichment.
He did the same with Russia. He offered
Vladimir Putin a new detente. “Reset,” he called it. Putin responded
by decimating
his domestic opposition, unleashing a vicious anti-American propaganda
campaign, ravaging Ukraine and shaking the post-Cold War European order to its
foundations.
Like the Bourbons, however, Obama learns
nothing. He persists in believing that Iran’s radical Islamist regime can be
turned by sweet reason and fine parchment into a force for stability. It’s akin
to his refusal to face the true nature of the Islamic State, Iran’s Sunni
counterpart. He simply can’t believe that such people actually believe what
they say.
That’s what made Netanyahu’s critique of the
U.S.-Iran deal so powerful. Especially his dissection of the sunset clause. In
about 10 years, the
deal expires. Sanctions are lifted and Iran is permitted unlimited
uranium enrichment with an unlimited number of centrifuges of unlimited
sophistication. As the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens
points out, we don’t even allow that for democratic South Korea.
The prime minister offered a concrete alternative. Sunset? Yes, but only after Iran
changes its behavior, giving up its regional aggression and worldwide support
for terror.
Netanyahu’s veiled suggestion was that such a
modification — plus a significant reduction in Iran’s current nuclear
infrastructure, which the Obama deal leaves intact — could produce a deal that
“Israel and its [Arab] neighbors may not like, but with which we could live,
literally.”
Obama’s
petulant response was:
“The prime minister didn’t offer any viable alternatives.” But he just did:
conditional sunset, smaller infrastructure. And if the Iranians walk away, then
you ratchet up sanctions, as Congress is urging, which, with collapsed oil
prices, would render the regime extremely vulnerable.
And if that doesn’t work? Hence Netanyahu’s
final point: Israel is prepared to stand alone, a declaration that was met with
enthusiastic applause reflecting widespread popular support.
It was an important moment, especially because
of the libel being
perpetrated by some that
Netanyahu is trying to get America to go to war with Iran. This is as malicious
a calumny as Charles
Lindbergh’s charge on
Sept. 11, 1941, that “the three most important groups who have been pressing
this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt
administration.”
In its near-70 year history, Israel has never
once asked America to fight for it. Not in 1948 when 650,000 Jews faced 40
million Arabs. Not in 1967 when Israel was being encircled and strangled by
three Arab armies. Not in 1973 when Israel was on the brink of destruction. Not
in the three Gaza wars or the two Lebanon wars.
Compare that to a very partial list of nations
for which America has fought and for which so many Americans have fallen:
Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea, and every West European
country beginning with France (twice).
Change the deal, strengthen the sanctions,
give Israel a free hand. Netanyahu offered a different path in his clear, bold
and often moving address, Churchillian in its appeal to resist appeasement.
This was not Churchill of the 1940s, but Churchill of the 1930s, the wilderness
prophet. Which is why for all its sonorous strength, Netanyahu’s speech had a
terrible poignancy. After all, Churchill was ignored.
***
Churchill’s warnings in the 1930s, during the wilderness years:
Here, again, mystery shrouds all German preparations. At various points facts emerge which enable a general view to be taken. Enormous sums of money are being spent on German aviation and upon other armaments. I wish we could get at the figures which are being spent upon armaments. I believe that they would stagger us with the terrible, tale they would tell of the immense panoply which that nation of nearly 70,000,000 of people is assuming, or has already largely assumed. But there are certain things which strike one. For instance, the population of Dessau increased during last year by 13,000 people. Dessau is a centre of the great Junkers' aeroplane works, but it is only one of four or five main air factories of Germany. There are at least 20 others of a secondary but important character; and 13,000 people are known to have entered the town of Dessau—I do not say that they are all workers—in the course of last year. One can see what the scale of production must be. Further, owing to the fact that the Germans had to prepare their air force in secret and unofficially, there has grown up a somewhat different method of producing aircraft from that which obtains in this country and in France. Much smaller elements are actually made in the main factories than are made over here. Nuts and bolts and small parts are spread over an enormous producing area of small firms, and then they flow into the great central factories. The work which is done there consists in a rapid assembly, like a jig-saw puzzle or meccano game, with the result that aeroplanes are turned out with a rapidity which is incomparably greater than in our factories, where a great deal of the finer stages of the work are done on the spot
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
***
Churchill’s warnings in the 1930s, during the wilderness years:
Speech delivered on the BBC radio, 10pm, 15 November
1934
After
all, my friends, only a few hours away by air there dwell a nation of nearly
seventy millions of the most educated, industrious, scientific, disciplined
people in the world, who are being taught from childhood to think of war as a
glorious exercise and death in battle as the noblest fate for man.
There
is a nation which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its
collective strength. There is a nation which, with all its strength and virtue,
is in the grip of a group of ruthless men, preaching a gospel of intolerance
and racial pride, unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion. In
that country all pacifist speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or
suppressed, and their authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new table of
commandments they have omitted "thou shall not kill."
March 19, 1935, House of Commons
Here, again, mystery shrouds all German preparations. At various points facts emerge which enable a general view to be taken. Enormous sums of money are being spent on German aviation and upon other armaments. I wish we could get at the figures which are being spent upon armaments. I believe that they would stagger us with the terrible, tale they would tell of the immense panoply which that nation of nearly 70,000,000 of people is assuming, or has already largely assumed. But there are certain things which strike one. For instance, the population of Dessau increased during last year by 13,000 people. Dessau is a centre of the great Junkers' aeroplane works, but it is only one of four or five main air factories of Germany. There are at least 20 others of a secondary but important character; and 13,000 people are known to have entered the town of Dessau—I do not say that they are all workers—in the course of last year. One can see what the scale of production must be. Further, owing to the fact that the Germans had to prepare their air force in secret and unofficially, there has grown up a somewhat different method of producing aircraft from that which obtains in this country and in France. Much smaller elements are actually made in the main factories than are made over here. Nuts and bolts and small parts are spread over an enormous producing area of small firms, and then they flow into the great central factories. The work which is done there consists in a rapid assembly, like a jig-saw puzzle or meccano game, with the result that aeroplanes are turned out with a rapidity which is incomparably greater than in our factories, where a great deal of the finer stages of the work are done on the spot
I
must assemble these facts because they are very important. According to
yesterday's "Daily Telegraph," in this same account which I thought
was so Very well informed, between 250 and 300 military aircraft have been
added to Germany's total since November. I fear it will be found that the
German factories are working up from their present rate of output of more than
100 a month to some unknown monthly increase. It may be 100, 120, or 140 a
month; I do not pretend to be able to say. Nothing I have gathered from the
newspapers enables me to say what the ultimate result will be, but it seems to
me that if you take the next 12 months at an average output of 125 machines a
month—I am sure there are a great many people who will scoff at such a low
figure, and I may be only making myself ridiculous by using such a figure and
may afterwards be mocked at for doing so—even if you take that moderate figure
of 125, it will mean an addition to Germany's military aircraft in the
financial year 1935–36 of 1,500, of which a portion will go to replace wastage,
and the rest will be a net addition to their total military aircraft
strength. That
is many times larger than any programme of deliveries provided in this
Estimate, which we see is concerned with an increase of 150, plus the natural
wear and tear and wastage. Therefore, I am unable to accept the second
statement of my right hon. Friend the Lord President in November last, which I
have read to the House and will read again: As for the position this time
next year, so far from the German military air force being almost as strong as
and probably stronger than our own, I estimate that we shall have in Europe
alone a margin of nearly 50 per cent.On the contrary, I must submit to the
House that the Lord President was misled in the figures which he gave last
November, quite unwittingly perhaps, because of the great difficulty of the
subject. At any rate, the true position at the end of this year will be almost
the reverse of that which he stated to Parliament. We must remember also that
Germany's scale of reserves, judging by the lectures which are being delivered
at different times by those who have been presiding over German aviation
development—the scale of reserves of first-line air strength is 200 per cent.
The reason is this: It will take them three months to get their peace-time
industry working at full blast on a war-time basis and they calculate on a loss
of 100 per cent. of aeroplanes per month, that is damage to 100 per cent. per
month in time of war. Thus they would have three months' supply at the end of
that three-monthly period. They hope to transfer the whole of the civilian
industry into the means of getting their air force into permanent being on a
wastage of 100 per cent. a month. They have, of course, made preparations for
converting the entire industry of Germany to war purposes by a simple order
being given of a detail and refinement which is almost inconceivable. I am not
particularly stressing at this moment what comparable measures have been taken,
but I am certain that Germany's preparations are infinitely more far-reaching.
So that you have not only equality at the moment, but the great output which I
have described, and you have behind that this enormous power to turn over, on
the outbreak of war, the whole great force of the German industry.
May 2, 1935, House of
Commons:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1935/may/02/foreign-office#S5CV0301P0_19350502_HOC_289
“When
the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly
out of hand, we apply the remedies which then might have effected a cure.
There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It
falls into that long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the
confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when
action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of
counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring
gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of
history."
November 12, 1936, House
of Commons:
“The
Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the Prime
Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to
be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity,
all-powerful to be impotent.
“Two
things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in
these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us
in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook
of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of
Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I
never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to
go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even
the Government's own confessions of error have produced no concentration of
Parliamentary opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to
the level of emergency. I say that unless the House resolves to find
out the truth for itself, it will have committed an act of abdication of duty
without parallel.”
Sept
30, 1938,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/397522/Munich-Agreement
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”