 |
| Yoram Ettinger |
National security and foreign policymakers should study a
critical lesson from the medical profession: The failure to think beyond the
stage one effect of painkillers may solve
short-term problems but will trigger long-term
health risks: addiction, organ damage, nausea, headaches, dizziness,
memory impairment and decreased cognitive performance.
National security and foreign policymakers should also
heed the following observation by Thomas Sowell:
"When most voters do not think beyond
stage one, many elected officials have no incentive to weigh what
the consequences will be in later stages. ... These reactions would lead
to consequences much less desirable than those at stage one. ... Most
thinking stops at stage one."
Sowell argues that "basic economics is
generally misapplied because politicians think only in stage one -- the immediate
result of an action, without determining what happens next. Many
politicians cannot see beyond stage one because they do not think beyond
the next election."
However, the track record of Western national security
and foreign policymakers documents such
shortsightedness: a tendency to sacrifice long-term
considerations, complexity, principles and interests on the altar of short-term,
stage one convenience and oversimplification. They ignore the
glaring writing on the wall and lessons of the recent past.
The late chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee,
Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, detected the
shortsightedness and self-destructive
conduct of Israeli and U.S. policymakers regarding the Palestinian
issue. He lamented his own participation -- at the request of then-President
Bill Clinton -- in the September 1993 Oslo Accord
signing ceremony: "While most participants rejoice the Rabin-Arafat
handshake of the moment, I fear that in the long
run it could lead to a funeral procession
of the Jewish state."
Contrary to Inouye, Israeli and U.S. policymakers did not
weigh the long-term consequences. Israel's
eagerness to conclude the Oslo Accord
with Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat was a stage one,
short-lived pain reliever. As predicted by
Inouye, the snappy stage one was succeeded
by a second stage and long-term national security predicaments:
"organ damage" (unprecedented Palestinian noncompliance,
hate education and terrorism), "headaches" (intensified international
pressure), "dizziness" (eroded posture of deterrence), "memory
impairment, nausea and decreased cognitive performance" (addiction
to further sweeping concessions, to the Palestine Liberation Organization and
Syria, by Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin,
Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well
as U.S. Presidents Clinton and Barack Obama), recklessly ignoring the thundering
Palestinian mission statement, featured prominently in Abbas' school textbooks,
mosques and media: It's the existence
-- not the size -- of Israel!
"Peace in our time" -- and not thinking beyond
stage one -- has channeled U.S.
zeal into making a deal with the ayatollahs.
U.S. policymakers assume that a nuclear Iran would act
rationally and could be contained. They believe
that a constructive agreement can be
achieved at stage one without a dramatic, long-term transformation of the
nature of the ayatollahs. They underestimate the deep roots of the overtly
anti-U.S., apocalyptic, terrorist, subversive, expansionist, supremacist,
repressive, deceitful and noncompliant nature
of the ayatollah regime.
Therefore, they assume that just like the USSR, a nuclear
Iran would be deterred by mutual assured
destruction. However, unlike the USSR,
the ayatollahs are driven by martyrdom and apocalypse. They are enticed
-- not deterred -- by MAD. A conventional Iran is controllable, but a
threshold Iran would be chaotically uncontrollable.
U.S.
policymakers focus on a stage one agreement with the ayatollahs, overlooking
the staggering second stage cost to vital U.S. interests of the U.S., thereby playing directly into the hands of the ayatollahs. The
cost to the U.S. is spelled out in the heinous anti-U.S. writing, in bold, 40-point letters, written on the Ayatollah
Wall, which was erected in 1979. It is reflected by the
ayatollahs' track record, domestically, regionally and globally, including
Death to America Day, observed annually on November 4 and featuring the burning of U.S. flags and photographs of U.S. presidents.
Stage-one-thinking policymaking
could yield an uplifting ceremony in Lausanne. However,
the succeeding stages would transform the ayatollahs into
a threshold nuclear power, compounding the existing lethal threats
to global sanity and paving the road to nuclear war.
