War necessary for peace?
Reader comment on item: Israel and Syria going to war?
in response to reader comment: Frogs Luxuriating in a Large Pot of Warm Water, Over a High Flame.

Submitted by Chris G. (United States), Jun 26, 2007 at 18:50

Ok, let me get this straight? Israel is threatened with getting overrun by Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians???
Saudi Arabia has never had strong offensive capabilities. They are more worried about Iran invading in order to re-take Mecca and Medina. True they are a massive thorn in the side of Israel by funding Palestinians... but guess what, we also provided alot of training and funding to the PLA.. We are now about to give them even more funding.

From a military perspective, the only real threats to Israel right now are from Egypt and from Iran. Egypt actually has the conventional military power to put serious hurt into Israel with hundreds of M1A1/2 tanks that we so happily sold to them. They actually make the majority of the tank under licensing agreements. So basically we also taught them how to make most of the tank. We have done the same with the Apache gunships and F-16C Falcon's that we sold to them along with top knotch training. Right now, the Egyptian government is on more or less good terms with Israel. However if we push for true democracy and freedom in Egypt, then BANG.... the Islamic Brotherhood will come to power rapidly and things will change very quickly.

Iran is a threat because of their WMD capabilities and more importantly, their ability to project those WMD's into Israel. They also started, train, and arm Hezbollah. Hezbollah is without a doubt, the most potent and professional light infantry force in the Arab world. What we need to do, is help encourage Nasrallah to stop with the terrorist rhetoric and use his power towards peace with Israel (and America) and to unite Lebanon. They are not as fanatic as Al-Qaeda and are more professional Because of this they have more potential for being reasoned with. Unfortunately the current Iranian leadership may not be so reasonable, but again its complicated because Iranian politics is very complicated. The President does not have all the power, is extremely unpopular (the Iranian Bush), and their economy is in bad shape right now. He just has a big mouth that the media loves and he likes to piss off Americans and Israelies.

There are other powers within the Guardian Council and the military leadership of the Revolutionary Guard, who hold the real power. If we send over some of our top experts on Iran with the best diplomatic skills, we stand a chance to manipulate change from within. Iran is the natural enemy of Al-Qaeda. If we can get them to make peace with Israel and end their nuclear weapons program (and open any civilian nuclear projects to full international monitoring), things will be alright.

As for Syria.... There is no way they are a real threat to Israel. Their training, tactics, and equipment are mostly the same crap that Saddam had before we steam rolled his military. They are upgrading slowly, but their economy simply can't sustain any major offensive war and they simply don't have the military capability to contest Israel.

With all of that said however, I have to agree with you that Israeli politics is insane with power hungry politicians. It is much worse then here in America. However yes, I have little faith in either the Republican or Democrat party or any of the presidential candidates. None of them have any solid ideas for winning the war on terror and none of them have the leadership or diplomatic skills required to lead America through a difficult period in our world history. Things can very easily go south for our nation if we end up going to either extreme of being to naive about politics in the Middle East and how you make deals there or too gung-ho in our bloodlust to kill terrorists or over zealousness to bring democracy to the Middle East.
Sadly these days all you got are these extremes in our own political system.

Chris G.

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