Fire Power Demonstration
Reader comment on item: [Michael Oren's] "Six Days of War"

Submitted by Michael Sheridan (United States), Jun 5, 2002 at 15:47

I agree with Dr. Pipes' as well as with Mr. Lauder's comment. Isreal will not know peace until it defeats its enemies. Wars are not settled by treaties -- they are settled by the winner defeating the loser. Sucessful peace treaties are not negotiated, they are imposed on the loser by the winner. The US won its war against Imperial Japan in four years by forcing Japan to its knees. Israel has been a war for more than 50 years because it has never done the same. The Egyptian government wouldn't be able to claim it won the 1967 war if there had been Israeli tanks in Cairo.

I also agree with Mr. Burczyk about the Gulf War, too bad we didn't defeat Iraq when we had the chance. As a weapon systems engineer, I was working with USAF fighter pilots during the Gulf War. At a meeting some months later, one of the pilots refered to his experiance during "our recent Middle East fire power demonstration". He explained you couldn't call it a war, since only one side did any fighting. It wasn't quite that one sided on the ground, but nearly so.

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