Jeffrey Goldberg posts “an interesting and challenging view of McCain (and Bush)” from Hillel Levin, the thesis of which is that Bush has been bad for Israel, and McCain will be too, insofar as he continues Bush’s policies.
The war in Iraq has removed Iran’s historic nemesis and counterbalance, strengthening its hand and ambitions in the region. The war has also demonstrated to Iran’s leaders precisely why it is so important that Iran develop nuclear weaponry: America wouldn’t dare attack Iran once it has attained nuclear capabilities. The mishandling of the war has also weakened America’s hand in the region, removing any credible threat of a sustained American military engagement with Iran… And finally, Bush’s refusal to engage with Israel’s closer neighbor Syria–not a traditional ally of Iran’s–has pushed Syria further into Iran orbit than it has ever been before, providing a land-bridge for the transfer of weapons from Iran to Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Simply put, Bush’s policies have emboldened and empowered Iran and improved its regional standing. Israel is left facing the consequences.
All of this today is standard leftist trope material. The idea is that before the invasion in 2003, Iran and Iraq held each other in something akin to suspended animation, frozen in a historic standoff, is silly. For Iran’s purposes, Iraq had been neutered by the Gulf War in 1991 and the imposition of no-fly zones and embargoes. Far more beneficial to Iran’s ability to project power against Israel have been 1) the dramatic increase in Iran’s oil revenues, and 2) Israel’s withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza — which, Levin surely knows, are exactly the two places where Israel faces Iranian-sponsored terrorism today.
The call for American engagement with Syria, as if this would redound to Israel’s benefit, is similarly misguided. The U.S. has been indeed trying to drag Syria away from Iran for a very long time, especially during the late Bush I and Clinton years. Every attempt was a failure. During the current administration, similar attempts, though less high-profile, were made, with the same results. And does Levin really believe that the proper American response to Syria’s campaign of assassination against American allies in Lebanon should have been to increase the courting of Assad? Syria was a Soviet client during the Cold War; then Saddam Hussein’s ally; and now Iran’s. Levin seems unaware that Damascus’ stock-in-trade has always been to ally with America’s enemies and then play Washington for everything it can get by pretending to negotiate. And his idea that Damascus’ isolation has encouraged Syria to act as a conduit for Hezbollah is a claim so outside the bounds of historic chronology that it’s no use even discussing.
So has Bush been good for Israel? Sort of — because things started off so well and are ending so terribly. Bush, for a few years, succeeded in liberating America from one of its most fruitless diplomatic obsessions. Fast forward a few years, and Iran and its proxies are having coming-out parties all over the region. Yet American policy in all arenas but Iraq has been handed over to Condi Rice, who appears to have a singular ambition: flying off to Jerusalem every month to scrutinize maps of West Bank checkpoints.
The Iranians of course would like nothing more than for the peace process to remain the obsession of U.S. Middle East policy from now until the 12th imam reappears, especially now that Tehran operates many levers of Palestinian violence. And the Bush administration has obliged. In the strategic sense, this is not great friendship to Israel. I suspect — I hope I am wrong — that if Annapolis had never happened and today the Bush administration was engaged in ever-greater saber-rattling against Iran, people like Levin would be saying: Bush is no friend of Israel’s, he’s just a warmonger, and whatever happened to the peace process?
