I was watching Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish ex-prime minister of Israel, getting interviewed on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time. I’ve been watching Netanyahu on the news for years. He’s obviously very smart, articulate and clearly in the loop. Here are a few things he said in the interview.
1. Hezbollah might NOT have had approval from its sponsor Iran to kidnap the two Israeli soldiers, thus triggering the larger war in Lebanon.
2. Iran DID start the fighting in Lebanon to distract from its nuclear program.
3. Iran is building a nuclear bomb to use on Israel.
So here I am, the dumb American, trying to connect the dots. And I can’t figure out how it can simultaneously be true that Iran might NOT have endorsed Hezbollah’s kidnapping plot with the fact that Iran perpetrated the plot as a distraction.
And how does starting a war help you convince the world of your peaceful nuclear intentions? What are the odds that the Iranians would have hatched such a stupid plan?
I also can’t square the fact that Netanyahu KNOWS Iran is building a nuclear weapon to use on Israel with the fact that this hawk isn’t urging a massive military strike. A first strike is the only option that makes sense. If you KNOW someone is planning to annihilate you, waiting for it to happen seems like exactly the wrong strategy. If Iran is crazy enough to nuke Israel (and be annihilated in the process), economic sanctions would do nothing but postpone the inevitable. Crazy people don’t respond to stuff like that.
As readers of this blog know, my view is that I never have enough information to make an informed decision about world policy. This is a perfect example. Perhaps Netanyahu has access to secret information that makes these inconsistencies go away.
Or maybe he’s full of crap, just like Iran, and just like our own leaders. The only choice we citizens get is whose crap to eat.