Jewish Leaders Caught In Iran Bind
As Walt-Mearscheimer book appears, efforts to keep military option open run counter to national mood

By James D. Besser
James Kelso Comments

Even as they fight revived charges that Israel and the pro-Israel community are beating the drums for war with Iran, Jewish leaders here are quietly trying to protect President George W. Bush’s ability to use military force to knock out that country’s nuclear weapons program if diplomatic efforts fail.

But they are running headlong into a national mood of skepticism and distrust about American foreign policy in general — and a surge of opposition to any new U.S. military involvements in particular.

Talking even indirectly about the war option is risky because “there is virtually no public support for an attack on Iran,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

And a leading Jewish military analyst warned that Jewish leaders are playing with fire by talking about the military option without understanding its difficulties or dangers.

“Flirting with the military option without understanding its meaning is very dangerous,” said Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). “I don’t think Jewish leaders are pushing the administration to war, but by not understanding the consequences, they are not making themselves look good; they open themselves up to a lot of criticism by being glib about going to war.”

Bryen, whose group has strong ties to U.S. and Israeli military leaders, said there are no simple, clean military options for dealing with the Iranian threat, and that almost any U.S. attack would prompt massive retaliation against Israel.

Jewish leaders “say they don’t want to remove the military option, but when asked how we should exercise it, the answer is usually ‘uhhhh,’” she said. “That really weakens their case.”

Bryen said she agrees with most Jewish leaders that “the military option should never be taken off the table. But I would be very careful about how I throw it around out in public.”

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Abolish the H1 and L1 Visas

By John Young

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Welcome to Western Voices, I’m John Young.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, America became a powerhouse that delivered living standards, levels of personal freedom and class mobility that made it the envy of the world. As developments in the European homeland were not analogous, the unparalleled prosperity of the United States cannot be explained on an ethnic basis alone. The main difference was ideological. The ideas and conditions that gave America the crucial edge continue in many forms to this very day, and can be seen in rates of ownership of real property that aren’t even approached anyplace else in the world.

Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation that would separate the United States from Europe, and create the greatest nation the world has ever seen with his often-misunderstood words in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” His true intent was given life in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Sections 9 and 10 in which both the United States and the Several States were expressly prohibited from granting titles of nobility; and in Article III, Section 3 in which Attainders of Treason are specifically prohibited from working Corruption of Blood.

The importance of these matters to our Founding Fathers can be seen in the fact that they were included in the Constitution itself, rather than in the subsequently ratified Bill of Rights. They didn’t want to entrust it to the amendment process. And the amendment process was a risk. Today, we think of the first ten amendments to the  Constitution as a monolithic article containing only ten amendments. But what most Americans don’t realize is that the Bill of Rights, as sent to the States for ratification, actually contained twelve amendments, two of which weren’t ratified at the time.

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