What Would Ike Do?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
March 20, 2015 "ICH"
- In November 1956, President
Eisenhower, enraged he had not been
forewarned of their invasion of Egypt,
ordered the British, French and Israelis to
get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told.
How far we have fallen from
the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles
has been on painful display this March.
An Israeli leader told a
joint session of Congress that President
Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is stupid and
dangerous and must be rejected. Congress
gave him 40 ovations.
Bibi Netanyahu then went
home and told the world there will be no
Palestinian state, and was re-elected in a
smashing victory.
“Perhaps it’s time for
Americans, especially those in the White
House, to recognize this new reality of
Israeli politics,” says The Wall Street
Journal. We should restore “Israeli
confidence in U.S. support.”
Excuse me? Who is the
senior partner here? Who needs whom more?
Israel is entitled to
choose its own leaders, who are entitled to
make their own policy. But that goes for us
as well.
We are today headed for a
collision with Israel as serious as Suez
’56, and we are about to see what Barack
Obama is made of.
The days of self-delusion
are over. For was there ever a doubt where
Bibi stood? In 1994, he denounced the Oslo
Accords in a speech interrupted by chants
that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a
“traitor.”
Did anyone think Bibi, who
opposed Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of Israeli
settlers from Gaza, was going to withdraw
tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from
Judea and Samaria, share Jerusalem with a
Palestinian state, or allow the return of
Arab refugees to what Bibi says is the
“Jewish state”?
“Arab voters are coming
out in droves to the polls. Left-wing
organizations are busing them out,” said
Bibi on his Facebook page in Hebrew,
according to a translation by Haaretz.
That’s the real Bibi. We
have clarity now.
What should Obama do?
Drop the petulance, call
and congratulate Bibi on his election and
tell him we are proceeding with the Iran
deal — if we conclude it accords with our
interests. And if he attempts to sabotage or
scuttle the deal, he should expect political
and economic retaliation.
Bibi is looking out for
Israel first. America needs a president like
Ike who will start looking out for America
first.
It appears we are at a
moment of truth worldwide.
Our freeloading friends in
NATO, only four of whom spend 2 percent of
GDP on defense, and some are cutting that,
should be told that the days of Uncle Sam
carrying the lion’s share of their defense
are over.
Ukraine and Crimea are on
their continent not ours.
The Soviet Empire is dead;
the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. A
Russia smaller than it has been in
centuries, with half the population the USSR
had at the end of the Cold War, is primarily
their problem not ours.
If the Germans, Brits,
French and Italians will not man up and pay
for their defense, let them pay tribute to
powerful neighbors the way other fat, rich
and feeble nations have historically done.
The Chinese are launching
an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a
rival to the U.S.-dominated World Bank.
Despite our pleas, Britain, France, Italy
and Germany are rushing to sign on as
charter members. South Korea and Australia
may follow.
Our allies are looking to
pick up contracts for the construction
projects for the new Chinese “silk road”
from Asia to Europe.
The AIIB will have $50
billion in startup cash, a pittance to a
China sitting on a hoard of $3 to $4
trillion in cash reserves, from decades of
huge trade surpluses run at the expense of
the United States.
Virtually all our Asian
allies do a larger share of their trade with
China than with us. They want to buy from
and sell to China, and stay in Beijing’s
good graces. But if menaced by China, they
want the United States obligated by treaty
to come and fight for them.
One understands why this
is in their interests. But why is it in
ours?
Nor is the Middle East any
different.
The Turks, Saudis and Gulf
Arabs want us to finish off ISIS, whom they
were lately aiding, but also Hezbollah,
Syria and Iran. They want us to fight them
all, but disagree on whom the Americans
should fight first.
Last week, John Kerry said
he might talk with Syria’s Bashar Assad, and
was denounced by the Saudis. The State
Department backed off. But who are the
Saudis to be telling us to whom we may talk
when coping with the Islamic State?
In the Eisenhower era,
Dulles spoke of an “agonizing reappraisal”
of our alliances, a cost-benefit analysis of
what America was getting out of them,
compared with what we were contributing to
them.
Is there a single U.S.
alliance today that would survive a
cost-benefit analysis like that?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the
author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The
Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World. To find
out more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at
www.creators.com.
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