The Ceasefire is Not Good News
Today in Israel, there’s a lightness in the air. Though the joy is dampened by the mourning for seven fallen soldiers, the whole country is breathing a sigh of relief.
The war with Iran is over, at least for now.
No more sirens. No more alerts.
We can all look forward to a much-needed sleep. No more cawing of our phones telling us that missiles are hovering above our heads waiting to destroy us.
That is a good e. These twelve days have been among the most challenging our country has ever faced. Our pilots have performed thank G-d with spectacular precision and G-d was on our side.
We’ve seen miracles, not the least of which was President Trump’s bombing of the Fordow nuclear power plant. Our leaders tell us that we are saved from the scourge of a nuclear Iran at least for the next few years.
So why not rejoice? Not because I’m a warmonger.
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, you know that I don’t like war at all.
Still, I believe that this ceasefire will be remembered alongside Neville Chamberlain’s infamous declaration of “peace in our time” as one of history’s great mistakes.
Trump’s reasons for stepping out are clear. Among his base, there is no popular support for foreign entanglement, even against the terrorist Mullahs of the IRGC. Americans are worried about their pocketbooks, their vacations, their IRAs–not about the future of freedom and democracy.
As YouTuber and podcaster Vivian Tu puts it, war means that “everything gets more expensive,” https://youtube.com/shorts/OSlG1ZPAb_w?si=C6p2Sq-CQ2e7OKmMand
Nobody wants that.
I don’t like to see prices rise either. I want everyone to be able to take all the vacations they want and to prosper in retirement, but…
Here’s where it gets sticky.
The Iranians and their Islamo-fascist buddies are not the live-and-let-live kind of people. Israel has been the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The terrorism we’ve just experienced–yes, blowing up residential housing of non-combatants is terrorism and a war crime– will be exported to the US if the US doesn’t fight back.
Americans, including American policymakers, tend to believe that everyone else is as rational as they consider themselves to be. Americans take Anne Frank’s oft-quoted statement that all people are basically good as gospel truth. As Dara Horn astutely points out in her excellent book “People Love Dead Jews,” Frank wrote those words before she was deported to Auschwitz.
The Iranian people may be wonderful and peace-loving–though one wonders why they have not risen up against this regime, which we are told is crumbling. The real bad guy is the evil Ali Khamenei, who was, probably at the request of his Qatari buddies, not assassinated.
As the Qatari gift of a new Air Force One to the President suggests, Donald Trump and his team have been bought, as have many other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Qatari money has muddled their good judgment. To win a war, your leaders must be able to rally their nation behind them as Churchill did during the Second World War.
In case you might be confused, Trump isn’t Churchill.
By nature, Americans can’t see beyond their borders or their personal comfort. They don’t realize that the same enemies who just fought us will come for them too. It’s that shortsightedness that led Trump to call off the war even as the US and Israel were winning spectacularly.
Khamenei, the IRGC, and its Islamo-fascist allies read this as a sign that America is too weak to fight them. Their war crimes have earned them time to recoup their losses -already, their allies are promising to replace their nukes and prepare for the next round, which is sadly sure to come.
Pray hard.
