The Rising Lion – Winners and Losers

Speaking of his military deployment in Afghanistan, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Dr. Watson character said, “The campaign brought honors and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster.”

The current belligerencies between Iran and Israel will almost surely change the political and social landscapes of the world we have come to know. Many will emerge with honors and promotion, and for many it will have nothing but misfortune and disaster.

Israel is already showing signs of emerging a winner (albeit at a very high cost), its decision to strike when it did having been validated. Whether that decision was part of a scripted coordination between Netanyahu and Trump, a matter of Netanyahu standing up on his hind legs after having an epiphany, or some combination of the two is not clear and might never be known with certainty by outsiders. The losers are likely to include not only Iran, but also China as well. Qatar could go either way, whether as a big-time winner or a big-time loser.

My previous blog post on these pages deals with former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. I knew Dr. Koop personally as his seven-year-old patient, and my family had further contacts with him when my brother was under his care. This posting discusses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, neither of whom I have ever met, nor have I any intentions of going out of my way for the sole purpose of meeting. At this juncture in time, Trump and Netanyahu are clearly postured as winners, albeit winners who carry significant liabilities.

While Trump and Netanyahu, like Dr. Koop, have tremendously huge egos and dictatorial tendencies, Dr. Koop’s grounding in his personal values and beliefs gave him a respectability, in the eyes friend and foe alike, such that neither Trump nor Netanyahu could elicit. Donald Trump’s remaining time in office is limited to less than four years by the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, while Bibi, whose total tenure as Prime Minister exceeds 18 years, has no such term limits to constrain him.

[In such regard, Israel’s healthcare system has addressed its problem of a physician brain drain by putting its older physicians out to pasture and offering the positions thus vacated to newly-trained doctors with an eye towards discouraging the doctors it trains from going overseas. It is difficult to see how jettisoning the tried and seasoned physicians and replacing them with inexperienced ones can be salutary to the quality of Israel’s healthcare. The irony of Netanyahu’s persistence in the Prime Minister’s residence while long-serving physicians who have seen all types of cases are being summarily cut loose is not lost upon the forcibly-retired physicians (including my wife).]

To be sure, as I have previously noted in these pages, Bibi has done much to facilitate Israel’s current posture of military and economic strength. That said, it is time for Bibi to step aside for a new generation of leaders to carry on what he has set up.

I do not now purpose to deeply analyze or particularize the issues in the personalities of Trump or Netanyahu; it suffices to say that emotional issues override logic on the part of many of their respective proponents and opponents to extents that would never be reached with regard to Dr. Koop.

Another winner here is Ambassador Mike Huckabee. I have yet to meet him personally, but would welcome the opportunity to do so; he addresses his personal values and beliefs in a manner more like that of Dr. Koop than those of Bibi or Donald Trump. I say this fully aware of the issues the Jewish people have with the evangelical Christianity Huckabee professes; indeed, this was the root of Huckabee’s political downfall as Governor of Arkansas, when he was wont to grant parole to any convict who played the Jesus card. But before 13 June 2025, Huck’s pronouncements as Ambassador were perceived as questionable and undermined by some sort of disconnect between himself and Trump. Israel’s strike upon Iran showed that Trump, Netanyahu, and Huckabee were all running a coordinated play from Trump’s playbook, and boosted Huckabee’s credibility and effectiveness in the process.

There are many Israel supporters, here and in the USA, who now insist that they had kept their faith in Donald Trump all along, and their doing so has been confirmed appropriate by the ongoing events. My chary attitude towards Donald Trump has already been posted on these pages, so I make no such contentions. What I will go so far to say is that my trepidations regarding Donald Trump’s stand towards Israel are now markedly decreased.