What is my opinion of Shlomo Ben-Ami? That he is an ultra dove, which is beyond dispute (he was FM under Barak) and that hard experience has already proved his positions wrong. For example, he has admitted that he was taken completely by surprise when he & Barak made far, far reaching concessions in the Camp David talks, and received only more demands from Arafat instead of any corresponding concessions from the Palestinian side. He said afterwards in an interview in HaAretz that it slowly dawned on him that any end-state in which Israel was left standing was not acceptable to Arafat. Needless to say, this was completely opposite to the assumptions under which he had been working. So I think his assumptions regarding Iran (whenever they date from, you didn't say) are as wrong-headed as his assumptions regarding Arafat.
Noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld even told Newsmax last week that he "cannot think of even one case since 1980 and the Iranian Islamic Revolution that this country has behaved irrationally".
Martin van Crevald must think it's rational to kill 10s of thousands of your OWN youth by clearing minefields with human waves of young boys with plastic keys to Paradise around their necks. It must also be rational to fund radical Shiite Islamist militias such as Hizbullah, and to risk war with Saudi Arabia by seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca. It must also be rational to deliberately seek 'rogue nation' international status and war with the US by siezing the US embassy, blowing up the Marine baracks in Beiurt, etc. Wow, quite a stretch for rationality, that.
We know after the fact that the US did not respond with fullscale war but that was quite the bet for Iran to take, hm? Especially the Marine Barracks, since they didn't have the safety of the wimp Carter still in office. Worst mistake Reagan ever made, not responding to that.
There are rational components to such actions, but ignoring the religious fervor behind them leaves you kind of clueless to motivation and intent. It's like writing a history of the Crusades that leaves Christianity out of the mix. Rationality alone fails to explain the whole purpose of the venture. Similarly if you leave the 'Islamic' out of the Islamic Revolution. |
