27 September 2012

Another lesson from the Yom Kippur war?

Every year the painful issue of the political and (as a result) military blunders by Israeli leaders in the days before the war is raised anew. This year, due to release of another batch of hitherto secret documents, the discussion of these failures is heating up again.

Individuals rarely learn from other individuals' mistakes and only a bit more from their own. History show pretty well that nations don't learn anything from any mistakes, and it will be of immense benefit to us if we succeed at least to remember the chief lesson of that war: be prepared.

There is another, secondary* lesson, though. I was reminded of it, hearing on the radio today somebody reciting a headline from 1973 Maariv daily:

Preemptive attack will create a crisis in our relationship with USA

That's all.

(*) Is it really secondary? You tell me.

4 comments:

KatieNorcross said...

A preemptive attack will force Obama's hand. Either he will support Israel fully or risk the Jewish vote entirely.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Are you sure that he values the Jewish vote all that much? After all, he usually has about 70% of it in his pocket no matter what he does...

Dick Stanley said...

I've yet to meet an American Jew who doesn't care about Israel and it's fate. I don't know any anti-Israel lefties, of course, but I doubt there are that many of them. It just seems so because they're so vocal.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I doubt anything is going to happen before the election.