Lenny Ben David says that Prime Minister Netanyahu should have reminded President Obama of how poorly the US 'had our back' during the 1991 Gulf War.According to Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister at the time, his American counterparts “expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If it turned out that they were not going to be able to do it within 48 hours, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate.”Unlike the politicians and pundits cited by Ben David, I think that Netanyahu's Holocaust analogy was apt.
Not a single Scud missile or launcher was knocked out by American planes, not just in the first 48 hours, but during the whole war. Yet President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker insisted that Israel continue its restraint and not “spoil” their coalition. They assured Israel that the most modern Patriot anti-aircraft missiles would be dispatched to Israel and would be able to shoot down the Scuds. Post-war analysis showed that not a single Scud was intercepted by the Patriots.
Meanwhile, the commander of the American coalition, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, objected to the number of American planes hunting Scuds in western Iraq, wanting to redirect U.S. aircraft to the Kuwait front.
At the height of the war Arens was sent to Washington to meet with President Bush. In a 21-year-old news account that could actually describe Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington last week, The New York Timeswrote, “An administration official said Arens seemed to be ‘laying the groundwork if the Israelis decide to retaliate.’ The administration official said that in the talks with Bush, Arens ‘didn’t say absolutely that the Israelis were going to retaliate. But he didn’t say they were not, either. He made a very emotional presentation, though.”
But there are also some comparisons that can or cannot be made between Gulf War I and the Iranian threat. First, Gulf War I was characterized by a misplaced emphasis on the need for a multilateral coalition. I cannot recall any US President before George H.W. Bush who insisted on a UN mandate to do what needed to be done.
Second, while I disagreed at the time with the Israeli decision to stand down (we were still living in the US then - we made aliya later that year), once the first SCUD's did not have chemical content, they were reduced from a real threat to a nuisance, and standing down was not unreasonable. I doubt that the old war horses - Shamir and Arens - would have sat still if those had been chemical missiles.
Third, the fact that the US didn't do what it said it would do on Israel's behalf in Gulf War I ought to be waved in Obama's face. There is no basis in Obama's behavior on which to trust the US again to do our dirty work and no reason for us to entrust our security to the US. Obama certainly has no warmer feelings for Israel than Bush I had. Let's face it: It was only by God's grace that there was not much more serious damage in Israel. And the Iranian threat is much stronger.
Finally, for the Israelis, what good did standing down do us in 1991? Immediately after that war, the Bush administration dragged Shamir to Madrid, cut off his loan guarantees, and did more than any Republican President not named Eisenhower to destroy Israel's special relationship with the US. I cannot tell you how happy I was when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Does anyone really believe Obama will be any better?
