When the US suddenly ended the First Gulf War, my father remarked: “Bush has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” It’s a horrible thing to squander a victory. No sober person would want that.
Doomsayers had predicted a terrible fate for Bush’s American-led coalition, but their victory was swift and terrible, routing Saddam’s army who left behind them a trail of blasted and deserted equipment and an open road into Baghdad. Exactly at that point, Bush called off the fighting, figuring everything else would fall into place.
Ask the Marsh Arabs about that. With his new lease on life, Saddam drained their marshes, poisoned their wells, and ruined their entire way of life.
Ask the Kurds, whose villages were attacked with poison gas.
Victory in the battlefield must be followed up with victory in the peace. Compare the two military defeats of Germany in the world wars. After the first war, the Allies lost the will to enforce the Treaty of Versailles. America bailed out immediately; Britain and France helped Hitler rationalize his piece-by-piece dismantling of its terms. Millions paid the cost to before a worthy peace was established.
Israel has, too, has witnessed many military victories, but few at the peace table. Its smashing defeat of Egypt in 1956 did not end Egypt’s terror strikes. The territory Israel won in battle it had to exchange for a UN promise to keep open the Straits of Tiran to Israel, but that promise lasted only until Egypt reimposed a blockade there less than a decade later.
The lightning triumph of the Six Day War did reunite Jerusalem and allowed the survivors of the Jewish community of its Old City, killed or expelled by Jordan in 1948, to return home. But the Israel’s expectation that its offer to give back most of the land it had won in return for peace was met with swift and total rejection at the Khartoum conference, in which the Arab League vowed the three no’s: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel.
And so it continued — victories in the field never followed by a good peace. Concessions followed only by renewed demands and terror. Negotiations in which Israel accepted nearly every claim of the Palestinian Arabs — but were still rejected in order to continue the struggle to deny by force the right of Israel and its people to exist.
There is the pallid success of the Camp David pact; at least there has been no fighting between Egypt and Israel in decades. But there is no warmth and little interchange. Egypt secretly allowed massive transfers of armaments to Hamas, helping them maintain a continuous rocket bombardment of Israel for over two decades and to eventually field the massacre and rape of October 7.
The one real success is the Abraham Accords, which are a result neither of concessions nor force but of seeing a abundant mutual benefit in normalized relations. These accords so frightened the absolutist eliminationists in Teheran and its proxies that they cranked up their war machine in order to pre-empt the expansion of peace by what they hoped would be a wave of jihadist fervor.
Though the mullahs lit a fire on American campuses and in a Europe engaging in civilizational suicide, they failed miserably to restore lockstep rejection of Israel throughout the Arab world. In an astounding reversal, there are many in that world who openly embrace peaceful engagement with Israel and who advocate for it in the media, in politics, and in the seats of power, the UAE being the best example.
At the present moment, the MOU with Iran looks like a blow to the momentum for real peace and a concession allowing Iran’s current leaders to continue in their old ways. This is best exemplified in their continuing to execute protesters, including, this last Tuesday, Javad Zamani and Abolfazl Saedi, both arrested in the January protests.
There is much to suggest that prima facie, the US – Iran MOU falls into the same category as earlier failed attempts at peace. What is touted as the understanding’s key achievement, the re-opening of the straits out of the Gulf, looks very much like Israel’s return of the Straits of Tiran for a mere promise, a promise quickly reneged. If it is true that the MOU forbids Iran to charge a fee for only 60 days, that’s a quick expiration date.
May the mullahs not simply reassert control over the straits the moment they think there will be no more political will to resist? Have we not given in to Tehran’s claim that these international waters are fall under their sovereignty? If that was conceded, no doubt they think Trump is on his heels. The Teheran regime’s spoke-folks seem to believe that the political winds are against Trump and think that Trump has as much as admitted that lack of support for the war is a large reason for his peace initiative. They see him conceding defeat.
Democrats smell blood in the water and with good reason. But having befouled themselves with an ever-increasing acceptance of ever more violent hatred of Jews, their moral case is worse than that of the British Left calling for the removal of Chamberlain when they had only a moment before been fighting violently against British re-armament. There is a moral vacuum in our politics now as, for the moment, the ones who still chant “Death to Israel, Death to America” as they have done for 47 years, seem to have come out on top. As more than one observer has noted, Iran wins back in negotiations what they lose in war. Some fear that this is no exception.
What is the reality here? Is this Trump spectacularly failing, outwitted by the murderous Hitler wannabes in Teheran? Or is this a spectacular fall in the making for the people who have never held to any agreement they have made, being allowed to grease their slide into oblivion?
When Trump’s great peace plan was announced during his first term, I was ready to jump ship. One more president thinking he knew the Middle East well enough to force Israel into a bad deal and become acclaimed as the Great Peacemaker.
But it didn’t go the way of the bad deals pushed by Eisenhower, Carter, and Clinton. The intransigence of the PA resulted in a measure-for-measure response – Trump rejected their veto and succeeded in fast-tracking the breakthrough treaties of the Abraham Accords.
Does anyone really think that a regime addicted to bad faith has gone cold turkey? The executions of the protesters testify that its character is unchanged.
Does anyone believe that Iran’s leaders are capable of upholding what it has agreed to in the MOU for six months?
And if that happens, does past behavior give evidence that Trump will wind up playing chicken?
Trump has consistently been able to get his enemies to overplay their hand. When they did, he flipped the board on them. And if his enemies should change their character and play a sober game, that would be even better – reserve a place in the Abraham Accords!
Let us see. High stakes and trying times reveal the character of the players. Trump can prove himself a warrior statesman of the highest caliber. We would all benefit if he did, so I am not indifferent. To value defeat of Trump over all else proves something about one’s character as well. Character, in the end, is important. Character is proven continuously, in real time in the real world.
We are given the freedom to prove ourselves. May we all pass the test.
