To Bomb or Not to Bomb......

The Atlantic Monthly September 2010 issue has a lead article by Jeffrey Goldberg entitled "Israel is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran: How, Why - and What It Means." This article has sparked a vigorous debate in Washington and in the blogosphere. A good summary of recent comments and reactions can be found here.

I am impressed at the confidence with which some writers dismiss the Israeli worry about Iran's nuclear capability. We are all, of course, biased by our own experiences, and those who dismiss Israel's worries as overblown are clearly not people who ever lived through a holocaust, or under the constant threat of Hamas rockets and Hezbollah suicide bombers. I'm sure there were those in the late 1930's who thought worries about Hitler's ambitions were overblown.

I suspect that American writers and politicians, sitting safely in their comfortable offices here in America, are poorly equipped to understand either an Israeli fear of another holocaust or yet another major assault by their Arab neighbors, or the apocalyptic visions of the mullahs and their thugs in power in Tehran. We might not view a nuclear Iran as a serious threat, but their nearby neighbors certainly will so long as Iran is led by religious fanatics.