I’ve been saying for a decade or so that the Clean Break policy is, just like pretty much everything out of the Israeli right and their American neoconservative allies’ brains, a really dumb policy for Israel.
Yeah, okay, so I can see how it sounds plausible for a minute: Hey, let’s get the Americans to overthrow all our neighboring governments and replace them with friendly Hashemite kings or, failing that, permanent, low-level chaos forever! It’ll be great! No one will ever threaten us again!
Makes sense. Even though Assad hasn’t done anything to Israel but fund and arm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon a little bit. He doesn’t say jack about the Golan Heights/Sheba Farms and all that or do a damn thing for the Palestinians either.
But I could see how it makes sense to a neocon – for a minute anyway. But then the thing of it is they tried it in Iraq, and now its war has spread to Syria and back again. Either way, Iran and al Qaeda have both gained in Iraq, and now one or the other or both will be gaining big from the war in Syria too.
So Israel’s strategy has been to replace stable secular nation states with their very worst enemies — and in the case of the mujahedeen, people with whom they can never deal.
Stupid.
Anyway, this guy in Foreign Affairs says that the Israeli government now knows how stupid it is and has come away with a saner point of view: leave Syria the hell alone for a while. ‘s worth a quick read.
Update: Heh. Oh, that’s right. “This guy” Halevy is the former head of Mossad
