One of the major failures of American and other Western governments is that they do not understand the thinking of their adversaries.
Apparently there was a picture in the offices of William Webster, the then-head of the CIA. It was a satellite image of an exploded Russian oil pipeline somewhere in Siberia. The explosion was so enormous that it was thought to be a nuclear test. It even registered on the Richter scale. What caused the explosion? Webster and his spook colleagues understood their USSR adversary.
The USSR had the unenviable task of trying to keep up with the United States militarily. The outlays were enormous and were one of the reasons that the Russians could not improve their economy: much of their money had to go to building submarines, planes, nuclear bombs and the like in order to keep up with the U.S. as a legitimate superpower. One way that the Russians then and the Chinese today could short-circuit both expenses and time was industrial espionage. If the Russians could steal a blueprint or get their hands on some advanced microchip, they could save a fortune and years of research and development. The CIA understood the Russians’ actions and had two paths to deal with it.
The first was to try to catch the Russians in the act and stop them. Just as the U.S. had set up front companies to buy all of the titanium from the Russians used in the production of A-12 and SR-71 aircrafts, the Russians had their fake firms that could buy necessary materials and components for their military needs. It would be a whack-a-mole kind of job to try to weed out their front firms, and the Russians could go back into business under a new name. The second approach, the one actually employed, was to intentionally sell sensitive material to the USSR but make sure that a certain percentage of the products was defective. That exploded gas pipeline resulted from the control system sending oil in both directions, thus leading to enormous pressures that led to a rupture of the steel and the ensuing explosion. The Russians found that they could not know that a given missile or torpedo would work if it had a defective chip. This program was considered one of the major drivers for the demise of the Soviet Union.
If our predecessors in the executive branch understood Russian thinking and used it against them, today’s leaders and bureaucrats are ignorant of Islamic goals in the Middle East and beyond. It was reported that very sensitive data compiled by the U.S. on Israel’s potential response to Iran’s last volley of ballistic missiles was intentionally leaked. Unless this was a false-flag operation, the release of Israeli preparations taken from satellites and analyses by the Pentagon’s best and brightest can only hurt Israel and make a future attack more challenging. If the material released via an Iranian Telegram account compromised Israeli planning, then the Israelis might be looking in the Knesset library for “Plan B.” The U.S. during the past 12 months of active warfare here in Israel has been like the husband who beats his wife while telling her how much he loves her. “Take the win” was Biden’s comment when he told Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu not to respond to the first Iranian attack (Bibi ignored him). Don’t go into Rafah (Bibi ignored him). Don’t attack Beirut (Bibi ignored him). And on and on. Yet while the U.S. tries in vain to restrain a finally unchained Israel, it also provides weapons at levels probably never seen since 1973. This week, over 20 C-17’s flew into Israeli air force bases to deliver the THAAD and Patriot missile defense systems. Biden is OK with defense but he hates when those pesky Israelis take it to their enemies. Going into Rafah cut off arms flows into Gaza and last week led to Yahyah Sinwar’s demise. A drone was downed this week flying in from Egypt with rifles and clips. That gives you an idea how critical the taking of the Philadelphi Corridor was in stopping new weapons delivery.
Why do Biden, Macron, Starmer and others always demand that Israel stand down or reduce its successful offensive activities? There could be some antisemitic reasons for their behavior, but the much bigger problem for their countries is that they do not understand the Islamic threat. When Muslims from Gaza to London to Hamburg to Dearborn talk about destroying the West and installing Sharia in place of the local law, they mean it. Nasrallah and Sinwar meant what they said about destroying Israel completely, and Israel had to get rid of them for good. Those in Iran and elsewhere have their eyes set on taking Europe and the U.S. and making them completely controlled Sharia states. Western leaders either believe that they are bluffing or that they do not have the means to realize their dreams and plans. That was not the approach of Webster and his colleagues. They never underestimated the potential of the USSR to both export its communist ideology throughout the world or destroy the U.S. through a surprise nuclear attack. If the Iranians get nuclear weapons, they will gladly use them against Israel—and Europe, the targets that are presently within the range of their known missiles. Don’t think that they will forget the U.S. They would save the U.S. for dessert. The West should be strongly encouraging Israel to permanently defang Iran rather than browbeat Bibi or leak sensitive information so as to make attacking Iran more difficult. They hate Bibi because they cannot control him, and they are angry that Israel is taking care of its needs and not listening to their kibitzing from the sidelines.
A decade ago, two professors asked twenty-somethings what is morality. They were appalled by the students’ lack of knowledge of morality or their ability to even define a moral question ("What socks should I wear?" was one answer). What came out of their research was that most interviewed said that each person has to define what is right or wrong in his or her eyes. As Westerners, we tend to think in a similar manner—live and let live. We don’t get involved in other countries’ affairs or how they conduct themselves. The problem today is that Islamic countries, terror groups, and their supporters brought into the West in large numbers have as part of their program a subjugation of the West. In the past they did not say it, but with the rise of the massive and continuous anti-Israel protests of the last year, they are much more comfortable in saying that they want to turn the U.S., England, Germany, etc. into a caliphate. So what they think right now will impact you: convert or die? Cover your head? No more alcohol?
Israel’s potential attack on Iran may be the driving force for weakening this Islamist ability to destroy the West. If the Biden White House was not filled with pro-Iranian players, it would be providing more than defensive support: it would actively encourage a decapitating blow that gets Iran out of the jihad game. As in Lebanon, the Iranian people are awaiting the moment when their oppressors are weak enough to be confronted and overthrown. The U.S. should be supporting this process and not do what Barack Obama did, namely stand by when Iranians protested en masse against fake election results. If the West understood its enemies, it would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel to weaken and wipe out Islamic threats to Israel and the West. The problem is that the leaders think that everybody thinks like they do. Boy are they wrong.