U.S. had emergency plan for attacking Israel in 1967

[Violet_Crumble]

For some time, the United States had had an emergency plan to attack Israel, a plan updated just prior to the 1967 war, aimed at preventing Israel from expanding westward, into Sinai, or eastward, into the West Bank.

In May 1967, one of the U.S. commands was charged with the task of removing the plan from the safe, refreshing it and preparing for an order to go into action.

This unknown aspect of the war was revealed in what was originally a top-secret study conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington. The full story is detailed in Haaretz' Independence Day Supplement.

In February 1968, an institute expert, L. Weinstein, wrote an article called "Critical Incident No. 14," about the U.S. involvement in the Middle East crisis of May-June 1967.Only 30 copies of his study were printed for distribution. Years later the material was declassified and can now be read by everyone, although details that are liable to give away sources' identities and operational ideas have remained censored.

Strike Command, the entity that was to have launched the attack on Israel, no longer exists. It was annulled in 1971 for domestic American reasons and superseded by Readiness Command, which was abolished in the 1980s in favor of Central Command (CENTCOM) which today includes forces in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Afghanistan; and the Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/851708.html

[MADem]

1. Like we don't have one now? I mean, come ON. There's a notebook for EVERY country!

Hell, we even have one that says "Blame CANADA!" on the cover (no, not really). But we do have a plan for Canada.

We have contingency plans for every nation and region in the world. They're updated periodically. They're used in developing wargames (using elements to create fictional countries to invade, and so forth). They're not really "war" plans, they're contingency plans. It's just-in-case stuff.

Pity no one bothered to read the one on Iraq before they went in there, and noticed the huge section on the sectarian divides in that country. Mighta saved 'em a little angst had they planned for that shit instead of fixating on the flowers and sweets that never materialized.

[msmcghee]

2. A plan aimed at preventing Israel from expanding . .

. . in some directions seems a bit more serious than a contingency plan in case something goes wrong - like Israel is taken over by enemies of the US. I don't know how true or extensive those plans were but this does add a bit of colorful speculation to the USS Liberty incident.

It also tarnishes the "US/Israel block against Islam" meme a bit.

[The Magistrate]

3. If You Recall, Ma'am

At that time, Trans-Jordan ranked as a very close ally of England. Not only did Nasser's Egypt rank as a Soviet client state, but the Israeli attack on it a decade earlier had met with great disapproval from the United States. Thus, an Israeli drive in either direction would have potentially unsettling effects from the point of view of current U.S. policy: a strike against Jordan pptentially involving a leading U.S. ally, and a strike against Egypt potentially involving the Soviet Union deeper in the Middle East, as well as defying earlier positions of the United States.

[msmcghee]

4. I don't know if you are just a very well-read history buff or . .

. . if you are professionally tuned in to these things - or both - but you certainly have a depth of understanding about geopolitical conflict that I find remarkable. I sometimes disagree with you on first blush but usually find my views aligning with yours as I learn more and look deeper.

That doesn't mean I'm ready to accept everything you say without question - but when I find my opinions differing from yours on some (non-ideological) topic I now look first to see where I might be wrong, not you.

We seem to have a persistent ideological rift in that I place great importance on the need to hold people (states) to basic moral standards in terms of their intentions. For example, I say that no person (or state) has the right to violently attack another and that all that follows from such an attack is the fault of the initiating party - a fault that they must be held to strict account if a more peaceful world is ever desired.

You seem to place greater import on the practical aspects of conflict - such as, weaker people (states) should not attack strong states else they'll get their asses handed to them. And I guess that also can be seen to produce a form of stability, if not justice. The problem with your view as I see it - is that the biggest asshole prevails regardless of the purity of their intentions. I see that as not only unjust - I fail to see how such a view can be seen to preserve peace as much as it preserves the ability of the more violently inclined to get whatever they want - and thereby reward violence over peace.

I understand that your view represents the level that human nature, left to it's own - in most cases, would naturally seek. And perhaps my idealism is naive. But I do a see value in enlisting the efforts of our better angels - which derive perhaps from our more recently evolved nature. It's understanding that duality and its intelligent application to human affairs that I find holds the greatest potential for improving the human condition. And I do see that as a worthy goal.

Despite these differences I appreciate the opportunity to occasionally air such deeper concerns.

[The Magistrate]

5. Thank You For The Kind Words, Ma'am

I very much enjoy our occassional exchanges, as they often require me to stretch a bit, and examine critically my own views to test their soundness yet again, since your responses will generally be well ahead of the general run.

You have put your finger to the basic difference of our outlooks, namely the ancient rift between idealist and pragmatist. For me, idealism would be a dangerous orientation, because my character has a ruthless bent, and ruthless pursuit of the ideal state has done tremendous harm down the ages. Idealism is often regarded as something soft and necessarily benign, but it can be quite hard and cutting in application. Acceptance that there must be a gap between the actual material state and the conceived spiritual ideal is a mark of all idealist philosophy, even if these often incorporate various gnostic exceptions to allow a few enlightened souls to enter into communion with the ideal. It seems better to me, and certainly is better for me, to accept that what is will fall well short of what ought to be, and to pay more heed to the question of what is possible than to the question of what would be most perfect. When contemplating action in the face of human arrangements and their manifold complexities, "First, do no harm" is a motto suited for far more than doctors of medicine.

It does seem to me that some of your formulations do not take sufficient heed of the actual complexities of real situations to make them useful tools of analysis. It is all very well to state, as a principle, that none should initiate violence, and responsibility for any consequences of violence are properly assigned to the initiator of the violence. But when applying this to actual cases of violence, it is not always so clear who initiated it, or that they had no good cause to initiate it. There are a variety of actions short of open violence that may place another in a situation where violence is the best course for them, or at least the most obvious course for them, and indeed, there is a large element of strategic thought that emphasizes the desireability of luring an opponent into striking the first blow. Where one is 'wrong-footed' by such a strategm, or more simply confronted by a situation in which the threat of impending violence is obvious but not yet actualized, it is not so easy to say simply that the one who struck the first blow is the one who violated the principle that one should not initiate violence. Where one party's actions, though not openly violent, are of such a character as to do great actual or potential harm to another, it may well be argued that there is no other recourse but resort to violence in an effort to force the other to desist, and again, in such a situation, who actually 'initiated' the violence?

"Purity of intention" is a thing it seems to me almost impossible to assess in any neutral manner: to regard any intention as either pure or impure one must necessarilly share certain views with one or both of the actors so described. Trajan's legionaries, busy slaughtering Dacians for their gold mines, would have considered the motive of aggrandizing Roman wealth and power the most pure and highest aim conceivable, and would have been absolutely impervious to arguement for the view that they were engaged in the most base and murderous greed and thieving imaginable. A policeman who concots evidence to convict a man he knows, but cannot otherwise prove, to be guilty of a heinous crime, is by his own lights acting from the purest of motives, even as he commits both a grave miscarriage of justice and a crime himself, and would argue that he is doing something of tremendous benefit to society, and of far more real value than any of his detractors have ever done.

[pelsar]

6. and i enjoy....

reading all of these posts that have a bit of depth to them and the relevant history....be it the application of the idealism or the application of the practical.....i find myself in between the two: having some idealism but restricted to its practical implementation.

[The Magistrate]

7. Thank You, Mr. Pelsar

Certainly, a balance needs to be struck, and maintained, between the two poles.

[Shaktimaan]

8. Great exchange.

The past fifty years or so has seen a valiant effort to bring about a codification of ethics on an international scale in the UN. The struggle for dominance between the two poles you are describing has been playing itself out publicly in its name for the whole duration. I feel like the UN is the greatest attempt yet seen to apply an objective idealism evenly to every state. And we have since seen it expertly manipulated at times for purposes of self-interest. Practicality always wins out in the end, for all our efforts we have only succeeded in forcing the players to dress differently and adopt a different language. If equality is the goal then wars get fought for equality nowadays and selfish, self-interested tyrants just recast themselves as statesmen fighting for liberty. It's just a minor inconvenience that was unnecessary 100 years ago. But when the morality that supposedly governs our decisions sees fit to award the likes of Kissenger and Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize, and states like Libya and Zimbabwe head up the UN's Human Rights Coalition it almost seems silly to think that it was ever anything besides bare-knuckled streetfighting the whole time.

Ideology is great, when you can afford it. But ethics are really just a luxury. Poor people don't buy premium gas. However they may sell it to you, y'know?