The liberal folks around me at work and law school then had been frustrated and puzzled at the lack of progress being made in Vietnam by the 448,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and the sudden and astonishing success of the Israel Defense Forces, symbolized by the eye-patched Gen. Moshe Dayan, was a refreshing contrast. The result so far of the 12-day war was, by many Democrats and many in the press, denounced as the overture to a massive ground war like the 2003 Iraq invasion and deconstructed by leaked memos suggesting the mullahs would have their nuclear weapons program up and running in a few weeks. Israel’s strikes on Iran, the historian Niall Ferguson posted, are “a decisive victory for the West.” Just as the Six-Day War largely removed the threat of Israel being overrun, the 12-day war largely removed the threat of Israel being annihilated by an Iranian nuclear attack.
Author: Michael Barone
Published at: 2025-07-06 22:00:00
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