According to Foreign Policy magazine, Central Command Proconsul General Petreus in January dispatched a team to brief JCS Chairman about the lack of progress in “on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and Petreus’s “growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue.”
The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”
The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.”
[T]he JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message [to the head of the Israeli military, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi] on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians “in a larger, regional, context” — as having a direct impact on America’s status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.
I thought claiming that claiming the United States was attacked, or put at risk, because of support for Israel and the actions of the Israeli government was at best unpatriotic and at worst treasonous. And yet, if the report is to be believed, the senior officer in charge of CENTCOM, the military command responsible for the Middle East (but NOT Israel or the occupied territories, which have been assigned to EUCOM, the European Command) is fingering that very state for America’s diminished political and military prestige in the region. Apparently, Vice President Joe Biden later told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that “Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.”
I do not know if this presages the start of a larger conflict between the U.S. and Israel or not. If it does, it will be very interesting to see what happens to the Republican Party, which loves the Pentagon and the State of Israel in equal measure. What if Republicans are forced to choose?
2:59 pm on March 15, 2010