Israel Matzav: The morning after

The morning after

I never did see The Poseidon Adventure, but I remember the theme song quite well - it came out while I was smack in the middle of high school... learning Geometry (which I begged off teaching my 10th grade daughter today, telling her that all I remembered from 38 years ago was that we got the first teacher fired and that the second teacher was a guy named Steve who used to take us out to shoot hoops when he wasn't in the mood to teach).

But let's go to the videotape.



That's all by way of introduction to a very serious question posed by Gabriel Schonfeld: What will the US say the day after an Iranian nuclear test?

One question that should be asked is what we will say the day after Iran tests its first nuclear device. Back in 1935, the great historian John W. Wheeler-Bennett wrote a brilliant book called The Pipe Dream of Peace: The Story of the Collapse of Disarmament. It was a history of the General Disarmament Conference that opened in 1932 and dragged on ineffectually for more than two years even as shattering events unfolded all around. In the preface to this book, Wheeler-Bennett reflected on the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. His words are pertinent to the picture unfolding before our eyes:

The role of Cassandra carries little satisfaction for those who play it, and now that the worst has happened and the blackest forebodings are justified, there is no time for repining. The milk has been spilt. It was worth while to try every expedient up the last moment, but it is fatal to be content now to say, "We told you so."

Wheeler-Bennett was profoundly right and profoundly wrong at once. His blackest forebodings were justified. But the worst had certainly not yet happened. That was to come in forms unimaginable.

If the Islamic fanatics running Iran get the bomb, our blackest foreboding will also be justified. But the worst will certainly not yet have happened. The imagination recoils at what might follow.

Indeed, it does. That's why I believe that Israel must find the courage to act against Iran. Before it's too late.
Israel Matzav: The morning after