The long war that Iran's rulers and their proxies have been waging against Israel took an unexpected turn last week. Thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon had ditched their cellphones – afraid Israelis were tapping them – for low-tech pagers.
But some time earlier, those beepers had been covertly transformed into miniature bombs that exploded suddenly and simultaneously, killing or incapacitating those Hezbollah operatives.
Few civilians – even those standing near the terrorists – were harmed. Many just looked on in astonishment.
Precision Israeli air strikes followed, eliminating more than a dozen top Hezbollah leaders.
Two had been on America's "most wanted" list with multimillion-dollar bounties on their heads for truck bombings that killed more than 300 diplomats and military personnel serving on a peace mission in Beirut in 1983.
Nevertheless, it's become reflexive: Whatever actions Israelis take to deter and perhaps defeat their enemies – who declare without equivocation that Jewish genocide is their war aim – are denounced as unfair and illegal by UN officials, bogus human rights activists, and other members of the chattering classes who do not wish Israelis well.
Let me take two paragraphs to remind you how the current battle began.
Last Oct. 8 – the day after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and committed the most horrific atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust –Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, began firing thousands of missiles at northern Israel. Among the Israelis killed over the months since: 12 children playing soccer.
More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to abandon their homes near the border and live as refuges in their own country.
The Biden administration's heavy-handed guidance to Israel: Don't escalate against Hezbollah, Tehran's foreign legion. Make a deal with Hamas, Tehran's proxy.
Then, last Friday, unnamed Washington officials leaked a new policy that will please Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: President Biden now plans to withdraw the tiny contingent of American forces – just 2,500 troops – from Iraq by 2026.
"This is the clinical definition of insanity!" remarked my FDD colleague, retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery. He was alluding to the quote (often misattributed to Einstein) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Among the past repetitions he has in mind: In 2011, President Obama withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq, disregarding advisors who urged him to leave in place at least a residual force to suppress terrorists – both those affiliated with al-Qaeda and those armed and instructed by Mr. Khamenei
Mr. Obama's bugout led to the rise of the Islamic State, aka ISIS. Also empowered were the Tehran-backed Shia militias responsible for killing hundreds of Americans soldiers.
In 2014, President Obama had little choice but to send American troops back to Iraq where they engaged in a fierce conflict with ISIS which, by then, was ruling 12 million people in an area the size of Britain.
Five years later, during the Trump administration, ISIS was finally evicted from the territories it had conquered.
A small contingent of elite U.S. troops supporting Kurdish, Arab, and Syrian Christian partners have remained in Iraq, as well as in Syria, to continue suppressing ISIS, and help contain Mr. Khamenei's forces.
Having not learned from that experience, President Biden, just prior to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, withdrew U.S. troops (at that point also only about 2,500) from Afghanistan where they had been training, assisting, and advising the Afghan security forces preventing the Taliban from seizing Kabul and other cities.
During the badly planned and executed retreat, 13 American troops and 170 Afghans were killed by a bomber from the local ISIS franchise.
Yes, President Biden had inherited from President Trump an ill-advised deal with the Taliban. But the Taliban had been violating its commitments, so the deal should have been scrapped.
The mistake President Biden is now in the process of making is akin to a mistake President Trump almost made.
In December 2018, Mr. Trump announced his intention to withdraw the 2,000 mostly elite U.S. troops then in Syria, who were effectively working with local allies to contain 30,000 ISIS terrorists, keep Syrian oil reserves out of Iranian hands, and prevent Mr. Khamenei from establishing a land bridge to Lebanon and on to the Mediterranean Sea.
In response, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis submitted a letter of resignation. In the end, President Trump decided not to abandon America's friends and bolster America's enemies.
If President Biden does give Iraq – a country that American blood and treasure liberated from Saddam Hussein – to Mr. Khamenei, will that thaw relations between Washington and Tehran?
Consider that Tehran-backed Shia militias have attacked American forces in the Middle East more than 170 times over the past 11 months. Three U.S. soldiers have been killed, and many more injured. American reprisals have been few and far between.
Pushing the U.S. out of the Middle East would be a great victory for Mr. Khamenei.
His Arab neighbors would be left more vulnerable. As for Israel, Mr. Khamenei won't countenance a "two-state solution." He will continue to pursue what the Nazis called a "final solution."
His allies in Moscow and Beijing know that if Americans can be made to pivot away from the Middle East, they also can be chased out of Europe and Asia.
Israelis are not retreating. They are defending their right to exist with resilience, resolve, and courage. They are on the front lines in a war against the West. They are latter-day Davids using high-tech slingshots to battle a medieval Goliath.
I think most Americans – by no means all– understand that fact and are becoming increasingly aware of what it would mean were an axis of Iranian jihadis, Russian imperialists, and Chinese Communists to defeat and destroy Israel and other free nations.