Alan Stein
Please consider the
following submission for publication.
Please note that I am currently in Israel. If you wish to verify my
submission by phone, calling my home number in Connecticut won't work
but I can be reached in Israel by dialing 011-972-50-869-5035.
Thank you for considering this submission.
Thank God We're Not Spending Tens of Billions to Have American Soldiers
Defend Israel
Whoever wrote "Here we go again," published January 10, complains that
Israel hasn't "contributed one dime … for an American base in Israel."
That person clearly doesn't have a clue.
When we build American bases in other countries, those countries don't
pay us - we pay them and then, on top of that, spend countless billions
in endeavors that protect them far more than they protect America. In contrast, Israel defends itself and, in the process, protects the
shared interests with America while risking Israeli rather than American
lives. Its ports also provide a welcome respite for Americans serving
overseas in a generally - except for Israel - unfriendly area.
Israel's friendship has also benefitted America in immense and generally
unappreciated ways. For example, during the Cold War, Israel managed to
obtain a Soviet MIG, completely intact, and gave our American
intelligence community full access to it. The benefit of just that
friendly act, one of many, was enormous and had a value that could not
be measured in dollars.
It can, and has, been reasonably argued that Israel's surprise victory
over the Soviet-armed Arab armies in the 1967 war was the catalyst
setting off the chain of events that led to the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and America's victory in the Cold War.
On the other hand, that might be considered a mixed blessing, since many
also believe, with good reason, that the extreme Islamism that has been
rising in its place poses a far greater threat to the civilized world
than the Soviet Union ever did.
--
Alan Stein, Ph.D.
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org
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