Rethinking America, Israel, and Iraq.(Israel and The Middle East)

In "The End in Iraq" (Liberty, December 2006), Jon Harrison repeats the familiar shibboleth that the 2003 American invasion of Iraq was meant to "preserve and protect the state of Israel." Though we've heard this before and will probably hear it again, it isn't true and would have been foolish even if true, for a very simple reason. Hugely outnumbered by its Arab neighbors, Israel benefits from their disunity. What Israelis rightly fear is any superpower move that would overcome the Arab predisposition to internecine conflict, such as occupation by an outside force, which nearly