If you take a pragmatic, Realpolitik viewpoint of Israel, its willingness to act against its enemies is admirable, and instructive.
The preemptive, “decapitation” and nuclear facility strikes against Iran, work in Israel’s favor. They weaken Iran’s military, and they diminish or remove some of the key command structure behind it. But it also sends an unequivocal message to the entire region: Israel is ready and willing to actively lead a fight against forces determined to systematically undermine it, based on the underlying, enlightened philosophy of its founding. America shares the same mandate.
Netanyahu has called this operation “Rising Lion,” and that is an important analogy: the lion is a fierce animal always ready to fight and defend, but does so when provoked. It is not a predator in its social organization. It prioritizes its own immediate pride, or family, and patrols and guards its society within its territory. It’s ability to act in lethal ways when necessary, and its constant state of readiness to fight and win, ensures its survival. It is also the ancient emblem of courage and heroism in Iranian culture before the mullah takeover.
This brings up the current state of the U.S.: Is it also going to be a rising lion, or a vulnerable lamb? Its enemies on the political left count on passivity or surrender. Suppose, however, that assumption is wrong?
In some ways, the U.S. has a problem as threatening as what Israel is facing, but it is more complicated because the fight is simultaneously internal and domestic, and external and foreign.
This includes its “sandwiching” between Mexico and Canada that represents a massive invasion boundary, and unreliable, possibly hostile territories with weak internal controls that allow them to be used as “staging” areas.
Then there is the “army” of millions of illegals that crossed our border over the last four years, with the Biden administration’s systematic illegal facilitation, including covert transport to select U.S. cities.
How many of these illegals are made up of “cells” that are trained, directed, and ready to attack and destabilize the U.S. when directed or encouraged? Indeed, has it already started?
As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu correctly stated, the threat is against Western civilization itself.
It is a threat against Judeo-Christian civilization, from radical fundamentalism. It is no mistake that this ideological fundamentalism is contributing to protests and violence in U.S. cities.
When Sen. Lindsey Graham announces that Rising Lion represents “Game On,” he is effectively sounding the charge against Western enemies, and this must include those against the United States.
The U.S. and Israel are united in joint principles and joint economic interdependence, like never before. If given the chance, America’s foes on the radical left would effectively “wipe America off the map,” like Iran seeks to do against Israel, and for the same reasons: a fight over civilizational principles, political dominance, and control of resources.
This makes the current White House deployment of the National Guard and Marines a national sovereign imperative to protect the United States. This imperative moreover, cannot be suppressed by a partisan, corrupt judiciary that blocks that national security mandate. That means the executive office must take a martial stance. Israel and Rising Lion is the model.
But more, the pragmatic Realpolitik of Israel is that without the United States, its independence cannot be guaranteed. For Israel to survive, America must survive: it cannot be defeated or undermined by radicalized domestic political networks working systematically to “transform” it. The Left’s fantasy of revolutionary transformation begins with internal destruction, and ends with external control.
Matthew G. Andersson is a former CEO and executive advisor in aerospace and defense. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and the University of Texas at Austin where he worked with economist and White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He has been featured in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Washington Post. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Legally Blind,” concerning law and policy.
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