Seven months ago, Israel and the U.S. postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile-interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.The claim is that there are "budget" issues, but it's a brushback pitch directed at Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who both seek to derive personal political gain from an attack.
“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official says.
The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot antimissile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.
I approve, particularly in the case of Netanyahu, who, if reports are accurate, is still driven by the need for approval from his nonagenarian revisionist father, and that's a level of crazy that ill serves both the security needs of Israel and the United States.
Amoral and crazy is a toxic mix, and Netanyahu has it in spades.
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