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Like doomed characters in a Shakespearean tragedy, some of Israel's most vocal American supporters are risking bringing about the very danger to Israel that they ardently want to avoid. Blindly siding with those who advocate an offensive war, or abstaining from the debate about U.S. policy, is a terrible mistake.
As so often happens in discussions about the Middle East, it is important to make clear what the debate on American policy in the Persian Gulf is not about.
First, it is not about whether Saddam Hussein is a tyrant. He may not be the only monster who is a head of state, but he is indeed a monster, and his conduct in Kuwait has rightly been condemned by most of the world. The debate is about how to stop his aggression. The debate also is not about Adolf Hitler or the '30s or the Holocaust. Every Jew and every moral human being wants to avoid any despot's rise to power comparable to Hitler's. But we cannot go back in history and correct the Holocaust by creating a false analogy between Nazi Germany and modern Iraq. The international political context half a century ago was very different from today's. For one thing, there was never a credible effort to impose worldwide sanctions against Hitler. And...