National Review have been celebrating William F. Buckley’s centenary birthday with republications of his old articles.
WFB is a personal hero. A towering, witty and urbane figure of Conservatism and independence of thought. I am currently reading his “God and Man at Yale”.
In the below article he comments on the Israel’s six-day war and US-Israeli relations, and, I must admit, found myself smiling and chuckling:
I also forgot that the Soviet Union had backed the Arab nationalisms against Israel during the 60s onwards.
Perhaps we should sign that mutual defense pact with Israel — if only for our own self-protection. Let’s face it, that was a blood-stirring show she put on against the Egyptian swaggerer with all his Communist tanks and airplanes, and all his jingoistic rodomontade. One can hardly imagine a better military machine to help us out of a jam than Israel’s. There is courage, tenacity, single-mindedness, skill — all of them put to essentially non-imperialist uses, if you grant the legitimacy of the Balfour Declaration which at this stage you might as well do.
Nasser declared that the Mideast was too small an area for the Arabs and for the Israelis, to which the Israelis’ only response — always assuming they were not prepared neatly to dismantle their nation and march into the sea — was that under the circumstances, the Arabs would have to move over. (Lol) After 36 hours of an Israeli blitzkrieg, the Arab braves have stopped war-dancing long enough to discover that they are surrounded by Israelis, and that their great brothers in the Soviet Union were off at the United Nations jawing about cease-fires, and never mind the old borders, the new ones would be perfectly satisfactory. (Another lol)
Not only might Israel be of great military help to the United States in any future emergency: there is absolutely no limit to the psychological help she can be. Who else but Israel could have turned our doviest doves into tiger sharks? Who but Israel could, for instance, have persuaded Dwight Macdonald, that eminent pacifist, who walks out of the room rather than listen to Hubert Humphrey because Hubert Humphrey is committed to the proposition that the United States has to help small nations around the world when threatened by aggression: who else but Israel could have transformed Macdonald into the very image of Long John Silver, patch over his eye, dagger between his teeth, napalm grenades in his rucksack, boarding the enemy’s ship shouting lustfully Murder! Loot! Rapine! Come one, come all!
A single advertisement sponsored by the “Americans for Democracy in the Middle East,” whose text I myself heartily endorse, is signed by Theodore Draper, critic of LBJ; Michael Harrington, a pacifist of sorts; Robert Heilbroner, the economist and critic of LBJ; Irving Howe, the critic and editor of “Dissent,” which is to the American left what the John Birch Society’s “American Opinion” is to the American Right; H. Stuart Hughes, who loveth man so much that he would have had the U. S. disarm unilaterally years ago — leaving us, Sir Stuart, with what means of implementing the action you call for now in Israel?; Norman Podhoretz of “Commentary,” Joe Rauh of the ADA, and so forth and so on.
Any nation with the strength to compel such men as these to start talking in terms of international obligations, the demands of honor, the necessity for the use of force thousands of miles from home, is a priceless national asset, quite apart from the sentimental value of the country. Indeed, one should consider giving to Israel a few square miles of territory in South Vietnam, in West Berlin, in the Straits of Formosa, and at other likely pressure points where East and West are likely to meet on unfriendly terms.
