".. Indignant Arabs .."

"...The most shocking revelation (but not a revelation, really, as many of us had warned about this for decades), is that Arab governments that have spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on buying American and other foreign arms still find themselves totally helpless, vulnerable and fearful in the face of what they see as growing Iranian power and influence in the region. The assorted Arab leaders who are quoted as asking the United States to hurry up and do something about Iran’s growing nuclear technology capabilities reveal an apparent inability to take care of their own countries and citizens.

Those who privately called on, or expected, Israel or the United States, or both, to do their dirty work for them did so because of their inability to make decisions and pursue policies to transform their countries into more viable states that could undertake the tasks of statecraft – whether diplomacy or war – with some credibility.

It is bad enough that a host of Arab countries has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “security” systems that in the end saw them asking others to make pre-emptive attacks against a neighboring Iranian government and country that should have been a partner, friend and even ally. It is worse that the Arab leaders who looked to the US and Israel to protect them by attacking Iran asked for this course of action quietly, surreptitiously, without standing up for their positions in public. But it is far, far worse that all of this should have taken place in a context in which the Arab leaders in question seem to have had zero conclusive proof – zero – that Iran was planning to produce nuclear weapons. Indeed, their policies, instead, may prompt Iran to consider this option.

A collective Arab policy of covert appeals for America and Israel to carry out aggression against a (Muslim) neighbor without evidence of that neighbor’s culpability, while affirming that one’s own immense, nearly immeasurable, national wealth that had been spent for security was not actually able to provide that security, is a sad testament to poor quality leadership in national security, to say the least. ...

Wasted billions, perpetual vulnerability, a chronic absence of credibility, duplicitous policy pronouncements, and, in the end, the lack of success to show for all of this; all this adds a more serious and priceless, if intangible, casualty to the list: national dignity......."