Publicly, Sharon played the silent ally; he neither criticized nor supported the Iraq adventure. One reason for his relative silence was Washington's explicit request that Israel refrain from openly backing its invasion of an Arab country or in any way intervening, lest its blessing damn the United States in Arab eyes.
But sometime prior to March 2003, Sharon told Bush privately in no uncertain terms what he thought about the Iraq plan. Sharon's words - revealed here for the first time - constituted a friendly but pointed warning to Bush. Sharon acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was an "acute threat" to the Middle East and that he believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Yet according to one knowledgeable source, Sharon nevertheless advised Bush not to occupy Iraq. According to another source - Danny Ayalon, who was Israel's ambassador to the United States at the time of the Iraq invasion, and who sat in on the Bush-Sharon meetings - Sharon told Bush that Israel would not "push one way or another" regarding the Iraq scheme.
According to both sources, Sharon warned Bush that if he insisted on occupying Iraq, he should at least abandon his plan to implant democracy in this part of the world. "In terms of culture and tradition, the Arab world is not built for democratization," Ayalon recalls Sharon advising.
Be sure, Sharon added, not to go into Iraq without a viable exit strategy. And ready a counter-insurgency strategy if you expect to rule Iraq, which will eventually have to be partitioned into its component parts. Finally, Sharon told Bush, please remember that you will conquer, occupy and leave, but we have to remain in this part of the world. Israel, he reminded the American president, does not wish to see its vital interests hurt by regional radicalization and the spillover of violence beyond Iraq's borders.
Sharon's advice - reflecting a wealth of experience with Middle East issues that Bush lacked - was prescient. The American occupation of Iraq has ended up strengthening Iran, Israel's number-one enemy, and enfranchising militant Shi'ite Islamists. A large part of Iraq is slipping into the Iranian orbit. Iraq's western Anbar Province is increasingly dominated by militant jihadi Sunnis who could eventually threaten Syria and Jordan, the latter a strategic partner and geographic buffer for Israel.
All these developments harm vital Israeli interests.
Hopefully, revelations like this will shut up the anti-Semites who maintain that Joe Lieberman is a tool of Israel who puts Israel's interests before America's. That is clearly not the case.
Joe Lieberman isn't a Zionist stooge. Joe Lieberman is a neocon nutjob who advocates policies that directly threaten Israel's security.
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