Monday, June 05, 2006
The 25th anniversary of Osirak
Wednesday will be the 25th anniversary of Israel's raid on Osirak, Saddam Hussein's first nuclear reactor. The BBC has surprisingly adulatory coverage.
Osirak, like the raid at Entebbe in 1976, captured the imagination of Americans at a time when it seemed we couldn't do a damned thing right. Coming as it did just a year after our own disaster at Desert One, the Israelis revived our hope that it was possible to stand up to the world's dirtbags. Sure, there was no end of foot-stamping and outrage and tut-tutting, but -- in all honesty -- was there any non-French Westerner with a brain who wasn't relieved?
The interesting question is whether the Osirak raid was of any lasting strategic significance. Iraq, we later learned, was pursuing nuclear weapons along two tracks, and ultimately got closest via enrichment by gas centrifuges. Indeed, with Iran following the same two paths, expect that the true legacy of Osirak will be argued by both those who support air strikes against Iran, and those who oppose them.
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