'Largest US aircraft carrier’
Bollocks. The moment a US aircraft takes off from Israel is the moment it is precluded from flying anywhere else.
What an altogether stupid article. It is so ridiculously overwrought that any reasonable point is lost in the ocean of hyperbole. Take this paragraph for instance:-
US forces were overly-involved in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but Israel mobilized its military, forcing a Syrian evacuation of Jordan, thus preventing a collapse of pro-US regimes, a setback to US national security, havoc in the Arab oil-producing countries and a blow to the US standard of living.
Its worth noting that Israel never intervened in the Black September conflict at all, although a panicking King Hussein was asking for help from any quarter. Eventually, the Syrian tank columns were beaten back by the Jordanian Air Force without any external assistance. The Syrian Air Force made no attempt to intervene.
The reason for this was that the Army was still nominally under the control of the pro-Soviet hardliner Salah Jadid, whereas the Air Force was aligned with the pragmatic Hafez al-Assad, then minister for defence and an opponent of the attack on Jordan. The events of 1970 led to a pro-Assad coup that left the Assads in control of Syria, a situation which has not changed since.
Even if the decision by the Syrian Air Force not to intervene was based on considerations of Israel and even if, had the Jordanian Air Force not been able to operate with impunity, the state of Jordan would not have been able to beat back the Syrian tanks - it is still ridiculous to surmise that this would have led to a domino-theory style collapse of pro-US regimes in the region. How exactly were the Syrian tanks going to topple the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt?
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