Four decades ago, after returning from a tour as an intelligence officer in Southeast Asia, I reported to the Intelligence Early Warning Center (INEW) at Headquarters, Strategic Air Command (SAC). Warning centers existed at headquarters throughout the U.S. military and at the Intelligence and Research Branch in the State Department, at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon and the White House. Secure Teletype machines connected SAC INEW to the warning centers at CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and the NMCC. INEW also communicated via secure telephone with every other intelligence warning center as well as the NMCC and White House. The word “FLASH” put watch officers in instant contact with the right party.

An American ambassador under attack at a U.S. consulate in a Muslim country would have generated a “CRITIC message” from the appropriate embassy. The reception of a CRITIC in INEW, at whatever hour, required the senior watch officer contact the SAC Director of Intelligence who then decided how to handle it. Had Benghazi occurred on September 11, 1972, 40 years ago, warning centers in Washington and at SAC Headquarters would have gotten the message in mid-afternoon on a weekday when all hands were on deck to make decisions. Appropriate area specialists would have been contacted within seconds of the CRITIC’s arrival. In the case of Benghazi, the Department of State was critically affected.

Had the Benghazi attack occurred on a date as auspicious as 9/11, every U.S. intelligence warning center would have been on a heightened state of alert. We were especially attentive to dates marking events like the Tet Offensive of 1968, birthdays of leaders like Mao Tse Tung, the start of the Korean War, etc. We knew our enemies: the communist countries and terrorists ranging from the Baader Meinhoff Group in Germany to the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the Middle East. Forces appropriate to cover contingencies would have been on alert, ready to respond. Intelligence officers also studied mistakes from Pearl Harbor in 1941, TET-68, and the capture of the USS Pueblo a few weeks later.

According to recent Congressional testimony, the State Department knew about the September 2012 Benghazi attack around 3:00 p.m Washington time. All hands were on deck in Washington, DC, including area specialists at every intelligence agency. Supposedly, the national security advisor was at his desk in the White House. News that terrorists were attacking a U.S. consulate with the ambassador on the premises should have gone directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A secure phone call to the White House, possibly vetted through the national security advisor, should have followed. If it didn’t, someone was inexcusably inept.

Evidently, the extent of the Air Force’s global reach must have shrunk considerably in the past few years. Although the Benghazi attack started after duty-hours at Aviano, it should have taken less than an hour to prep F-16s for combat. Any weaponeer would have known to load highly accurate munitions sufficient to take out small targets without risking collateral damage. Our pilots are experienced at supporting troops in contact with enemy forces. The internal M61 Gatling gun spews 1,000 rounds per minute. Although F-16s carry only a few seconds worth of ammunition, it’s enough to decimate the half-company of terrorists involved at Benghazi. Remarkably, on the anniversary of 9/11 U.S. fighter planes in the Mediterranean area were so unprepared for combat it would have taken “several hours” to get them over Benghazi. Although USAF tankers were unavailable, F-16s could have refueled at Italian air bases in southern Italy. Did anyone ask?

Ineptitude and lack of ability to respond resulted from a policy mindset unwilling to acknowledge words like “war or terror” or “Islamic terrorism,” despite the reality of the continuing war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. Our armed forces had appropriate capabilities but couldn’t use them. Why?

The tragedy at Benghazi resulted from dereliction of duty spawned by an inane sense of political correctness coupled with determined deference to political expediency emanating from the highest levels of the Obama administration.

For example, there’s the media trap. Hamas, like other Islamic terror groups, manipulates the Western media while toying with an abundance of useful idiots within certain political and religious circles. Large explosions in densely populated Gaza are more dramatic and easier for the press to cover than are rocket attacks that rain down on Siderot and Ashkelon in the south and that can now strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Additionally, Israeli drone and aerial responses, being far more precise than rocket barrages, mean journalists in Gaza can record and transmit dramatic explosions by precision-guided munitions with minimal risk to themselves. Not so for reporters inside Israel. Fox News leads the way in objective coverage.

The ceasefire announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notwithstanding, it is unlikely U.S. diplomacy will broker the permanent peace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated Israel can—or will—accept. The Israelis know a deal opening the Gaza crossing points will lead inevitably to a third intifada. Furthermore, Hamas only agrees to ceasefires when it is to their advantage. Israel’s enemies have never modified their stated goal of annihilating the Jewish state and, until they do, there can be no permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Such an implacable enemy must be totally defeated. Ceasefires are irrelevant for Israel’s Gaza trap.

Strategically, Gaza presents a persistent and immediate threat while Hezbollah poses a greater, potentially more dangerous challenge from Lebanon. The Iranian threat, however, is one with which Israel must deal. Given the tenor of the Obama administration, Israel may be forced to act militarily—and alone. In that case, Hezbollah will unleash a massive missile attack on Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. It could also send ground forces into northern Israel. Bashar al Assad, although hindered by the ongoing civil war in Syria, might throw in some support. With the Muslim Brotherhood controlling Cairo, if Israel falters, Egypt could be tempted into the fray. So, if Israel attempts to neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it makes sense to negate the strategic dimension inherent in the Gaza trap. Air power, however, can only do so much. It takes ground troops to root out guerrillas and terrorists. While Gaza abounds in both operational and tactical traps, urban warfare operates in four dimensions:

In the first dimension, at ground level, Israeli air strikes have created rubble strewn amidst the concrete canyons of the world’s most densely populated city. Rubble inhibits the movement of invading armor and infantry while providing concealment for defenders. Invading forces will be “channeled” into areas sown with mines and booby traps and ripe for ambushes.

Also at the ground level, a second dimension of urban warfare involves rooting out defenders concealed in buildings where they possess the element of surprise. Every doorway, every room, each staircase holds the potential for booby traps and ambushes.

The third dimension comes from above. While Israeli control of the air with drones and fighter planes negates some of the danger, guerrillas firing from rooftops have a tremendous advantage because tank guns cannot be sufficiently elevated to take out the threat. Furthermore, troops and some armored vehicles are vulnerable to fire from above.

The fourth dimension involves defenders moving through sewers and tunnels, which also abound in Gaza. Pop-up attacks can occur anywhere at any time. Explosives can be set off beneath enemy forces, especially when they are stymied by rubble blocking their advance.

Since the Israeli Defense Forces are among the world’s best trained and led, they certainly will have studied the lessons from the U.S. Army’s October 1993 debacle in Mogadishu and the challenges Chechen rebels presented the Russians in Grozny. The temptation will be to deal with the problem like the Russians did in Grozny and the Germans did during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, stand back and let artillery be the final arbiter. The U.S. didn’t do that in Mogadishu and Israel won’t do it to Gaza.

With the Iranian threat increasing, and with U.S. support for Israel questionable, Israeli leaders may feel their options are limited. Nevertheless, with plenty of military muscle and facing an implacable foe sworn to its destruction, Israel may be forced to disassemble the Gaza trap.

I know this, because I lived it—at the time and in the military.

In the ‘70s, intelligence priorities were focused on the Soviet Union, China and the Communist bloc; nonetheless, an attack on a U.S. consulate would have prompted an immediate call directly to the secretary of state. If an ambassador were murdered, the secretary of state would have been informed, even awakened. It’s likely the next call would have gone to the White House.

Every year, the White House publishes its National Security Strategy of the United States, setting the nation’s security agenda. From the start, the Obama administration erased the term “War on Terror” from the national-security lexicon. In recent months, the narrative has revolved around, “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” establishing a false syllogism between two disparate and unrelated events nevertheless reflecting national-security priorities … as well as a muddled, uncertainty in priorities.

The attacks in Benghazi started late on the night of September 11. For Americans, the time difference between Washington and Libya put the attacks at the close of a day marked by remembrances for 9/11 victims.

It is inconceivable that the intelligence community, including watch officers at Langley, the Pentagon and in the White House, were unaware that the attack was a well-coordinated, military-style operation, one far more powerful and concentrated than the intrusion by a squad of Viet Cong commandos into the compound of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon at the onset of the Tet Offensive in 1968.

There are established intelligence protocols for passing information “up the line.” Watch officers surely contacted their immediate supervisors—even if it meant interrupting their evening—along with appropriate area specialists. The decision to continue the notification rests with officials at various levels, so it is not inconceivable that the president of the United States would not be informed immediately of such an attack. It’s quite likely that his national security advisor and Secretary of State Clinton were informed. The claim of “evincible ignorance” involves a two-edge sword. While the highest levels of the U.S. government may have been uninformed at 7:00 p.m. on the night of September 11, a dozen hours later analysts should have had time to sift through the “fog of war” with a good approximation of what happened and who was behind it.

This is where the story gets muddled. A riot in Cairo on 9/11, attributable to an obscure internet video publicized for political purposes by the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, made for a quick and convenient cover story to explain the tragedy in Benghazi. It also fit the political narrative that with Bin Laden dead, al Qaeda was “on the run.” Tragedy in Benghazi notwithstanding, it was time to get on with the main focus of the Obama administration, ensuring another four years to affect change, hopefully for the better—something that eluded the administration in its first four years.

The video scapegoat worked well, given that if it didn’t emanate from a crackpot right-winger with Tea Party sympathies, it probably did issue from a crackpot who by extension or implication reflects the kind of injudicious and inconvenient opinions the administration attributes to its opponents. That the Republican candidate Mitt Romney dared to criticize the administration in the wake of a tragedy costing the lives of four Americans offered the opportunity for trivializing criticism, especially when the root cause might be pinned on an internet video.

The intelligence community knew what happened in Benghazi. While it’s possible President Obama wasn’t immediately informed, it’s less likely the secretary of state was not told as soon as Ambassador Chris Stevens’ fate was known. Only the most egregious mishandling of intelligence would have prevented the president from getting the right information at the next briefing, which should have occurred the following morning, almost 12 hours after the event.

It comes down to a matter of priorities. Clearly, this administration’s reluctance to deal with the realities of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism, even under the admittedly weak description of a “War on Terror,” and its insistence that “al Qaeda is on the run,” reflect a denial of reality. The White House reaction to the Benghazi debacle is amateurish at best.

Since World War I, when chemical weapons were widely used, no nation able to retaliate in kind has been subjected to this type of WMD attack. Chem/bio weapons provide non-nuclear states with a “poor man’s deterrent.” Dr. Jill Dekker, a NATO expert on WMDs, estimates Syria’s arsenal includes chemical weapons (sarin, tabun, VX, and mustard gas) along with biological agents (anthrax, bubonic plague, tularemia, botulinium, smallpox, aflotoxin, cholera, ricin, and camelpox). In addition to a robust air force, Syrian artillery stationed near Golan can hit Haifa and SCUD missiles—with chem/bio warheads—can target all of Israel. Syria possesses 1,000 Russian SS-21 missiles capable of carrying 265-pound warheads to a range of 75 miles. Should chem/bio agents fall into the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas, or al Qaeda, suicide bombers could spread death and destruction on a global scale.

The day after Syria revealed its deadly stash, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman declared his country would act “decisively and without hesitation” should Hezbollah or Hamas gain access to these weapons, stating such an act would “constitute an act of war.” Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz warned the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel must take action “when the time is appropriate,” implying this is a matter of “when” not “if.” President Barack Obama also recently declared any transfer of WMDs to terrorist groups might prompt U.S. intervention.

Logically, the “appropriate” time to address this threat is before—not after—terrorists gain control of WMDs. By then, locating and destroying them becomes infinitely more difficult, and there is a much greater risk of casualties among innocents that Hezbollah and Hamas use as cover. For Israel, the threat posed by Syrian WMDs poses a potentially greater and more immediate threat than the yet-to-be realized (but increasingly inevitable) Iranian nuclear threat.

Some analysts think Israel may attack Iran’s nuclear-weapons production sites before Americans go to the polls in November based on Israeli speculation that in a second Obama term, without the need for Jewish votes, Jerusalem’s leverage in Washington will be nil. In that case, an Israeli Air Force attack, following conventional operational dynamics, will be at the edge of the IAF’s capabilities—involving 2,000 miles of flying through hostile territory and then fighting its way into and out of well-defended Iranian airspace. Furthermore, the IAF’s bunker-buster bombs are not large enough to penetrate the deeply buried production facilities spread out over a dozen target sites. This adds up to great risks with little long-term benefit.

Gideon’s descendants are renowned for military ingenuity. If there are other ways to deny Iran its stated goal of annihilating the Jewish state, Israel will explore them. Furthermore, the Obama administration’s political calculation may well be that since, at present, it can count on 60 to 70 percent of the Jewish vote, which constitutes only 3 percent of the electorate, it may not be worth risking supporters reacting to a doubling of gas prices in the weeks before the election.

On the other hand, Syria’s WMDs present an immediate threat but one within easy range of Israel’s air force. While a ground attack might be possible, it risks exposing Israeli troops to chem/bio agents. While aerial attack risks spreading deadly gases, bacteria and viruses, weapons generating extreme heat minimize that danger.

There’s one other possibility. Russia could take control of the Syrian arsenal, securing them on its naval base at Tartus. Even though the base is frayed and constitutes little beyond a mooring pier, Israel, NATO, or the United States are unlikely to risk war with Russia. Moscow, however, isn’t inclined to do Washington any favors, although doing so might relieve the Obama administration of doing something that could jeopardize a second term; something Vladimir Putin needs to consider.

That’s the way it stands: American foreign policy—and leadership—in the Middle East has devolved to a limited number of risky alternatives, save Moscow’s possible good graces. In this second decade of the 21st century, a growing global-leadership vacuum makes a bipolar future between Beijing and Moscow increasingly likely. The Syrian question becomes, “Is this the world Americans want?” The answer will come in November.

Historically, references to God have been common in in the Air Force. Robert Lee Scott, Jr.’s account of flying in the China-Burma Theater during World War II, “God Is My Co-pilot,” included a foreword by Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault, chief of the Flying Tigers. The concluding line of “High Flight,” a poem by pilot-poet Gillespie Magee, killed in action three days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, concludes, “I’ve trod the high un-trespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.” Such references, along with references to flying “on a wing and a prayer,” have long been integral Air Force culture. The chapel at Offutt Air Force Base, formerly the Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), includes an airman standing in front of a nuclear mushroom cloud.

Two years into my Air Force career, I returned from my first assignment as an intelligence officer in Southeast Asia completely disillusioned. During my tour as a briefing officer charged with keeping the major general in charge of air operations in Laos informed on intelligence matters, I routinely briefed items related to the unauthorized “protective reaction” strikes conducted against targets in North Vietnam’s southern panhandle, the secret bombing of Laos, and worse, I forwarded on a litany of lies wrapped around inflated figures on supposed results of bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So much for “We will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate among us those who do.”

My next assignment was as a nuclear targeting officer at SAC’s 544th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, where I served on a team charged with targeting Soviet and East European defensive fighter bases. We routinely targeted one to three nuclear warheads on selective bases to pave “corridors” through which B-52 bombers could safely pass to obliterate military-industrial targets from Moscow to Sverdlovsk, Vorkuta to Volgograd. We wrote the script for Armageddon.

Although I didn’t go to church much, my strict Calvinist upbringing ingrained in me a faith that understood this isn’t the way the world ends. I knew a God bigger than SAC and the Soviet strategic forces combined. Furthermore, planning the deaths of millions was abstract. We planned to kill bases, not people.

From 1979 to 1981, I taught history at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where cadets looked forward to a future when they could fly and fight. Their innocent bravado bespoke “killing” MiGs, tanks, trucks, missile sites and “crispy-crittering” enemy troops. The basic world military history course required of all freshmen dwelt on the nature and efficacy of killing. Students read Michael Shaara’s Civil War novel “Killer Angels” and the post-Great War classic by Erich Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The point was that all wars are quintessentially human endeavors. It’s impossible to kill inanimate objects like MiGs, tanks, trucks and missile sites. But we do kill people. To make “crispy crittering” easier, we noted, we dehumanize the enemy with terms like “Japs,” “Dinks,” “Gomers,” “Krauts,” “Huns,” “Injuns,” “Rebs” and “Yanks.” We noted the Nazis refereed to the genocide of Jews as “evacuation” and the murder of the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals, and other “inferiors” as “medical re-socialization.”

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted that with God out of the equation, almost anything becomes possible. Godlessness elevates human ideas, all of which are flawed, some so bad as to result in German fascism and Soviet communism. A generation later, the Star Wars trilogy issued from the universal “Force” of advanced technology.

Air power is intrinsically awesome, involving—as it does—death from above, out of the blue. Its technological handmaiden flows from humanity’s greatest intellectual accomplishments. When absent God, human advancement—whether ideological, political, philosophical or technological—reflects our intrinsic nature, which is evil. Better we fly with a wing and a prayer.

In the autumn of 1960, with the presidential race between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy tightening, the Democratic Party candidate made much of a supposed “missile gap” that had emerged during the Eisenhower administration. Ike could have exposed the non-existent missile gap, but didn’t.

In May 1960, Soviet air defenses downed a U-2 reconnaissance plane flying high over the Urals on its way from a secret CIA base in Pakistan to Norway. In the messy aftermath, President Eisenhower suspended U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. He didn’t say that these missions were no longer necessary, which they weren’t, given the advent of satellite photo reconnaissance so good that only a handful within the American intelligence community knew the missile gap overwhelmingly favored the United States.

That fact was so far beyond top-secret classification that it’s likely Vice President Nixon wasn’t even cleared for it. In the interest of national security, Ike kept mum even though revealing the true nature of the missile gap might have favored the Republican candidate. Consequently, in October 1962, President Kennedy was ready to call Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s bluff during the Cuban missile crisis. National security trumped partisan politics—as it should and always must.

The Kennedy administration proved equally adept at keeping secrets by covertly committing U.S. forces to combat in Vietnam while claiming they were “advisors.” In February 1962, Air Force planes commenced Operation Steel Tiger, bombing a network of pathways leading from North Vietnam through Laos to South Vietnam. By 1968, the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail had escalated, but the secrecy surrounding what was then called “Operation Commando Hunt” held until mid-1971.

Commando Hunt was no secret to the tens of thousands of North Vietnamese troops manning and transiting the trail. It was no secret to the Russians and Chinese who supplied the 1,200 anti-aircraft guns along the trail and the thousands of trucks that moved supplies between North Vietnam and the battlefields to the south. Meanwhile, the Chinese busily built a road from southern Yunnan Province through northern Laos pointed directly at Thailand. The British, who with the Soviets were co-sponsors of the 1962 Geneva Accords—supposedly neutralizing Laos—knew that North Vietnam, China and the United States were violating those accords with alacrity. No one leaked, at least not until the summer of 1971 when Daniel Ellsberg, who came to Department of Defense on Secretary Robert McNamara’s watch, released thousands of classified documents published by the New York Times as “The Pentagon Papers.” By then, however, the American anti-war movement was ready to publish the Cornell University Air War Study Group’s “The Air War in Indochina,” edited by Raphael Littauer and Norman Uphoff—a cornucopia of facts and figures that revealed the secret bombing of Laos and much else. Ellsberg went to jail.

The “secret” bombing of Laos, though highly classified within the U.S. intelligence community, was no secret to intelligence services in London, Moscow, Beijing, and Hanoi. So why the secrecy? Without official acknowledgement, no one had to react. Escalation of the Indochina war benefited no one. If Washington denied the bombing, then Moscow need not increase its military support for North Vietnam. Accordingly, the United States wouldn’t be forced to blockade Haiphong Harbor, bringing pressure on Moscow and Beijing to react. Conversely, our reconnaissance planes stayed away from the Chinese road in northern Laos. If Washington didn’t acknowledge its existence, the Chinese wouldn’t be forced to defend it with more troops, and the status quo remained. No complications meant Nixon’s troop drawdown could continue and the world could put a messy situation behind it and resume the Cold War’s global chess match with one less potentially dangerous hot spot.

What’s the lesson here?

National security, international diplomacy and world politics depend on intelligence, and the bodyguard of intelligence is security. It must never be forsaken for short-term, partisan political gain.

Admissions from “the highest levels” of the U.S. government that it was party to a cyber attack on Iran risks a retaliation that could take many forms, compelling further escalation. Without the glare of publicity trumpeting the U.S. role, Iranian leaders would be left to fume and stew in their suspicions, knowing the United States could find ways to reach out and touch them. That works much better than an amateurish shout out for partisan political gain.

Here are the five points:

1. Making Afghans responsible for their own security within two years
2. Training and operationalizing a 352,000-man Afghan security force
3. An enduring partnership with the United States providing training and counter-insurgency guidance
4. Pursuing a negotiated peace with the Taliban
5. Building a global consensus for peace

Afghanization—the practical consequence of the withdrawal of American forces—requires the strengthening of the Afghan military to withstand the Taliban. Elements fundamental to its success involve improving and modernizing the Afghan military, pacifying rural areas, strengthening the national political apparatus, delivering essential services while building a viable economy and, most importantly, ensuring security for the people.

Subsidiary tasks include expanding and improving the police, establishing democratic institutions down to the village level, restructuring the agricultural economy away from opium production, and rooting out the Taliban infrastructure. Given the non-specific nature of goals four and five in the president’s plan, the three essentials of Afghanization are: self-defense, self-government, and self-development.

Neutralizing the Taliban infrastructure is critical to extricating the U.S./NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan for the past decade. In part, this overly long commitment resulted from misjudging the nature of the war from the start, thinking it would be relatively easy to destroy al Qaeda and replace the Taliban government that nurtured and protected the terrorists. What are the obstacles successful Afghanization?

On the plus side, the Afghans are tough, resilient fighters who defeated Alexander the Great, thwarted British imperialism, humiliated the Soviets, and frustrated the U.S./NATO coalition. Molding the Afghans into a Western military image will be difficult. Unlike the Iraqis and Pakistanis, Afghans lack the British military tradition. That 86 percent of Afghan recruits are illiterate makes building a modern U.S.-style military a challenge. Leadership tends to be tribal and reflects the corruption rife in Afghan politics. Warriors abound but many of them are Taliban. Modern armies, however, require trained soldiers and effective leaders. Additionally, the security of advisors and trainers is integral to building a viable Afghan fighting force. So far, 20 percent of U.S. casualties have come at the hands of Afghan military personnel. This does not bode well for the advisory phase.

Item four in the Obama plan specifies a negotiated peace. Leverage is key to successful negotiations. President Obama declared, “A path to peace is now set before them (the Taliban). Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan Security Forces, backed by the United States and our allies.” Is the president’s threat credible?

The Taliban knows that U.S. forces are leaving and 1,834 combat deaths (as of May 3, 2012,) have depleted American will. Given that Washington’s objective seems to be the extrication of U.S. combat forces by 2014, with an advisory contingent remaining, the enemy senses the “new day on the horizon” belongs to them. The Taliban responded to President Obama’s pre-dawn declaration with a daybreak attack within earshot of the U.S. embassy coupled to a strategic proclamation targeting U.S. military forces as well as Afghan security personnel and political leaders. Expect the Taliban to keep the pressure on during withdrawal.

The challenges of Afghanization mirror those of Vietnamization, which succeeded only in providing a patina for extracting U.S. forces from South Vietnam. The precursor to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was the advisory and training phase that began in November 1961 but so failed to overcome cultural and military impediments that it required a massive U.S. military commitment starting in 1965 to forestall defeat. In 1969, when Vietnamization started in earnest, the original cultural and political challenges remained. Attempts to replicate the U.S. military structure focused on meeting the managerial imperatives of logistics rather than building armed forces able to withstand a North Vietnamese attack.

In the end, Vietnamization fulfilled President Richard Nixon’s vow to bring the troops home by the end of his first term. The president’s promise to South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu to enforce the Paris Agreements of January 23, 1973 proved irrelevant following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Barely two years after the last U.S. troops departed South Vietnam, Saigon’s army disintegrated in the face of a concerted North Vietnamese attack. The South Vietnamese lacked military acumen and leadership and, most importantly, the will to fight … and so did the United States, whose Congress drastically cut appropriations needed to sustain the Industrial Age force Vietnamization rendered.

Afghanization succeeds only if it proceeds with a bodyguard of political and economic reforms compelling the Afghan people to fight for themselves. Otherwise, Afghanization only needs to endure until early November and the re-election of President Obama.

First, understand the historical context. The Vietnam intervention resulted from a Cold War mindset that assumed the war in South Vietnam was part of a larger “communist plot for world domination.” That made Vietnam more important than it was. The resulting intervention into a local struggle tied U.S. prestige to a dubious cause. Lesson: Look closely at the local situation before commitments become irrevocable.

Second, there are dangers in incrementalism. It is a myth that the United States “blundered” into a Vietnam quagmire. American intervention resulted from a series of small, incremental steps, each seemingly low in risk. By the end of 1965, with over 100,000 American service personnel committed to Vietnam, the U.S. presence was hostage to a faulty policy. The political cost of getting out seemingly outweighed the military cost of staying in.

Third, there are limits to what military power can achieve. In 1961, when the Kennedy administration decided to “draw a line in the sand” in Vietnam, the general military assumption was that U.S. military power, sufficient to defeat Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan in less than four years, could easily handle an insurgency in South Vietnam supported by an impoverished military power in North Vietnam. Surely a nation reaching toward outer space had little to fear from a country where few people knew how to drive a car.

History shows that small nations and dedicated movements can defeat major powers. England defeated the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. The American Revolution succeeded against the British Empire. Japan defeated Russia in 1905.

In March 2003, with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the assumption was U.S. forces would be in Baghdad within a month. It took three weeks. Then the real war started and U.S. forces languished there for the next eight years.

Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant understood, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog that counts.”

Fourth, know your enemy. From the start of the Vietnam War, the fatal assumption was that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front—the Viet Cong—could be coerced with incrementally applied force. Their goals were not amenable to our logical frames of reference. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were willing to pay an enormous price for victory.

The “War on Terror” suffered from the failure to identify the enemy as Islamist fundamentalist-Jihadists determined to defeat the United States and, ultimately, bring down Judeo-Christian civilization. Knowing yourself corresponds with knowing the enemy.

Fifth, Americans are not patient. In 1946, General of the Army George C. Marshall stated, “America cannot fight a Seven Years’ War.” In 1968, the Tet Offensive occurred almost precisely seven years after the Kennedy administration drew the line in Vietnam. Frustrations grew throughout the subsequent administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, weakening public will.

Sixth, beware of open-ended commitments to regimes of dubious legitimacy. In Vietnam, first the United States committed its power and prestige to the support of Ngo Dinh Diem, a self-described “16th-century Spanish Catholic” who governed like a mandarin in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country struggling to throw off its colonial past. When in late 1963, Diem proved ineffective, the United States acquiesced in a coup resulting in a succession of military dictators.

History’s not so tidy that mistakes in the War on Terror are entirely analogous to those in Vietnam. The current war proceeded with an all-volunteer force, not a conscript-driven force. From October 2001 to the present, American military leadership, at every level, has been outstanding. The Bush administration’s big mistake was not clearly identifying the enemy. The Obama administration’s blunder was to set a deadline for withdrawal.

Wars are the most unpredictable of human endeavors, fraught with the unexpected and quite often, when strategically ill-conceived, much longer and bloodier than anticipated. That’s why over 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote, “War is a matter of vital importance; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.”

Indeed the raid succeeded. No Americans were killed. On the down side, the United States left behind a stealth helicopter for the Chinese and Russians to reverse engineer. Nevertheless, President Obama made the right call. Seal Team Six performed magnificently.

But the most audacious plan in 500 years? No way. Just keeping it to raids, the November 20, 1970 Son Tay Raid conducted by U.S. Army Special Forces in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service was far more audacious in concept, planning, and execution. The Son Tay Raid involved two C-130E assault transports, an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant, and five larger HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopters flying at night, at altitudes below 500 feet for 200 miles across northern Laos into North Vietnam to a prison camp located 28 miles north of Hanoi. The objective: free American prisoners of war thought to be held in the camp.

Planning for the raid started in June 1970 with practice conducted at night on a collapsible replica of the Son Tay prison located deep inside the swamplands that are part of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Every morning, the “prison compound” was dismantled to prevent Soviet reconnaissance satellites from discovering it. Dubbed “Operation Ivory Coast” to divert speculation from Southeast Asia to Africa, the raiders were not told of their objective until hours before the raid, which departed Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand just after dark.

The raiding party arrived intact. Enemy radio intercepts indicated a major invasion was under way and, perhaps, the United States had used a nuclear weapon. I know. I was one of two intelligence watch-officers on duty at Udorn when the raid took place. Unfortunately, the prisoners had been moved out of Son Tay months before the raid, leaving behind a small contingent of guards who died that night. The raiders also killed up to 200 enemy sappers undergoing training at a school located a quarter mile from Son Tay. The only losses were the HH-3E, which was purposefully crashed into the compound so that Special Forces troops inside could neutralize the defenders before they had a chance to kill the prisoners, and an F-105F Wild Weasel badly damaged while attacking a surface-to-air missile site. Before departing Son Tay, the raiders destroyed the chopper, and a returning Jolly Green Giant picked up the two-man crew of the F-105. A North Vietnamese MiG-21 was lost after a rescue chopper it was pursuing at tree-top level hopped over a mountain ridge into which the pursuing MiG plowed.

The raid showed Hanoi’s leadership how vulnerable it was to attack and focused the world’s attention on the plight of American POWs held in North Vietnam. It also increased the morale of prisoners who knew they had not been abandoned. Finally, fearing the United States might attempt another raid; the North Vietnamese moved all POWs from outlying camps into two or three central complexes in Hanoi. This afforded the prisoners more contact with each other and helped establish who remained alive.

Just as audacious was the 1976 Entebbe Raid, Operation Thunderbolt / Operation Yoni, conducted by the Israelis to rescue Jewish passengers being held captive in Uganda by Palestinian and German terrorists. Operations Ivory Coast and Thunderbolt/Yoni are just two recent raids conducted within the past few decades. The action in Pakistan last May did not begin to approach in audacity the larger—and far more complex—operations like the Inchon landing in September 1950 or D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, in planning or execution.

What is audacious is Biden’s indefensible claim. But, then, what else can the administration point to with pride? Doubling the national debt in three years? Half-a-billion dollars wasted on Solyndra? The Chevy Volt subsidized at $240,000 a copy? The administration might brag about the withdrawal from Iraq if the country weren’t edging toward anarchy. There’s no lauding the strategic ineptitude of declaring a withdrawal date from Afghanistan, an act giving the Taliban every reason not to negotiate. Can the administration brag about the unpopular healthcare reform that Biden dubbed such a “big [expletive] deal?”

For an administration with lots of failures and few successes, bumper-sticker history may be all they’ve got.

Today, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) considers various strike options against Iran. Striking Iran confronts the IAF with the formidable operational challenge of hitting targets across 1,000 miles of hostile airspace. Israel has no long range-bombers. Its relatively small force of F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers will have to refuel at least once during the 2,000-mile round trip.

Distance is only part of the problem. To reach Iran, the Israeli strike force must fly over hostile territory. One possible route involves traversing Syria, which has the capability to respond. Another route takes the IAF over Saudi Arabia; the Saudis might acquiesce, given their apprehension of a nuclear-armed Iran. The other possibility is to fly over Iraq, whose air defenses are incapable of impeding such an operation, but Baghdad may warn Tehran of what’s headed its way.

The Iranian air assets consist of American F-14 and Russian MiG-29s, generational equals of the Israeli F-15s and F-16s. Iran also has a few obsolete American F-4 Phantoms and F-5s. The Israeli planes are newer, have enhanced capabilities, and are flown by superior pilots. Iran possesses an array of surface-to-air missiles, including the SA-5 for high altitude threats, SA-15 to meet lower-level penetrators, and U.S. Super Hawk missiles. It also has a number of Russia’s newest air defense missiles, the S-300. Since Israel doesn’t have the resources to soften up this air defense system, it would have to deal with it during a strike. The IAF faces the prospect of possible high losses.

Moreover, the small number of Boeing KC-135 tankers in the Israeli inventory (the IAF’s Achilles’ heel) would need to be protected by fighter escorts, unless refueling took place over the Mediterranean prior to entering Syrian or Saudi air space going in and again coming out. In that case, Israel’s fighters will have little margin for air combat along the way or over Iran. Otherwise, refueling must occur in potentially hostile air space.

For Israel, Iranian targets spread from outside Tehran in the north to Busheher in the south, meaning a multiple axis attack may be necessary. Additionally, some targets are underground. Each F-15 can carry one American-produced GBU-28 “Bunker Buster” bomb. It is far from certain that these bombs can do the job on deeply buried targets. Multiple strikes would be necessary to dig away rock, soil, and concrete.

Whether successful or not, Israel faces international condemnation. So will the United States, even if it remains on the sidelines. That leaves two added alternatives:

First, the United States could join with Israel in a comprehensive conventional attack. Unlike Israel, the United States can degrade Iranian defenses, as it did Libyan air defenses last year. Furthermore, B-2s, dropping far larger bombs, can do so undetected. The Israelis can take the high-level tactical risks but with active U.S. support it is less likely Syria or Saudi Arabia will interfere. A broader attack to degrade Iranian military capabilities will lessen the possibility of retaliatory efforts like mining Hormuz or undertaking a worldwide terror campaign.

Second, for Israel, a conventional strike involves high risks for potentially little gain. A fiasco on the scale of the Dieppe Raid of World War II is a distinct possibility. Therefore, in the mind of some planners, using nuclear weapons would make sense. Low-yield, tactical nukes would solve problems of penetration. The bonus effect includes making those sites unusable for years. Underground detonations also minimize radioactive fallout.

Most nations and peoples cower at the thought of a nuclear first strike. Israel’s history of facing annihilation from its neighbors gives Israelis a different perspective. The “Never Again” factor is an Israeli cultural imperative. The unthinkable remains an immutable part of Jewish history.

Such an attack, if expanded to take out Iranian military response capabilities, would make clear that Israel won’t tolerate retaliation from Tehran’s surrogates in Lebanon, Syria, and their Hamas allies in Gaza. Israel would have demonstrated its willingness to respond at places and by means of its own choosing.

If the United States sits this one out, Israel may be forced to act with enormous ramifications and consequences. Such is the fallout from Washington’s strategic policy of leading from behind.