Fifty years ago today (Oct. 29), Israel attacked Egypt in collusion with the UK and France; in early November, the UK and France entered the conflict militarily, as had been secretly agreed among the three allied nations. UK forces seized the Suez Canel (photo), which all along had been the real purpose of the three-nation assault on Egypt.
This invasion of an Arab country was in defiance of international law and world opinion. The US did not support the invasion. In fact, the US response forced the UK troops to withdraw in humiliation. Recently, Geoffrey Wheatcroft of The Boston Globe wrote about this in light of the invasion of Iraq.
From the article:
[UK Prime Minister] Tony Blair has quite enough worries. But he might still find time to reflect on the events of 50 years ago, when an attack on an Arab country–involving a conspiracy to misrepresent the real reasons–brought a dismal end to the career of [Prime Minister] Sir Anthony Eden.
…..In 1956, not only did London and Paris act in secret collusion with Tel Aviv, the United States was almost hostile to Israel–and toward ill-considered Western adventures in the Middle East. Today, Blair might ponder whether he should have acted as President Bush’s candid friend, in the way that Eisenhower did with Eden, counseling the president against a rash enterprise rather than grandiosely supporting him “to the last."
…..
[At the time, Prime Minister Eden] was reminded in friendly but forceful terms of the sheer unwisdom of “the use of force" against an Arab country-which would, “it seems to me, vastly increase the area of jeopardy." The “appeaser" in this case was General Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, in the day when things were different in the White House and the Republican Party. If Eden persevered in his folly, Ike wrote to the prime minister on Sept. 3, 1956, in words just as chilling today, not only the peoples of the Middle East but “all of Asia and Africa, would be consolidated against the West to a degree which, I fear, could not be overcome in a generation."
So, Ike knew: for the British to invade an Arab nation then, without the support of other nations, would turn the world and particularly the Islamic world against the UK. So, Ike knew: Don’t do it.
In this regard, I like Ike. I think Rev. Bu$h & NeoCon Republicans, Inc. (Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Board), may not.
