Successful Pre-emption

American Heritage tells about the Israeli bombing of Saddam’s nuclear site:

Early in the afternoon 25 years ago today, eight first-rate pilots took off from a base in the Sinai. Among them was Ilan Ramon, who later became an astronaut and was killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster. To avoid radar detection their F-16s flew just a hundred feet above the deserts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The jets reached Osirak while Iraqi antiaircraft gunners and surface-to-air missile operators were eating dinner. They flattened the reactor’s large dome and destroyed its complex machinery. At least eight people were killed, including a French advisor. The pilots then sped back home without taking a single round of antiaircraft fire. The raid was so sudden and successful that for days few believed it had actually happened.

This unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation in peacetime ignited fury around the world. The United Nations, the Soviet Union, and the Arab League all loudly condemned Israel’s action. The United States was equally upset; during the early 1980s the Reagan administration saw Hussein’s Iraq as a bulwark against Iran. Secretary of State Alexander Haig called Israel’s strike “reckless” and demanded sanctions. The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeanne Kirkpatrick, compared it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The use of the “defensive” F-16s was especially troubling. The raid made a joke of U.S. military sales; having failed to sell the jets to its former Iranian allies, America watched as Israel used those same planes against a friendly regime.

Yet others were very happy about the raid. President Reagan himself proudly called it “a terrific piece of bombing!” Though his administration suspended F-16 sales to Israel, the President let them resume in September. Most of the American Jewish community was ecstatic too. Even Bob Dylan agreed, mocking the uproar against Israel in his song “Neighborhood Bully.” Dylan sang: “Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad/ The bombs were meant for him, He was supposed to feel bad.”