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The Six-Day War Was about the International Community's Failure to Stand Up to an Aggressor

[Slate] Shmuel Rosner - At a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 23, 1967, two weeks before the Six-Day War began, Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) declared: "We have to make the other free nations understand the relation of freedom in this matter, because if they do get into a war, then you have got totalitarianism seeking to drive this country into oblivion." He was referring to the reluctance of the international community to intervene in a way that would make it clear to Egypt that blocking the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping was an unacceptable act of aggression. A statement like that from a senator like Morse, notes Kenneth Baer, co-editor of Democracy, was no small thing. After all, "[H]e was one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution three years earlier and...is remembered today, if at all, as a hero of the antiwar movement." In the days preceding the 1967 war, he proved to be smart enough to see the difference between Vietnam and the Middle East and to make the distinction between a victim and an attacker. In the game of what-ifs that everyone seems to want to play on the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War: What would have happened if the world had acted more decisively to prevent Nasser from violating his commitments? What would have happened if the world had been more attentive to Sen. Morse's wisdom and advice?
2007-06-08 01:00:00
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