How will Americans react if the Democratic Party’s coronation of Kamala Harris is interrupted by a bloody and sobering disaster abroad?
Israel’s response to the slaughter of twelve Druze children in the Golan Heights by a Hezbollah rocket attack has been everything the Netanyahu government’s critics say they want to see from Israel. In Beirut, the suburbs of Damascus, and the heart of the Iranian capital city, high-ranking members of U.S.-designated terrorist groups were assassinated in quick succession — not in devastating missile barrages but with remarkable precision.
If you’re still in the streets protesting the neutralization of these killers, some of whom had American blood on their hands, despite the lack of excessive collateral damage, you’re not motivated by humanitarian concerns. You’re not even anti-war, though you may tell yourself as much; you are pro-war so long as Israel, America, and their respective Jewish populations are bearing the brunt of it.
Well, the protesters may get their perverse wish. “U.S. officials say they expect any Iranian retaliation to be from the same playbook as their Apr. 13 attack on Israel — but potentially larger in scope — and it could also involve the Lebanese Hezbollah,” Axios reported on Thursday. “A senior Israeli official said the Israeli intelligence community expects Iran will launch a wide-ranging missile attack on Israel.”
To his credit, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin dispensed with ambiguity when he was asked if the United States would reprise the role it had played in thwarting the April 13 missile and drone barrage against Israel. “You can expect to see us do that again,” he said. But it is important to recall that, while the attack on Israel failed to produce a mass-casualty event, several missiles did penetrate Israeli air-defense systems and reached their targets. In addition, a surprise Houthi-directed drone attack on Tel Aviv last month demonstrated how a sophisticated drone strike can even evade Israeli radars. A massive drone and missile barrage that draws from the stockpiles in the custody of not just Iran but Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq could produce far more deadly results than the mullahs’ misadventure in April. And if that terrible scenario came to fruition, Israel’s response would not be so restrained.
If this crisis cannot be averted, it is sure to overtake the domestic political events that have for over a month now consumed the attention of American political observers.
How would the enervated remnants of the Biden administration react if Israel makes good on the threats it is telegraphing to Iran “that Israel is willing to go to war if Iran’s actions cause serious damage”? How would it navigate an environment in which its hollow gestures and calls for “restraint,” summarized as simply “Don’t,” are proven easily neglectable? The commander in chief, who seems to resent being ushered out of the presidency, would inherit a conflict in a region where U.S. forces are deeply enmeshed. Would he oversee it, eclipsing his chosen successor and reminding American voters of his failures — failures to which she is not just adjacent but implicated in? Might he abdicate, ceding to Harris both the incumbency and the mantel of something resembling a wartime presidency?
It may be apocryphal, but when British prime minister Harold Macmillan was asked what the biggest threat to his new government was, he supposedly replied, “Events, dear boy. Events.” For eleven days, Kamala Harris has basked in the adoration of a Democratic Party thrilled by Joe Biden’s departure from the political stage. She will never stop not being Joe Biden, so Democratic enthusiasm for her candidacy is likely to hold. But how will the Americans who will either make or break her candidacy react if the Democrats’ coronation is interrupted by a bloody and sobering disaster in the Middle East? We may soon find out.