The statement by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs warning that America will not be able to help Israel in the gathering war with Hezbollah is a shocking blunder. It was made in a press conference today in Africa by General C.Q. Brown of the Air Force. He said that America “won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones in April.”

What in the world was he thinking? It’s hard to imagine such a statement being taken in Tehran as anything but an invitation to attack. It could yet rank with such blunders as Secretary of State Acheson’s suggestion in 1950 that Korea was beyond America’s so-called defense perimeter. Or Ambassador April Glaspie’s suggestion to Saddam Hussein in 1990 that America wasn’t taking sides in the Arab-Arab wars.