One of my pet peeves with the US military, that I raise every time I find myself speaking to US military officers, is that they bowed to Arab pressure and wiped Israel off the Middle East map. This they did a number of years ago, when they decided that Israel would be attached to the US military's European Command while every single Arab state is located in Central Command.

This articifial removal of Israel from the purview of Central Command has bred generations of US military commanders who due to the inherent distortion of their organization, almost necessarily emerge as hostile to Israel after they serve for any significant length of time in Central Command.

In my mind, one of Israel's top priorities should be to demand that the US military place Israel back in Central Command to end this vile, unfair situation that works to the detriment of the strategic coherence of the US military and of course to the detriment of Israel.

With this introduction, I commend to everyone, Andy McCarthy's authoritative and important analysis of Gen. David Petreaus's hostility towards Israel. I have basically ignored the controversy regarding his remarks and particularly, Max Boot's attack on Diana West for calling Petreaus to task for his unfair, incorrect and indeed libellous statements about Israel's responsibility for Arab violence. And I am sorry for dong so. I received an email from Diana asking me to weigh in on the the issue but I just didn't have the time or energy to do so. Maybe I was hoping that Petreaus was telling the truth when he tried to weasel out of responsibility for his untoward attack on Israel during his Senate testimony. At any rate, as Andy makes clear, Max was wrong to defend Petreaus and attack West and I am glad he took the time to call Max out for what he did.