How can we, the United States and the west, avoid Armageddon? Well, that’s the question that should be on everyone’s mind in Washington, and sadly, it seldom comes up. I think the greatest challenge for Americans, even more than for the Israelis, is to understand just how profoundly the world we live in has changed since the last major war that the Israelis were compelled to fight, and that was in 1973.

Some of your observers and audience may remember in 1973, Israel was attacked by the Syrians in the east and the north, and at the same time attacked from the south and the west by Egypt. The problem was that Egypt had very limited goals. The Egyptian president was not interested in destroying or eradicating Israel. He simply wanted to regain control of the territory that had been lost in 1967.

So he moved across the canal, set up a defense, and that was as far as he went. The Assyrians, of course, did try to break through, and that was somewhat desperate for a period of time. But the Israelis were able to meet that threat first before turning their entire attention to Egypt. This time of situation is very different. First of all, the weapons have changed. The arsenal of rockets and missiles in the region is enormous.

People are quoting numbers. In the realm of 130,000 rockets and missiles from Hisbalah alone. We don’t even need to mention others in the region. That kind of arsenal is enough in and of itself to destroy much of Israel. But then you have a problem with Hamas and Hisbalah and the rest of the region, and that is, the rest of the region is as sick of Israel as much of the world, and Europe is sick of us.

And what I mean by that is that we are on the threshold of total war. That’s what no one seems to understand. If the Israelis march into Gaza, which I think would be a very unrewarding exercise for them, but nevertheless, they seem determined to do it. If they do, they will not only lose soldiers, they will fail to root out the thousands of Hamas fighters that are there.

They’ll get some, but they won’t get them all. They will not improve their position at all with the people of Hamas or the people living on the so called West Bank. And the rest of the region is prepared to go to war. To stop and think about it. It’s not just Iran. In fact, Iran has militias that can attack us. Anyone who works with this in Iraq, in Syria that’s one part of the problem.

The Iranians are not going to try to lob theater ballistic missiles at Israel because the Israelis have said they would use a nuclear weapon. But Turkey is different, and the Turks have an unhappy record with the Israelis. Just a few years ago, they tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israelis boarded their ship, killed some of their citizens and turned back the aid. This kind of thing did not cultivate support and friendliness in Turkey.

And remember, Mr. Erdogan is the de facto leading military power in the Sunni Muslim world. Finally, you have the Pakistanis, who are very close to the Turks and have made it abundantly clear that the Turks will receive nuclear warheads and other capabilities from them if they need them in order to deter the Israelis from using a nuclear weapon. And finally, the Turks have the largest air forces and armies in the region.

The Turks can put 2 million men in the field in the space of a little over a month, and the Turks are ferocious fighters. Now, all of this spells doom for the Israel Israelis if they launch this attack on Gaza. What I’ve just described is an unwinnable fight. Even the air power from the United States that we could commit is not going to be enough. And we all know we don’t have the troops on the ground.

We simply don’t have very many soldiers or Marines at this point. .