Cliff May has an outstanding piece arguing, correctly I think, that containment will not work with a nuclear Iran. It would be too costly to maintain, involve too many countries with conflicting interests, and require us to fight an endless series of small wars, with the very fractious internal political battles that we have already seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Michael Anton has analyzed the costs of containment at greater length here. And Bret Stephens does his usual thoughtful job in Commentary.
It’s grim news that geopolitical “experts” are thinking deeply about what to do after Iran gets the bomb, both because it means that they have already accepted the inevitability of Iran-with-nukes, and because they continue to skim over the basic facts about the world and the war in which we are so deeply engaged. The debate about Iran should not revolve around nukes, but about the war Iran is waging against us right now.
There is an amazing unwillingness to grant that American soldiers are being killed every day by Iranian proxies and by Iranian fighters (mostly from the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force), mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those killers are trained in Iran, funded by Iran, armed by Iran, and provided intelligence from Iran. They do not need nukes to kill us, but the experts obsessively focus their attention on the nuclear question.
Why do they refuse to talk about the real war? Why do they focus their attention on a problem that does not (yet) exist, rather than a terrible problem that does exist? To put the matter as brutally as possible, why don’t they — and our leaders — care about evil people who kill Americans?
Elites “don’t like war.” It makes them feel uncomfortable and a bit yucky. They fail to realize that their existential foes could care less. Their passiveness only encourages further aggression. These people are historical illiterates. Few have spent even a few minutes in their entire life studying how Hitler lulled the Western powers to sleep in the 1930s.
The primary reason we won’t defend ourselves against Iran is that we don’t believe we have the moral right to fight a war purely for self-defense.
According to the dominant morality of our time — which is altruism — fighting a war purely in self-defense is “selfish” and therefore automatically evil.
That’s the notion that none of our leaders, left or right, dares to challenge.
Even in the aftermath of 9/11, when the American people overwhelmingly wanted military action to destroy our enemies, that alleged “cowboy” George W. Bush was very hesitant to act. And we didn’t act until we had a semi-respectable ally we could appear to be helping: the Northern Alliance. Remember those guys?
So it was only AFTER Bush found someone other than America that would benefit from our military action did he dare to take such action.
And even then, even as we were dropping bombs trying to aid the Northern Alliance, we also had to drop food and medicine to the “civilians” of Afghanistan. Tons of such supplies were dropped, even though much of it undoubtedly fell into enemy hands.
The bloody hand of altruism — the need to make sure we are not acting solely for our own benefit — is also why we didn’t dare to simply destroy the Hussein regime in Iraq.
Instead, we had to fight a JAG-policed, civilian-friendly war under disastrous rules of engagement — and then stick around afterward for “nation building”. It’s why we spent billions and billions building schools and hospitals and sewage systems and repairing electrical grids — it’s why we permitted thousands of our soldiers to be murdered while acting as a domestic police force for Iraq.
It’s why the whole operation was called, “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” — in order to make it clear that we are fighting for the benefit of others, not just for our own.
The messes in both Iraq and Afghanistan prove that trying to fight a war under the constraints imposed by altruism is foolish and futile — and makes it virtually impossible to permanently defeat our foes.
Instead, Americans need to reject the demands of altruism and proudly assert our right to our own self-defense. We have every right to act unilaterally and alone and preemptively. We have every right to use overwhelming military force to destroy a threatening regime. And when we do — since it is the threatening regime that makes our self-defense attack necessary — the regime, not us, bears moral responsibility for all civilian deaths and property destruction that occurs.
Sooner or later, if we wish to survive, we must reject altruism and unleash our military to properly defend us, the way we did in WWII. Nothing else will work.
Containment of Iran will not work, just as negotiations and sanctions have not worked. Still, every possible avenue of negotiations, sanctions, and containment must be tried, because we studiously refuse to recognize that Iran is still in a war against us.
Mr. Obama deserves some considerable credit in obtaining China’s and Russia’s completely unexpected recent vote in the Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran. Iran is, of course, openly defiant, so they will shortly violate these sanctions, as well.
It’s a game of stall until Iran is nuclear-armed, but the stall game is missing one vital feature. The nature of the theofascist government in Iran makes it far more deadly than the nuclear-armed governments of the Soviet Union or the PRC. No genuine form of Fascism has ever been contained. Not ever.
‘All avenues must be tried…because we refuse to recognize Iran is in a war against us.’
Can you explain? Do you mean that these things must be tried because the ‘elites’ have failed to warn the public, and thus must ‘warm’ the public up to the reality. Or do you mean that the refusal is somehow principled, and that trying all these soft measures is consistent with this morality, which is apparently about avoiding conflict at all cost?
I would like to understand this. On the surface your comment makes no sense.
I believe that “a Duoist” was speaking rhetorically – all these things are being tried because the “elites” do not recognize the presence of the war.
Thanks. My take is that they can’t recognize it because denying it means protecting all that they hold dear. In other words, recognizing that Iran is at war with most of the world is an understanding so threatening to the cocoon of security, wealth and power that they hate it more than they could possibly hate Ahmedinejad etc.
Too much tunnel vision. That is my diagnosis of the reprobates, scalawags, scoundrels and deformed souls who would be happy to dish out what was dished out to Joel Mowbray, as Mowbray recounted it in “Dangerous Diplomacy”.
They resent their actions being made public, and all the while they prefer the cloak of secrecy.
I agree. I don’t really see how we “contained” the Soviets either. It is simply common sense to resist tyranny when it comes in the form of gigantic armies with commissars and obnoxious terrorist-mafiosi masquerading, unsuccessfully, as a political phenomenon. Anyone living next to an aggressive lunatic would do the same; even Gandhi would, out of simple self-preservation. Yet the world was flooded with Kalashnikovs, RPG-7s, Comintern-based and Patrice-Lamumba-U-educated international terrorists, trojan horse political parties in every country, and a media so corrupted, so venal, that the average person is not even aware of these phenomena – in fact, they’re not even aware they’re not aware. The entire world is largely designed in the image of the operations these cunning as_holes pulled off partially or wholly.
Does anyone really believe that “we” “contained” the USSR because they didn’t conquer Western Europe or nuke the USA? I hope that’s not the criterion. That’s a pretty low threshold for success.
So how could the same strategy work on Iran, a contemporary proxy expressing the same methodologies – if not the same aesthetic – as the USSR, which we previously failed to contain? We are already holding ourselves hostage to the mullahs’ ability to nuke or bomb our rear or threaten our shopping malls via Hezbollah through Mexico & etc. – and yet, the very problem we’re worried about is Hezbollah having the ability to strike us, but with nuclear weapons!
Who is in charge of this country and will someone please remove the LSD drip from his wrist?
The real problem is surely what generals and strategists say in private but never in public: the fact is that the USA is completely subverted by the matrix of personality disorders that, as part of its sociopathy, has convinced itself that it is a political movement expressing world-historical virtues. Just because they aren’t seizing the post offices and police and spreading propaganda among the Czars’ captive soldiers in Galicia doesn’t mean this isn’t the very same disease in contemporary idiom.
The basic problem is we are screwed because we believe that not acting is easier than acting. In order to believe and rationalize in this manner, all we needed to defeat was our own honor.
Well, I hope you hippies are happy. If there’s any justice we’ll get into power with enough time to take your social security checks and put them into the public fisc. You already spent your share of the commonwealth.
“… will someone please remove the LSD drip from his wrist?”
I’ve done plenty of LSD. Don’t blame the acid. Blame the willful determination not to look reality in its face. A significant element of reality is that human beings embody some mighty destructive impulses and desires, and they can better act them out when they are organized into powerful institutions, such as governments and ideologies like that of the “Islamic Republic” (now there’s an oxymoron!) of Iran.
Thank you to voices like Michael Ledeen’s…
We have been eliding our responsibility to deal with Iran ever since Carter withdrew American support for the Shah.
We should have put paid to Iran’s military ambitions right after Gulf War I.
Dear Michael, the big problem is not the matter of Iranian nuclear, or rather whether if Iran will nuke or not.
No doubt, the evil intent of the mullahs is very clear, even became so clear to blind and deaf man! Their dirty objective is to destruct the Great Satan and wipe out Israel off the map.They have sworn to combat the satanic influence everywhere on the earth that since the Ayatollah Khomeini had been declared in 1979, and since that time they are in a real war with you, since that time every single day murder the Americans and their allies. Above all, highly they harmed the USA interests and influence in the region.
As Mr. Bret Stephens reported in his article “Another believer is Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, who argues that while Iran “may be dangerous, assertive and duplicitous… there is nothing in their history to suggest they are suicidal.”
Mr. Brzezinski, yes most probably in Iranians history is no suiciders!? But we all know that about Iranian regime intolerance and propensity for violence. We all know that the Islamic fanatics want to become major effective force “evil power” throughout the world. We all know that about that horrible Iranian history of support for militias and the Muslim fanatics and terrorist organizations abroad, especially in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Kuwait, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey and even Chechnya. So, Mr. Brzezinski, they of course combat you and murdering you through the cult of death “Arabs and other Muslims” those who are eager to so-called “martyrdom”.
Yes, that’s right that “Iran is not the Soviet Union” and of course the most important difference between them is “ideological”. Just to remember!
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini believed in Muslim unity and solidarity and the export of Islamic revolution throughout the world, he said: (Islam is a religion that wants to rule the world; it has done so before and eventually will rule it again).
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (President of Iran) said: (the message of the Islamic Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time. Have no doubt…
Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world).
Therefore, Islam once again, 1400 years later, is seeking domination on the world through worldwide Islamic terrorism. It is seeking the destruction of everything is good in the world, and intends to replace it with the most barbaric ideology known to the history of man. Islam sees Christian America as a formidable enemy standing in its path of the world domination, which is why the Muslims have waged dirty war on Christian America.
So, the Islam ideology is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Islam’s rule. It is very clear that ideology is the biggest threat facing the free civilized world today, particularly “the USA and State of Israel”.
Finally, the militant Islam – is represented in the Global Terrorism States of countries that I have mentioned above – is intends to bring down Christian America by hook or by crook.
So, the citizens of the United States must be vigilant in understanding the serious and imminent threat by evil regimes to your life and culture.
I think the less thing on the free civilized world must do against Iran, is just allowing for limited strikes by USA and Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Jassem Othman, Syrian, the Land of Holocaust, Poland.
Deterrence only works if the country to be deterred believes that you will respond with overwhelming force. Looking at the Obama administration, would you be convinced by their actions to date?
Speaking as a Jew and an Israeli citizen, I thank you for your post. I hope that Syria will one day have a decent government and that there will be open borders between our countries – as well as true independence for Lebanon. According to a Lebanese Christian that I knew, 30,000 Lebanese have gone missing in Syrian prisons over the years. I hope too that when Syria is free that their families will have an accounting of their fates.
Best to you, Jassem.
Thanks, Mr. Ledeen. I learned something this afternoon. But I still worry about Israel: five minutes after Ahmadinejad gets the bomb, it gets launched at Tel Aviv.
By the way, have you tried “consulting” any of your bygone sources like Mr. Angleton?
What is his insight on Iran these days?
I rather think that Israel will not sit quietly by while a nuclear weapon is dropped on them. To begin with, they have anti-missile systems; they also (despite protestations to the contrary) have their own nuclear weapons.
The big questions are: 1) do the pertinent people in Iran believe that they can nuke Israel and get away with it and 2) do they care (about the possible repercussions to their own people)?
There’s no fighting this war until the left stops fighting us. This is like a pushme-pullya, we make some gains and the left takes it away. I was so hopeful about 6 years ago. I thought if more people just understood the situation. But that’s not the problem. They deny the situation. So Israel will get nuked and maybe us and then enough true citizens of this country will brandish the metaphorical pitchforks and scream “You’re either with us or agin us” and mean it. We can release ourselves from the millstones around our necks and save whatever’s left of America. Europe? They’re in the hate business as much as the other guys. They hate Jews, they hate Bush and now they’re coming to hate the one they were waiting for.
What containment? Are you kidding me? Containment assumes that the adversary has a modicum of logical instinct in matters of self preservation. It is an insult to assign such a logical mind to those morons. Their apocolyptic and nihilistic mindset does not allow them to even understand the definition of containment. If your motivating drive is having the opportunity to caress, ever so gently, 72 virgins, what do you care if half of the country is blown to pieces? The only way to “contain” them is through chemical castration so that they no longer have such base urges.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is not a king, he’s considered to be delusional.
Great line, Tcobb, I’m gonna steal it some day…
You sound like you are familiar with “Jonathan Livingstone
Seagull” by Richard Bach.
does anyone else feel like they are the only one with an eye while the rest of the country seems to be blind? How stupid can we be……… ???
We are most definitely at war with Iran. Afghanistan is the battleground
at the moment. I am a Marine of WWII vintage. What is happening in Afghanistan is
unconscionable. Men are called to combat unable to accomlish any
strategic objective. All that is happening is exposure of our military to injury
and death. The President sends more troops to Afghanistan but at the same time
assures the public that he will start withdrawal next year. Hence there can be no
significant strategic objectis and the enemy knows it. The President’s
incompetence blinds him to reality. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too.
I dont think anyone quite realizes how much the entire
world is going to change once Iran goes nuclear.
This wont be like the Cold War where our opponent
is at least rational and interested in survival. It
will like dealing with a nuclear armed suicide bomber.
Non-action against Iran since (’79) is easy to explain: liberal ideology of the establishment (both parties). What is hard to explain was the pre-emptive action against Afganistan and Iraq. 9-11 must have caused temporary insanity in Bush the younger (and his foreign policy team). Bush the elder, who fought the perfect ideological war in 1991, must have been apoplectic when irag was attacked. After it was clear that the Bushies had bitten off more than they could chew, the ideologists went wild with rage.
The Obama administration has already accepted Iran as it is. By recognizing the current government and not aiding those who wanted freedom, this administration has cast its lot with our enemy. You can attempt to prove (probably without question) that Iran is at war with us. Obama will cover it up. He has made it possible for Iran to become a nuclear power and for Iran to threaten us directly. All we have to do is look at North Korea as an example as to what can happen to see our own future. Iran has much more of an ability to hurt us than North Korea. All they need is the bomb. Soon they will have the power to deliver it. Containment at this point is a joke.
I think we would strike back if the attackers were in Iranian Army uniforms. But of course the disguise is to conceal their identity and make it difficult to aim or counter attack . It works so amazingly well I have often wondered why we don’t employ a similar tactic .
The enemy has cleverly made it possible to attack without being subject to retaliation.
It makes a manageable situation on a small scale but if they ever put their forces into a large conflict they better have on uniforms.
“Back when containment of the Soviet Empire was in vogue, we fought back when Soviet proxies attacked our friends and allies.” . . . “But Iran is different. We are not striking back.”
We’re striking back . . . like when you’ve got a gnat swirling around your head. You swat, it flies away, only to return a few seconds later, and you swat again. Finally, you get a good angle and you squash it. Ahmadinejad should be squashed in similar fashion.
The Fatal Follies of Containment
The number and type of fatalities determines the response.
Losing a few soldiers a day is negligible; Losing 3000
civilians at once requires a reaction.
It is folly not to be proactive to an existential threat;
Waiting until the damage has been done is not an option.
If Iran perceives Containment as an existential threat,
will its response present an existential threat to the US ?
The West sees the world through rose colored lenses,
but Iran has blood in its eye; Choose the winning color.
Contain what exactly? Talking about their motives (Islamic jihad as an active outdoor lifestyle) is forbidden by the President. Identifying the subjective understanding of the terrorist’s goal directed behavior is off limits for agents of the state–apparently such talk will scare the children. Identifying the enemy to be contained as Arab, Persian, or Muslim is forbidden, because it’s state sanctioned negative profiling–as distinct from positive profiling, like affirmative action set asides. So exactly what is to be contained? The bomb? Good luck, but we can’t even agree to agree to contain our own definitive borders much less contain a covert nuclear device within the confines of Iran.
That is rhetorical I presume?
But, …. because they are also evil monsters who loath themselves and America. It really is that simple. They are functionally insane or just plain stupid or plain evil. Pick one.
Some people just need …….
One of the biggest problems we have, as I see it, is that our elites have successfully dulled our willingness to defend ourselves against obvious aggression. Far too many Americans today would exchange their freedom for chains as long as bondage is relatively easy to bear. And what is bearable will, over time, become harsher and harsher until many will accept utter enslavement. Our schools and colleges have produced millions of citizens who really do believe nothing is worth fighting for. I don’t mean fighting as in slandering political enemies, lying, demonstrating and throwing bricks through windows. We have plenty of citizens who have no problem being bullies. I mean fight as in engage in combat with an equally armed and determined foe.
I submit that if we had the national sentiments and attitudes today that we had in the 1860′s or even as late as the 1940′s, then the attack on 9-11 would never have happened and we would not be in any kind of war with Iran. Why? Simply because everyone would know, in no uncertain terms, that if they attacked us, we would strike back with devastating, crushing military power. We would not give a crap if a mosque got blown up if the enemy was inside it. We would destroy population centers if it served to bring our enemies to their knees sooner. And everyone would know it too. Hence, Muslim powers would steer a wide course around provoking us.
But we don’t have that character anymore. And because of it we run the very real risk that many, many Americans will die needless deaths because a Nuclear Iran does NOT fear us.
Of course we are at war with Iran just as we are at war with the Muslim world. Unlike previous conflicts however, nobody can admit it due to the constraints of political correctness. Iran’s ambition is clearly to be the centerpiece of an Islamic caliphate (or something like it) stretching from Pakistan to the Atlantic. (And don’t forget Indonesia.) I don’t think that anyone can realistically deny this. I realize that there are different religious strains within Islam but, at bottom, there is always a shared interest in people of the same faith. This is why the search for “moderate Muslim” opinion is fatuous. People will always go with a winner and the more Iran looks like a winner, the more of both mid-eastern and worldwide Muslim opinion they will take with them. This isn’t paranoia but rather a reflection of simple human nature. Call it a “Pan-Islamic Union” or whatever you want but this is the ambition of both Iran’s leadership and a large slice of the elite opinion in the mid-east. As we know there are practically no real democracies in this region and very little sentiment for what we would call “liberal democracy.” Such a union would control two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves not to mention a very large and motivated anti-Western population. They are not interested in what we would call the niceties of democratic government. Soon they will have access to both atomic weapons and delivery systems. What do we plan on doing?
You’re all missing the point – the problem is not Iran, the problem is ISLAM.
We are at war with Islam or rather more accurately, Islam is at war with us.
The rulers of Iran don’t care about Iran, they care about Islam. The same goes for Hamas, for Hezbollah, the Taliban, etc. etc. I’m not saying that there is absolutely no element of nationalism in Iran’s quest for hegemony of the Middle-East. But to these Islamists, Iran or any other country is just a vehicule to further Islam. The goal of Islam is political domination, theoretically, an Islamic Empire that dominates the world. While in practice, this can never work due to rivalry between groups or regimes, but this is the ”ideal” that they work towards.
This is why defeating Iran is so important – Islam MUST be defeated, Islam must suffer defeat, one after the other. We cannot allow them ANY victory.
George Bush would not recognize that we are in a shooting war as he let Iranian roadside munitions kill and maim our boys in Iraq. So the chances of the current white house occupant doing anything different is absolutely zero unless doing so wins votes for his party.
From a way of wisdom a thousand ways of wisdom can be deduced, but if you miss-deduce anywhere along the way nothing else holds true.
I appreciate that you have adopted many of the “positions I wrote” on your articles.
When an analyst’s foundational assumptions are incorrect he can not understand what is happening.
Please consider these realities:
Analyzing the actions of the US executive branch over the last 30 years one can only conclude the US executive branch is committed to keep the Iranian dictators, that parade as religious, in power at all cost…
You are fundamentally wrong to say the US is at “war” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being at war would assume that a country is trying to “win the war”; no possible analysis of US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan could lead an objective analyst to believe the US has a goal, or even any interest, in “winning any war”!
So what, in dog theory, are we doing there? Human sacrifice of your best people to the Islime G-d is the only possible conclusion!
Chasing the endless individual supply of losers, who could not coherently describe/defend the “Jihad”; while inviting the leaders of the counties that fund, train, and equip (thru there intelligence agencies) them to dinner at the White House only makes “them” more boldly attack us.
Blockade all Mideast oil from export, blockade all shipping into and out of the Islime ports; they want 6th century; cut there phones, lights, internet, close their borders (by air and sea) until they unconditionally surrender; “War ends, we win”!
“They” are at war with us; we are handing human sacrifice to them, we are not at war (we make no attempt to win), we are at “surrender” and that is especially true with respect to Iran, who has been openly, continuously, and directly attacking the US since 1979.
“Back when containment of the Soviet Empire was in vogue, we fought back when Soviet proxies attacked our friends and allies. We fought proxy wars from Latin America to Africa to Afghanistan.”
That is the central error of all containment thinking, whether the prospective containee is the Soviet Union or Iran. The truth is, we didn’t fight back to WIN when we were containing the Soviet Union. We fought back just to be fighting back. Vietnam is the signal, enduring example, but all of our “fights back” share some of its characteristics. And the most important characteristic is that when everything is done in the context of a nuclear stand-off, WE CONSTRAIN OURSELVES NOT TO SEEK DEFEAT AND REGIME-CHANGE.
The first and only time we fought back to an actual defeat and ejection of the Soviets was in Grenada under Reagan. The rest of the time we accepted draws or defeats for ourselves. We’re still guaranteeing one of the draws on the Korean peninsula, 57 years later. The ironic truth is that what our force guarantees today is the integrity of the DMZ behind which the Kim regime whips and starves its people.
Containment is a terrible dynamic that plays out on the entrails of those proxy populations, and gets us, time and again, to pull our punches. Containment is an objective that seeks any “solution” that will get an evil actor to settle down, as long as we don’t have to court the risk of regime-changing his behind. Containment constrains US as much as it does the target. All it did during the Cold War was make the Soviets think twice about invading other countries with big armies. It didn’t stop them from doing anything else, whether it was propping up communists in Eastern Europe with bombs and tanks, airlifting expeditionary forces to Africa, deploying revolutionary cadre to Latin America, bankrolling Fidel Castro, supporting Islamic terrorism, or supplying arms to dictators in North Vietnam, Syria, Libya, Angola, and Nicaragua.
We can congratulate ourselves that once Iran — under her current leadership — has the bomb, we will have just such prospects to look forward to again. The people of Iraq, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Israel, Egypt, the rest of Africa, Southeastern Europe, South Asia, and Central America won’t view those prospects with quite as much complacency, since “containment” will be unfolding across their playgrounds and workplaces and kitchen tables.
“Containment” That’s what a coffin does.
A few cruise missiles on Khadafy’s compound in Libya stopped him cold from the mischief he was spreading around the world.
A few choice bus size bombs on Amaddogofjihad’s head would stop the Iranian regime cold in its track from supporting the fighting against America and Israel and may even liberate Iran into the hands of its people.
First and foremost, we have no leadership, period. Until we do, nothing will be accomplished. Obama will be the sitting president who allowed Iran to get the bomb, and then, woe betide us and the rest of the world. (Quite a legacy, wouldn’t you say?)
1. David Thomson ‘Elites “don’t like war.” It makes them feel uncomfortable and a bit yucky.’
A-holes love war. It makes them feel all warm and fuzzy. They can’t wait until we get into a REAL war with Iran. Drunk with the victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, they say, What could go wrong?
What part of “Death to the Great Satan” do you not understand?
Well, I hope you hippies are happy. If there’s any justice we’ll get into power with enough time to take your social security checks and put them into the public fisc. You already spent your share of the commonwealth. dan
This does not make your post more important, but shows you did not understand Viet Nam. The recent sanctions still lets Iran buy from the USSR, missle defense systems. So please, since either your a red neck or too young to know what the 60′s movement was about, do you feel the Afgans will continue planting wheat or go back to poppy when we leave? I’m more worried about Pakistan and India with Nukes than Iran. The fact that the people of Iran have to go to underground clubs to hear music, makes me believe the people of Iran will revolt when the time comes.
And yes, the biggest story of the century is in the “known facts of the gulf oil spill”, and not one person, except me, has figured it out; I am amazed! There is a monster of a story staring you in the face! Are there no analyst out there? Is everyone just depending on “Johnny” said? Think about the facts.
Paul of Alexandria:
Yes, it is necessary temporarily to resort to evil actions to achieve worthy objectives. Surely I am highly convinced that “the blind administration (Obamamism’s Socialist Administration) has been done nothing except a policy of pandering and appeasement and supporting Islamic States in addition to embraces of the terror masters.”
Larry in the Silicon:
Dear Larry, thank you! Actually the suffering of Jews is highly touching my heart, because I COME from societies (Arabs, Muslims and Poles) where Jews are MOST CURSED AND SCORNED. I extremely hate Muslims and extremely scorn Poles!!!
As you know the Muslims take over everything in the region, while Jews and Christians deprived of their legitimate right of the Holy Places in Saudi Arabia. And that Jews deprived completely from their right of fortunes in the birthplace of their patriarchs, particularly Saudi Arabia, Iraq.
In fact, all Islamic governments in the Mideast are hates and despise Israel State, including that moslem moderate governments (Turkey government) that claims itself in a good ally of the State of Israel. In general, the Muslims NOT CONVINCED with the existence of State of Israel.
Respectfully
Terry in Israel is correct. It is not Iran that is the problem; after all, look at the Green Movement. It is islam and its fanatical leaders. If we need any further proof of this, Turkey comes to mind. Indeed, this Truth about the horrors of islamic ideology has been occurring since the 7th century as Jews and Christians were consistently slaughtered and their communities destroyed. Just ask the Byzantines of Constantinople. So it is not Iran with the bomb that is the problem; it is islamic suicidal minds with the bomb who believe they will bring about the reign of their medhi. In fact, that mentality is the ultimate problem and why mutual assured destruction can’t work with them. But what is fascinating today is mention the dangers of islam and many people start to scream about ancient Christian abuses or Hebrew Scriptures that contain violence in them. Yet, these same people continue to ignore the daily modern violence of islamic believers, especially the ones who already have the bomb in a nation that was born as the evil one’s retort to the rebirth of Israel. It is a nation we also do not acknowledge that we are at war with called Pakistan. American naively elected a man with a muslim name and islamic sympathies as a “peace” offering to the mad men of islam. It hasn’t worked. We need to get back to destroying the axis of evil. We can begin by praying to the God of Israel for His help.
your obsession with Iran ans Chelers obsessions with muslim man
is amazing!!!
Look Mr. Ledeen: this is not 1940′s this is a whole new century. the 21st century….
do you see what is happening to us in Iraq and Afghanistan? I doubt it.
did you have a chanc e to review my post on your blog about writing fiction? it is still on the table
Best
m
Miriam, all that has changed is this: people are sneakier today than in previous decades, centuries and millenia when it comes to what they want.
Has perfidy been erased from existence?
Are Muslims killing Muslims today? Did Muslims kill Muslims in the past?
As long as ancestry determines the hierarchy within Islam, it continues to demonize what is outside of Islam, but all the while utilizes anything from outside of Islam that is deemed useful.
It’s my dream that if an American President were to order a serious strike package against Iran, a major component of it would be the maximisation of casualties against Revolutionary Guard forces. Of course the primary goal would be neutralisation of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, the secondary its economic annihilation via the destruction of its petroleum refining and domestic power generation capabilities, but a tertiary, and wholly laudable goal, would be to convert fifty thousand howling Islamist fanatics into flying gobs of meat. A massive cruise missile strike at three a.m. on their barracks would be a good start, along with the wrecking of their tinpot ‘navy’ and ‘air force’, coordinated execution of Iranian proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan by Special Forces, and a really lavish salvo of high explosives on any location we suspected contained Ahmadinejad and/or Ali Khamenei.
Of course, given the current epicene (and prone)* incumbent of the White House, this will remain a dream.
* not supine: that would assume he were getting it face upwards
In the Middle East and around the world today, a struggle of titanic proportions is taking shape. The battles are still small by 20th-century standards. In Afghanistan and Iraq, US troops fight in the field. Around the globe, security forces try to thwart murderous terrorists before they can strike at civilian targets. Under multiculturalist banners, unassimilable immigrants demand recognition of Sharia law, accommodation of “honor killings”, and punishment for anti-Islamic speech.
But the spectacle of Israel, a beleaguered island of democracy being hounded by a pack of vicious terrorists and a worldwide elite of self-righteous anti-Semites is enough to get under my skin. Helen Thomas was only the latest example of someone making the mistake of saying out loud in the wrong company what is being increasingly thought by too many others: “The Jews should get out of Palestine!” Israel was a mistake. The Mideast would be fine and the world peaceful if only those Jews hadn’t persuaded Truman and others to let them return home. (See an earlier post on this here.) You can see the Arab/Iranian rejectionists’ point. After all, they didn’t perpetrate the Holocaust! (Most of them can’t even believe such a thing could happen!)
But, like Henry II, we are all expected to keep it to ourselves when we wonder “who will rid us of this meddlesome democracy?”
And now, Iran openly prepares the ultimate weapon for Holocaust II. As if Hitler had published the Wannsee Plans in the New York Times, Ahmadinejad openly savors the day when he will receive the keys to a one-day genocide weapon. (I know, “he’s not really in charge, the Imams are, and they’re level-headed fellows, so they’d never do anything crazy, so don’t worry.”)
The world’s response, increasingly led by the US, is to “tsk- tsk” the whole business. Iran really shouldn’t do that, says Obama. The UN says the world should implement mild sanctions against Iran – up to whatever level Russia and China think compatible with their roles as Iran’s BFF, resulting in the feeblest sanctions ever imposed with a straight face.
Iran, as vulnerable to serious sanctions as any nation anywhere (they export all their oil and import all their gasoline, for crying out loud), laughs at the pathetic face-saving gestures of the West. They can afford to laugh as their centrifuges hum around the clock, because they know two basic facts. First, no nation (except Israel) regards Israel’s survival as a priority. And second, no nation (except Israel) will go to war to protect Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran.