If you’re not depressed enough today by the roiling financial markets, read Norman Podhoretz’s “Stopping Iran” in the WSJ. Actually, I read it last night before going to bed and, if it hadn’t been for exhaustion from my lingering flu, it probably would have kept me up.
Look, I don’t know if Norman is right or not – that we have no choice but to make a preemptive strike on Iran in order to prevent their religious-crazy regime from going nuclear – but if he is, the world is in a sorry plight. These are not happy times. Few people want to confront reality – and who can blame them? Watching the Democratic candidates blather on about getting out of Iraq you realize how dishonest we have all become. They know and we know that we must stay there as insurance against the very Iran Podhoretz is talking about, but they don’t have the guts to tell their constituents. So it goes.
“but they don’t have the guts to tell their constituents.”
So when war (probably nuclear) occurs as Podhoretz reasonably suggests is unavoidable because of 1938 style denial, many of their constituents will die, either in the initial attacks or the necessary reprisals. But, frankly, just as with a doomed Social Security program and other pie-in-the-sky liberal fairytale programs Democrats really do not care. Far better to deny reality, bury one’s heads in the sand, and pander for short term electoral gain. They do it so very well. And when war does come, it will not be the politicians who suffer since, as always, they will first protect their own sorry hides at the expense of those they pretend to serve.
Sure, vote for Hillary, universal health care, and another handout. And then get ready to maybe bend over and kiss your sweet patootie goodbye. People get the government they deserve.
America will be America. Canada will follow in its footsteps (as she followed the British Empire in WW1 and 2). We will wait until after an attack on American soil, and then react by making black glass out of Teheran.
And I include the Dems in this scenario.
A nuclear scientist remarked that “Weapons designers play the societal role of witches in fairy talesñwe scare people into behaving.” This may have been the case during the Cold War, but it is very dangerous to believe that nuclear weapons in the hand of the Iranian regime will stay in the realm of nightmares and of elegant mathematical deterrence formulations.
People who themselves have a fairy tale view of the world (and I mean that in the sense of the darker Grimm stories, not the Disney versions) are likely to see nuclear weapons use as something eminently sensible in the waking world.
“…are likely to see nuclear weapons use as something eminently sensible in the waking world.”
That’s the scary part. When you know what must be done (as everybody does) and you rather say well the cold war regime worked before, sure, let them have the bomb.
Our own ‘intelligentsia’ is leading us down the path of destruction.
It seems these people are shiftier than our own frigging enemies.
Can somebody tell me what is so terrible about bombing mostly empty bldgs in the middle of the night?
as opposed to the alternative?
Why are we not united on Iran?
Because self-serving assholes that call themselves politicians and other self serving assholes that call themselves pundits, focus far more on how evil GWB is, or how evil Hilliary Clinton is than on real evil.
You can think, in your happy minds that its all the fault of the Dems, or all the fault of the GOP… but, honestly, its the fault of every red-blooded American. Every American who is a One Issue Voter., every American that VOTES THE PARTY LINE, every American that votes because God supports candidate A, or because Candidate B will keep prayer out of school… has brought us to this place.
Humans do really well at perceiving AN enemy. They don’t do so hot when facing several. The less immediate ones tend to fall through the cracks.
So, by all means, continue to rail about how many babies die from abortions, scream about how many US citizens don’t have health care and argue about just how many millions of dollars a corporation should donate to a candidate. Then, when lots of babies disappear in a bright flash, when lots of US citizens no longer need health care at all and when corporations lie in a puddle… you might realize that America fell because we were too busy fighting with each other over which of Us was the enemy and which of us wanted to destroy America, while our real enemies built bombs to do just that.
This time of partisan “MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY” politics must end. Either we’re going to compromise on issues of opinion and belief, while galvanizing against external threats… or continue down the path of accusing your fellow Americans of being UN-American and then when the bombs hit, maybe you’ll think about those famous words from the Bible:
A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.
“They know and we know that we must stay there as insurance against the very Iran Podhoretz is talking about, but they don’t have the guts to tell their constituents.”
I don’t know about that. I think they’ve been deadly serious about getting out of Iraq for a long time now, consequences be damned. These are the same folks who abandoned SE Asia to the communists in 1975 leading to the slaughter of millions, the most rapid expansion of communism since WWII, and the soiling of America’s reputation.
These are the same folks who up until the fall of the Berlin Wall rushed to blame America first for the tensions that existed between the us and the Soviets, and frankly have always had a soft spot for Marxism and a distaste for capitalism.
It’s a mistake to think the left puts America’s interests ahead of their thirst for power. Witness the eagerness of many of their leaders to bash and blame the US while overseas…Al Gore in the KSA, Nancy Pelosi in Syria, etc. Politics stops at the water’s edge? I don’t think so.
It’s a mistake to think that they care about America’s economic well being either. Do you really think that they don’t know that high taxes, excessive regulation, and a weak and government-dependent electorate will strangle economic development? They know it full well but if they can dupe people into voting them into power with the promise of “free” healthcare and massive unearned entitlements they will do so.
And what is the real goal of the AGW hysteria? To save the planet? Nonsense. It’s to frighten people into accepting the lower standard of living that will be inevitable when they get their tentacles into the production, distribution and regulation of energy. After all the major premise of radical environmentalism is that mankind is destructive to the planet, and the wealthier people are the more damage they inflict. And since we’re by far the wealthiest nation it follows that we are the most destructive.
The framers understood human nature. They knew that ANY government or body of men who gained unlimited power would devolve into tyranny, and tyrants care not one whit for the common people. They care only about power and control.
Perhaps by the time they control the White House Iraq will have stabilized sufficiently that pulling out may no longer be politically expedient, but who in their right mind doesn’t see that the Democrats would have cut and run at any time up until the present success, and the more carnage the better to blame Bush and the Republicans for “the worst foreign policy disaster in America’s history”.
Amen, Paul –
It’s bad, and it’s gonna get worse before it can get better. But keep up the straight talk — Orwell said something like,
“In a time of universal deceit, truth-telling is a revolutionary act”
Buddy,
I am afraid you’re right.
After the Anbar awakening and the rejection of AQ by Sunni Muslims I realized that we essentially won the GWOT. Having Muslim Arabs reject AQ in favor of the American occupiers delivered AQ a fatal PR blow which could only have happened by Iraqis experiencing the AQ monsters first hand, as well as having the Americans there to help them defeat the terrorists and rebuild their country.
In other words whether by design or luck the war played out just right…had we followed either the more rubble less trouble strategy or the cut and run alternative we couldn’t have achieved the same results.
Of course as my fear of AQ abated it was replaced by an even greater fear of the creeping cultural Marxism that is gnawing away at structure of American society like an army of termites, and the prospect of the Dems controlling all three branches of government, the media, and academia is terrifying. Because I’m convinced that whatever it takes, the Dems will make sure the Republicans never get their hands on the levers of power again and thus we will have passed the point of no return on the road to serfdom.
Paul,
Well said. The left wants to make people dependent because you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. They will be entrenched in power. The left (and some supposed conservatives) will sell America and the Constitution down the river to make that happen. The myopic masses don’t even see the subjugation (i.e. serfdom) in store for them.
Buddy,
How true. Do you pay a lower cost today or a much higher cost tomorrow?
Thinking about Iran is difficult because there are no easy choices.
One problem many people have is they project their own values and mistakenly believe that everyone sees the world through the same prism – a colossal mistake when it comes to the Islamists. For example, the Iranians sent 10 year old kids to walk through mine fields during the Iran-Iraq war. There are myriads of examples.
Podhoretz asks should the USA take out Iran now at undetermined cost in human life, money and unintended consequences that he assumes will be less than the cost of taking out a nuclear Iran. The history of appeasement is not pleasant and supports his thesis. However, it seems that people hope against all odds that somehow the cost of conflict can be avoided only to pay a much greater price in the end.
I sent this article yesterday to one liberal fellow I know. He responded that he would be right behind the neocon Podhoretz during an invasion of Iran so he could kill Podhortez himself. Maybe he thinks everything would change if a flower was placed in the barrel of every gun.
Obviously to more rational people, Podhoretz is not the problem. It is what would the Iranians do if they had the bomb.
One of my guesses is that Iran would use the bomb on Israel. Assuming there was still a viable Iran afterwards, Iran would then threaten Europe and America under a “conversion by the bomb” strategy to try to make Islam the de facto religion of the world and establish some sort of global theocracy.
Another guess is that the first bomb goes off in Europe or America in an effort to destabilize the world and then Israel goes.
I do not think that loss of life caused by the bomb or any retaliation or caused by subsequent economic dislocation really matters as long as the mullahs believe they themselves can survive. Suicide is only for the minions.
Ralph Peters:
“One of the most consistently disheartening experiences an adult can have today is to listen to the endless attempts by our intellectuals and intelligence professionals to explain religious terrorism in clinical terms, assigning rational motives to men who have moved irrevocably beyond reason. We suffer under layers of intellectual asymmetries that hinder us from an intuititive recognition of our enemies.”
Paul Reynaud (who became Prime Minister of France just two months before the German invasion of 1940):
“People think Hitler is like Kaiser Wilhelm. The old gentleman only wanted to take Alsace-Lorraine from us. But Hitler is Genghis Khan.”
See also When National Leaders Are Madmen.