Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, insists on proving that he can't be trusted. He made his political debut in 1970, joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, then accused American troops of war crimes in Vietnam -- and tried to deny he had done so.
During his ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign, Mr. Kerry's hyperventilated claims to be a war hero were called into question by his own comrades. Now, the Democrat defeatist has published his formula for victory in Iraq: just quit.
In a 600-word screed published this week by the New York Times, Mr. Kerry lays out his vision for the future. Unfortunately, like so much else in the Massachusetts liberal's political life, it is full of flim-flam, half-truths, distortions and outright falsehoods. A few examples based on my seven trips covering U.S. forces in Iraq for Fox News:
Mr. Kerry: "Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war."
Reality: No U.S. or Iraqi official has described what's happening as a civil war. In fact, all have categorically disagreed with such a characterization. Only the "Blame America First" crowd and the mainstream media broadcasting from balconies in the green zone depict it as such.
Mr. Kerry: "Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work."
Reality: Those of us who are unashamed of our service know we didn't lose the war on the battlefields of Vietnam -- but in the corridors of power in Washington.
Mr. Kerry: "No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences."
Reality: American troops in Iraq aren't being wounded and killed because of Iraqi politicians -- but by terrorists who refuse to participate in the political process.
Mr. Kerry: "Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military."
Reality: Every soldier, sailor, airman, Guardsman and Marine I have interviewed in Iraq -- from Gen. George W. Casey down to riflemen on patrol believe a withdrawal deadline is a formula for disaster.
Mr. Kerry: "If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end."
Reality: Now there's a real incentive. If you don't do as we say, we'll pull out immediately. If you do as we want -- we'll still pull out 225 days later.
Mr. Kerry: "We must immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton Accords-like summit meeting."
Reality: Show us the list of "diplomats" who would negotiate with Abu Musab Zarqawi and his ilk.
Mr. Kerry: "To increase the pressure on Iraq's leaders, we must redeploy American forces to garrisoned status."
Reality: U.S. troop leaders -- and Iraqi officials agree the place to put the pressure is on the terrorists doing all in their power to prevent formation of a democratic government.
Mr. Kerry: "Special operations against al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq should be initiated only on hard intelligence leads."
Reality: That's what's being done now, Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Kerry: "We will defeat al Qaeda faster when we stop serving as its best recruitment tool."
Reality: As the September 11 attacks proved, just being the home of the brave and the land of the free, makes America al Qaeda's best "recruitment tool." It was that way before Iraq -- and it will stay that way much longer if we turn tail and run.
Mr. Kerry: "An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.... "
Reality: How?
Mr. Kerry: "... and allow us to repair the damage of repeated deployments, which flag officers believe has strained military readiness and morale."
Reality: If morale is suffering, why is the re-enlistment rate among combat-committed units (average 106 percent) at unprecedentedly high levels?
Mr. Kerry's half-witted harangue has attracted considerable attention in the media. It is widely circulated in the Islamic press. But it's no formula for success. It should instead be described as a plan to abandon ship.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:46 ||
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I should've HT'd Powerline for the referral
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 15:01 Comments ||
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It should be pointed out that John Kerry once served in Vietnam.
#5
#2: "It should be pointed out that John Kerry once served in Vietnam."
It should also be pointed out that J F'ing K was a TRAITOR during the Vietnam war.
And he hasn't changed a bit. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 22:08 Comments ||
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Puts things in perspective. No matter how mad I get at Bush and the GOP (and right now I'm seething like a Paleostinian) - it's STILL better than having that treasonous idiot Kerry in the White House.
#2
Unfortunately that is true. Even though I think Condi would be a most excellent POTUS. I just can't see the MSM (and NYT in particular) giving her the title 'First Woman President of the United States' without choking.
On that day they will simply stop the 'First Woman ...' so that they wouldn't have to.
HOW do you slip legislative poison past a U.S. senator? Bury it on page 302 of a bill. The Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders yesterday announced a compromise on an immigration bill - with some details still to be worked out. But details that may continue from the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee should definitely be deal-breakers.
Like that surprise hidden on page 302 - which would replace the country's entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.
With a few exceptions, today's immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years - and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years' experience practicing immigration law.
Virtually the only lawyers who'll meet that requirement are attorneys who represent aliens in the immigration courts - who tend to be some of the nation's most liberal lawyers, and who are certainly unlikely as a class to be fond of enforcing immigration laws.
It gets worse. Immigration judges are now appointed by the attorney general - whose job it is to see to it that laws are enforced. The Senate bill gives that power to a separate bureaucrat, albeit one directly appointed by the president, making immigration courts more susceptible to leftward polarization.
The second nasty surprise? Just before the committee approved the bill on the evening of March 27, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered the "DREAM Act" as an amendment. It passed on a voice vote. The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 law that prohibits state universities from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. The principle, of course, is that no illegal alien should be entitled to receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit that out-of-state U.S. citizens can't get. But the committee's bill allows illegals to be treated better than those U.S. citizens on tuition.
The bill also gives an amnesty to the nine states (including New York) that have been flouting the '96 law, two of which (California and Kansas) are now facing lawsuits (I'm a counsel to the plaintiffs in both cases).
The third nasty surprise lies in what the bill fails to do. The measure envisions a massive amnesty for illegal aliens now in the country - but doesn't give the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) the personnel or infrastructure to implement the amnesty.
In March, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the CIS's inability to effectively detect immigration fraud. The last time we enacted a major amnesty, in 1986, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the CIS's predecessor agency) processed some 3 million amnesty applications from illegal aliens. It found 398,000 cases of fraud - and missed thousands more. Now CIS may have to implement an amnesty four times larger.
Yet CIS already faces a backlog of several million applications for immigration benefits. And the GAO found that CIS managers pressure staff into "meeting production goals" by approving applications quickly - which means that fraud goes undetected. Adding millions of amnesty applications can only make things worse. And the latest Senate "compromise" - giving immediate amnesty only to aliens who've been in the country for five years or more - makes the process even more complex and fraud-prone, as illegals use fake documents to "prove" long-term residence.
In 1986, the terrorist Mahmud "The Red" Abouhalima fraudulently got amnesty as a seasonal agricultural worker (in fact, he was a New York cabbie). That status allowed him to travel to Afghanistan for terrorist training - which he later used as one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
Terrorists know how to game the system. Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, released a study last year on how easily terrorists obtain immigration benefits. Of 94 alien terrorists in the United States, she found that 59 were successful immigration frauds. That includes six of the 9/11 hijackers.
The Senate bill does nothing to address this problem - while throwing a massive new load on the bureaucracy. A new amnesty will almost certainly ensure that more terrorists gain the legal right to walk our streets.
They will no doubt show their appreciation by attacking innocent Americans. And that will be the nastiest surprise of all.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Xenophobic paranoia. Where's the popcorn graphic?
Posted by: Black Sunday ||
04/09/2006 0:48 Comments ||
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Yup, I'm xenophobic against commies. I think it's a good thing they're not allowed in or able to sit on the bench.
I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know you can help with this.
I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here.
So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Vicente Fox, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:
1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. All government forms need to be printed in English.
4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.
5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down.
7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.
9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my car, and have a gigadntic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws.
13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy.
I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all the people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that
Pres. Fox won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely. However, if he gives you any trouble, just invite him to go quail
hunting with your V.P.
A famed neoconservative switches sides on the Iraq war -- and all hell breaks loose.
By Francis Fukuyama
SEVEN WEEKS AGO, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind.
But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum. From the right, columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused me of being an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause and a coward to boot. From the left, I've been told that I have "blood on my hands" for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that my "apology" won't be accepted.
In our ever-more-polarized political debate, it appears that it is now wrong to ever change your mind, even if empirical evidence from the real world suggests you ought to. I find this a strange and disturbing conclusion.
For the record, I did change my mind, but in the year preceding the war not after the invasion. In 2002, I told the London Times that "the use of military power to push [Iraqi democracy] forward is a big roll of the dice. We may not win on this one." On the first anniversary of 9/11, I argued in the Washington Post that we should invade Iraq only with approval from the U.N. Security Council, and in December of that year, I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal warning that the project of democratizing Iraq and the Mideast might come to look like empire and that it violated the conservative principle of prudence.
But when my political shift occurred is not important: Even if it had come a year or two later, it would still not have represented a cowardly retreat or an apologia, but a realistic, intellectually honest willingness to face the new facts of the situation.
In my view, no one should be required to apologize for having supported intervention in Iraq before the war. There were important competing moral goods on both sides of the argument, something that many on the left still refuse to recognize. The U.N. in 1999 declared that all nations have a positive "duty to protect, promote and implement" human rights, arguing in effect that the world's powerful countries are complicit in human rights abuses if they don't use their power to correct injustices. The debate over the war shouldn't have been whether it was morally right to topple Hussein (which it clearly was), but whether it was prudent to do so given the possible costs and potential consequences of intervention and whether it was legitimate for the U.S. to invade in the unilateral way that it did.
It was perfectly honorable to agonize over the wisdom of the war, and in many ways admirable that people on the left, such as Christopher Hitchens, George Packer, Michael Ignatieff and Jacob Weisberg, supported intervention. That position was much easier to defend in early 2003, however, before we found absolutely no stocks of chemical or biological weapons and no evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program. (I know that many on the left believe that the prewar estimates about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were all a deliberate fraud by the Bush administration, but if so, it was one in which the U.N. weapons inspectors and French intelligence were also complicit.) It was also easier to support the war before we knew the full dimensions of the vicious insurgency that would emerge and the ease with which the insurgents could disrupt the building of a democratic state.
But in the years since then, it is the right that has failed to come to terms with these uncomfortable facts. The failure to find WMD and to make a quick transition to a stable democracy as well as the prisoner abuse and the inevitable bad press that emerges from any prolonged occupation have done enormous damage to America's credibility and standing in the world. These intangible costs have to be added to the balance sheet together with the huge direct human and monetary costs of the war.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently admitted that the United States made numerous tactical errors in Iraq, but she insisted that the basic strategic decision to go to war was still as valid as ever because we foreclosed once and for all the possibility that Iraq would break out of sanctions and restart its WMD programs.
But we now know a lot that throws that fundamental strategic rationale into question.
The Iraq Survey Group and the U.S. military have released hundreds of pages of documents on Iraq's prewar WMD programs showing that, at times, Hussein believed he possessed biological weapons that didn't exist and that, at other times, he led his most senior commanders to believe he had WMD capabilities that he knew were entirely fictitious. His government was so corrupt, incompetent and compartmentalized that it is far from certain that he would have succeeded in building a a nuclear program even if sanctions had been lifted. Nor is it clear that a breakdown of the sanctions regime was inevitable, given an energized United States and the very different political climate that existed after 9/11.
The logic of my prewar shift on invading Iraq has now been doubly confirmed. I believe that the neoconservative movement, with which I was associated, has become indelibly associated with a failed policy, and that unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy. I changed my mind as part of a necessary adjustment to reality.
What has infuriated many people is President Bush's unwillingness to admit that he made any mistakes whatsoever in the whole Iraq adventure. On the other hand, critics who assert that they knew with certainty before the war that it would be a disaster are, for the most part, speaking with a retrospective wisdom to which they are not entitled.
Many people have noted the ever-increasing polarization of American politics, reflected in news channels and talk shows that cater to narrowly ideological audiences, and in a House of Representatives that has redistricted itself into homogeneous constituencies in which few members have to appeal to voters with diverse opinions. This polarization has been vastly amplified by Iraq: Much of the left now considers the war not a tragic policy mistake but a deliberate criminal conspiracy, and the right attacks the patriotism of those who question the war.
This kind of polarization affects a range of other complex issues as well: You can't be a good Republican if you think there may be something to global warming, or a good Democrat if you support school choice or private Social Security accounts. Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.
Francis Fukuyama is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy.
Look everybody! Francis made us a pinata! (Forgive the missing squiggle mark)
The governments policy to cleanse the tribal agencies, especially South and North Waziristan, of hardened extremist Taliban and Al Qaeda elements has drawn increasing flak from various quarters. The political opposition, including the religio-political alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, says the policy is being pursued under pressure from the United States. The MMA also says there are no foreign elements in the area and the security forces are killing Pakistani tribesmen. On the other hand, non-religious and even some liberal elements want the government to remove the blanket cover on the region. They also want the violence to end and advocate a political dialogue with the leaders of the local people. For good measure the issue of reforms is also brought up time and again. The media, while reporting on incidents of violence and other newsworthy developments, is largely at sea when commenting on the situation. This is partially because there is not much access to the area and partially because large sections of the media are not convinced of the appropriateness of the current policy. This also comes through in talk shows and other programmes on TV.
What is the truth? Lets take the issue of foreigners in the area.
The MMA and other political elements simply lie when they deny the presence of foreign elements in the tribal agencies. Three years of arrests of various Al Qaeda elements from NWFP, Punjab and Sindh should be enough proof of how many of them were around and how many may be still hiding. The army and paramilitary troops have killed dozens in various encounters. Intelligence reports show their presence, as do the accounts of those who have been to the area. General Pervez Musharraf has admitted to foreign presence on many occasions. It is also corroborated by statements of political and assistant political agents and other administration officials. There is no use denying a fact as glaring as that.
As for a political dialogue, again, the truth is that the government has made numerous efforts to engage the local people, tried to cut deals with them, even looked the other way when they have acted in bad faith. But the Taliban penetration in the area is too deep and nothing has really worked. The MMA has played the worst part in the whole affair: its members have resorted to petty and self-serving tactics. While ostensibly allowing the federal troops to operate in the area to save the provincial government the MMA has done everything on the ground to trouble and harass the federal government. The reason is simple: it has sympathy for the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements and it wants to retain the profitable status quo in the region. This has forced it into double-speak and double-dealing. Therefore the MMA is not the militarys partner when it comes to dealing with the tribal agencies because it is part of the problem. Thus while dialogue is important and the government must never fear to talk and negotiate, it is counterproductive to talk and negotiate with terrorists out of fear. And, given the situation, the space for a dialogue is increasingly shrinking.
Have local people died in the clashes? Yes, they have. But such deaths need to be put in context. Most tribesmen are sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and are anti-army. All are armed. It is extremely difficult for the army to know exactly who is who when it is fired upon. These people do not wear uniforms and they cannot be identified. It is very easy to criticise the army from afar but those who have any experience of such operations know how difficult it is to control collateral damage in such situations. This is why the government has now directed in some areas within the region that people should not bear arms a policy that is being criticised by some people on the pretext that the NWFP has an entrenched gun culture. The argument that the government should not indulge in violence and the people must not be deprived of their arms because bearing arms is their tradition is ridiculous. This is what Maulana Abdur Rehman, general secretary of JUI-Fazl in North Waziristan told a jirga in Mir Ali on Friday. This is also the misplaced line taken by various commentators when they talk about engaging the tribesmen through traditional channels. Well, the fact is that the government has tried to engage them through jirgas but nothing much has come out of it.
This has reached the point where pro-Taliban local tribesmen have started demanding that the army should withdraw from North Waziristan. These are the same elements that, sometime ago, directed the prayer leaders in the two agencies to enforce the literalist brand of Islam favoured by the Taliban. Now they are clamouring against the armys presence in the area because they cannot move and operate freely with the army around. It is ironic that they are being supported by the moderate political opposition which wants to put the squeeze on General Musharraf for other reasons.
Those who are still not convinced of what the troublemakers are doing would do well to note a statement by tribal militant commander Baitullah Mehsud who said that those killed on Wednesday were mujahideen returning from operations in Afghanistan. Mr Mehsud has also demanded that the army should withdraw from Waziristan. It is part of our deal with the government that forces will be withdrawn, he told the media from an undisclosed location. This should be enough proof that those who want the status quo and those who want to trouble the government are not ready to listen to reason. The war against terrorism is Pakistans war first and then Americas war.
The Iranian president better sober up and do some cool reckoning.
We are now acquainted with the familiar scenario: Iran is supposedly poised to become another disaster like Iraq. The United States, bruised in Iraq, needs redemption, and so will either press onto Teheran in its vainglorious imperial ambitions, or seek to direct attention away from Iraq by conjuring up another dragon to slay.
The Left further alleges that, once more, we favor preemption, wish to attack an Islamic country, will act unilaterally, and will sex up the intelligence to construct a casus belli about mythical weapons of mass destruction. The result is that the mere idea of preemption in Iran is just too messy even to contemplate, so we may end up timidly outsourcing the problem to others. That is the general critique of our Iranian policy.
Meanwhile, amid that conundrum, the Iranians are engaged in a three-part strategy to obtain nuclear weapons. First, they conduct military exercises, showing off novel weapons systems with purportedly exotic capabilities, while threatening to unleash terror against global commerce and the United States. It may be a pathetic and circus-like exercise born of desperation, but the point of such military antics is to show the West there will be some real costs to taking out Iranian nuclear installations.
Second, Iranians simultaneously send out their Westernized diplomats to the U.N. and the international media to sound sober, judicious, and aggrieved pleading that a victimized Iran only wants peaceful nuclear energy and has been unfairly demonized by an imperialistic United States. The well-spoken professionals usually lay out all sorts of protocols and talking-points, all of which they will eventually subvert except the vacuous ones which lead nowhere, but nevertheless appeal to useful Western idiots of the stripe that say Israel has a bomb, so lets be fair.
Third, they talk, talk, talk with the Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Hugo Chavez, anyone and everyone, and as long as possible in order to draw out the peace-process and buy time in the manner of the Japanese militarists of the late 1930s, who were still jawing about reconciliation on December 7, 1941, in Washington.
During this tripartite approach, the Iranians take three steps forward, then one back, and end up well on their way to acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite all the passive-aggressive noisemaking, they push insidiously onward with development, then pause when they have gone too far, allow some negotiations, then are right back at it. And we know why: nuclear acquisition for Iran is a win-win proposition.
If they obtain an Achaemenid bomb and restore lost Persian grandeur, it will remind a restless population that the theocrats are nationalists after all, not just pan-Islamic provocateurs. A nuclear Iran can create all sorts of mini-crises in the Gulf on a far smaller scale than Saddams invasion of Kuwait which could spike oil prices, given the omnipresence of the Iranian atomic genie. The Persian Gulf, given world demand for oil, is a far more fragile landscape than in 1991.
The Islamic world lost their Middle Eastern nuclear deterrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union no surprise, then, that we have not seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel ever since. But with a nuclear Islamic Iran, the mullahs can claim that a new coalition against Israel would not be humiliated or at least not annihilated when it lost since the Iranians could always, Soviet-like, threaten to go nuclear. There are surely enough madmen in Arab capitals who imagine that, at last, the combined armies of the Middle East could defeat Israel, with the guarantee that a failed gambit could recede safely back under an Islamic nuclear umbrella.
Lastly, Iran can threaten Israel and U.S. bases at will, in hopes of getting the same sort of attention and blackmail subsidies it will shortly obtain from the Europeans, who likewise are in missile range. All failed states want attention who, after all, would be talking about North Korea if it didnt have nukes? So, in terms of national self-interest, it is a wise move on the theocracys part to acquire nuclear weapons, especially when there is no India on the border to play a deterrent role to an Iran in the place of Pakistan.
There are only two slight problems with this otherwise brilliant maneuvering: George Bush and the government of Israel. Conventional wisdom might suggest a chastised president is only showing the preemption card to play the bad cop alternative to the Europeans. Pundits also point to George Bushs low polls to illustrate how straitjacketed the president is in his options, as Iraq, Katrina, and illegal immigration sap away his strength.
Again, Im not so sure. Low polls work both ways. Is an advisor likely to whisper to a second-term Mr. Bush, Be careful about preemption in Iran, or your approval rating polls might sink from 40 to 35?
Moreover, who knows what a successful strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might portend? We rightly are warned of all the negatives further Shiite madness in Iraq, an Iranian land invasion into Basra, dirty bombs going off in the U.S., smoking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, Hezbollah on the move in Lebanon, etc. but rarely of a less probable but still possible scenario: a humiliated Iran is defanged; the Arab world sighs relief, albeit in private; the Europeans chide us publicly but pat us on the back privately; and Iranian dissidents are energized, while theocratic militarists, like the Argentine dictators who were crushed in the Falklands War, lose face. Nothing is worse for the lunatic than when his cheap rhetoric earns abject humiliation for others.
Finally, in a post-September 11 world, no American president wants to leave a nuclear Iran for his successor to deal with especially when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the one in control of the nukes and promising a jihad if confronted, is probably a former American hostage taker and terrorist.
The president still believes, as do many others, that the removal of Saddam was necessary, and that Iraq will still emerge as a consensual society. If he leaves office after birthing democracies in lieu of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and establishing that the region is free of nuclear weapons, despite the worst Iranian bullying, his presidency, for all the current hysteria, will be seen by history as a remarkable success.
And then there is Israel. All sane observers hope it is not drawn into this crisis, and for a variety of reasons. The emboldened Iranians count on this. Yet they do not realize the extent of the dilemma that their rhetoric and nuclear brinkmanship force on an Israeli president. To do nothing, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, would imply three assumptions on the part of an Israeli leadership wiping us off the map is just theocratic rhetoric; if the Iranians ever do get the bomb, they wont use it; and if they use it, it wont be against us.
Those are, in fact, three big ifs and no responsible Israeli can take the chance that he presided over a second holocaust and the destruction of half the worlds surviving Jewry residing in what the radical Islamic world calls a one-bomb state.
History would not see such restraint as sobriety, but rather as criminal neglect tantamount to collective suicide, and would reason: An Israeli prime minister was warned by the president of Iran that he wished to wipe Israel off the map. He was then informed that Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons. And then he did nothing, allowing a radical Islamic regime to gain the means to destroy the Jewish state.
So for all the lunacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad, it is time for him to sober up and do some cool reckoning. He thinks appearing unhinged offers advantages in nuclear poker. And he preens that unpredictability is the private domain of the fanatical believer, who talks into empty wells and uses his powers of hypnosis to ensure his listeners cannot blink.
Iran, of course, is still an underdeveloped country. It seems to profess that it is willing to lose even its poverty in order to take out one wealthy Western city in the exchange. But emotion works both ways, and the Iranians must now be careful. Mr. Bush is capable of anger and impatience as well. Of all recent American presidents, he seems the least likely to make decisions about risky foreign initiatives on the basis of unfavorable polls.
Israel is not free from its passions either for there will be no second Holocaust. It is time for the Iranian leaders to snap out of their pseudo-trances and hocus-pocus, and accept that some Western countries are not merely far more powerful than Iran, but in certain situations and under particular circumstances, can be just as driven by memory, history, and, yes, a certain craziness as well.
Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live. The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.
So far the Iranian president has posed as someone 90-percent crazy and 10-percent sane, hoping we would fear his overt madness and delicately appeal to his small reservoirs of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90-percent children of the Enlightenment, they are still effused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational 10 percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.
So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Brigitte Gabriel
I was invited to give a lecture sponsored by Professor David Patterson of the Judaic Studies Program. When news about my appearance spread, the Muslim community both on and off campus launched a full-scale campaign to stop my lecture. They demanded that Dr. Patterson cancel my speech. E-mails flooded the University of Memphis administration and Dr. Patterson from Muslim students on campus and Muslims in the community and mosques. Here are some of their comments:
People like Brigitte are plenty in the world, they are the true enemies of Islam. And despite their rubbish talks, the truth about Islam is spreading like a wildfire across Americas and across the globe (All Praise to Allah).
Dr. Patterson, hosting of this lady is orders of magnitude worse than hosting of the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Do you honestly think the scheduled lecture will serve any useful purpose other than inflaming the Muslims, insulting them and spilling poison in the community?
#2
well, if the campus bigs don't cave like a bunch of cowering wussies, then think of it as good publicity for your talk. And if they do cave, work to get them fired.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
HOW do you slip legislative poison past a U.S. senator? Bury it on page 302 of a bill. The Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders yesterday announced a compromise on an immigration bill - with some details still to be worked out. But details that may continue from the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee should definitely be deal-breakers.
