h/t Unstapundit
Israel and North Korea are on opposite sides of the Asian landmass, separated by 5,000 miles as the ICBM flies. But Israelis feels close to the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. They have faced this sort of crisis before, and may again.
Some history: In the mid-1970s, it became clear to Israel that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was working on acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Saddam had already demonstrated an uninhibited brutality in dealing with his internal enemies and his neighbors. He aspired to be the leader of the Arab world. Defeating Israel was at the top of his to-do list.
After coming to office in 1977, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin tried to convince the U.S. and Europe that Saddam was a clear and present danger to the Jewish state, and that action had to be taken. Begin was not taken seriously.
But Begin was serious, and in 1981 he decided that Israel would have to stop the Iraqi dictator all by itself. His political opponents, led by the estimable Shimon Peres, considered this to be dangerous folly. Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, the legendary former military chief of staff, voted against unilateral action on the grounds that it would hurt Israel’s international standing. Defense Minister Ezer Weizmann, the former head of the air force (and Dayan’s brother-in-law) was also against a military option. He thought the mission would be unacceptably risky.
Begin had no military expertise. But his family had been wiped out in the Holocaust. He looked at Saddam, who was openly threating Israel, and saw Hitler. To Begin, sitting around hoping for the best was not a strategy; it was an invitation to aggression. If there was going to be a cost -- political, diplomatic, military -- better to pay before, not after, the Iraqis had the bomb.
In the summer of 1981, Begin gave the order. The Israeli air force destroyed the Osirak reactor. The United Nations Security Council condemned the attack. The Europeans went bonkers. The New York Times called it "inexcusable." But the Israeli prime minister wasn’t looking to be excused by the Times or the Europeans or even the usually friendly Ronald Reagan administration. He enunciated a simple rationale that would come to be known as the Begin Doctrine: Israel will not allow its avowed enemies to obtain the means of its destruction.
The wisdom of this doctrine became clear a decade later, during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein made good on his threat to fire Russian-made SCUD missiles at Israeli cities. The SCUDs landed, and caused some damage and a fair amount of panic, but they were not armed with unconventional warheads. Israel had taken that option off the table.
Similarly, in 2007, Israel confirmed what it had suspected for five years: Syria, with North Korean help, was trying to build a nuclear reactor. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a Begin disciple, sent Mossad chief Meir Dagan to Washington, to ask for American intervention. The CIA chief, Michael Hayden, agreed with Israel’s contention that Damascus (with Iranian financing) was constructing the reactor. But Hayden convinced President George W. Bush that bombing the site would result in all-out war, and who wants that?
Acting on its own, Israel destroyed the Syrian site (reportedly killing a group of North Korean experts in the process). Hayden was wrong about how Syria would react, as he later admitted. If Israel had been reasonable and listened to the CIA, Bashar al-Assad would have nuclear weapons right now. What's so reasonable about listening to CIA?
[DAWN] IN the violence against civilians in the country, the repeated targeting of Hazaras in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... stands out as a particularly grim failure of the state. On Sunday, yet another family of the Shia community was targeted in Kuchlak as they were travelling to Quetta. Four individuals, including a child, were killed in the attack. What followed is also distressingly predictable: the assailants rode off on a cycle of violence unimpeded; security forces arrived at the scene after the gunnies had fled; and hasty search operations in the immediate aftermath of the killing failed to lead to the attackers. Meanwhile, ...back at the pond, the enormous newt was trying to decide if Gloria was edible... the Hazara people have been left to mourn more deaths in a seemingly never-ending descent into fear and terror. To be sure, the vast physical expanse of Balochistan and the sparse population of the province mean that protecting all the people all the time would challenge even the best-resourced, most-committed security forces in the world. But there have been several such incidents in Balochistan; they are clearly linked to a flawed security policy in the region and the failure of the politicianship. The Hazaras, as indeed the general population in Balochistan, will not be safe until the state changes its approach to security in the region.
Yet, delay in long-term changes should not stand in the way of short-term improvements where possible. The enemies of the Hazara people are a relatively narrow band of Death Eaters on the militancy spectrum. Among the groups likely to attack the Hazaras, active Death Eaters are estimated to be relatively small. So while there is no possibility of physically protecting every Hazara, the state can use its significant intelligence and security apparatuses to identify and progressively shut down groups targeting the community. Further, while the state has pointed repeatedly at external sponsors of militancy being responsible for terrorism in Balochistan, the networks used are invariably local. So is preventing violence against Hazaras not a priority for the state, or are lessons that ought to be learned not being learned because there is little accountability? Finally, the Balochistan government, weak and sidelined as it may be in security matters, needs to take a stand. When it comes to the Hazaras, there has long been a suspicion that the political class is indifferent to their plight. The provincial government needs to demonstrate empathy and concern for all its people.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/12/2017 00:00 ||
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[PoliticalPistachio] The horrors of a dystopian future have been laid out for us by science fiction writers, and history. However, time and time again we don't listen, and now our world is once again following the madness of collective promises that can only lead to communistic horror.
In his book 1984, George Orwell showed us a world where language becomes meaningless because of government's double-speak, and individualism is lost because of the rise of a collective society that uses technology to know our every move.
In This Perfect Day by Ira Levin the dystopia uses homogeneity to control the people, making them as alike as possible, using drugs to stop men from growing facial hair, and keeping the population as genderless and collective as possible.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Gibbs gets it. Statism, collectivism, socialism, globalism, political correctness and anyone who promotes this tyranny over the rights of the individual are the enemies.
#2
What is socialism beyond an update and re-naming of feudalism? At least with feudalism the hard guy who lived in the castle pretty much laid it out cut and dried. Now we have Orewellian speak where nothing actually means what they say. But for all the talk of justice the destination is just the same...a small coterie of super rich, super privileged, and above the Law and a vast, drone underclass without any available means to rise. Of course, comes the revolution, it will still be fun to see the excess numbers of Commisars getting the bad news.
#3
It's much more Brave New World than 1984, though there are elements of both, plus Animal Farm. We're seeing it in the raw now, where it was hidden before. The Alphas rule, the Betas carry carry out their will, and the Gammas on down work. Everybody who's anybody is drugged. Religion and monogamy have been abolished and sex is purely for pleasure.
Sound familiar?
Posted by: Fred ||
09/12/2017 16:30 Comments ||
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#4
You got that right. See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener". You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death.
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.
[PoliticalPistachio] The horrors of a dystopian future have been laid out for us by science fiction writers, and history. However, time and time again we don't listen, and now our world is once again following the madness of collective promises that can only lead to communistic horror.
