We don’t seem to be waking up
Iran, you may have heard by now, is firing up 6,000 centrifuges, certainly enough to make nukes.
Charles Krauthammer says that, since the W administration has utterly failed to stop Iran in its quest to get nukes, the next president is going to have to institute a deterrent policy, which Krauthammer calls the Holocaust Declaration. Basically, it would assert that a nuclear atack on Israel would be regarded as the same thing as an attack on the US. Krauthammer says the focus needs to be on Israel, because Iran isn’t capable of hitting a Western target any farther away.
It’s a sound policy, but he may want to rethink his formulation in light of this development.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Krauthammer was born to Jewish parents of French citizenship. With that talk of the Holocaust I woulda thunk he’s a Kraut. Balderdash!! Is this guy some member of the Israel Lobby? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy
The work claims that “the United States has been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state [Israel]”, and further that U.S. Middle East policy is driven primarily by the “Israel Lobby,” defined as a “loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The authors state that the “core of the Lobby” is “American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel’s interests.” They note that “not all Jewish-Americans are part of the Lobby,” and that “Jewish-Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies.”
And, no, neither I, nor the UN Security Council nor, I’m sure, the vast majority of sane citizens of this globe, wants Iran to be armed with nukes. But, by Jehovah, I would think we’re through being ballistic about all this. The freedom bluffers got us into this mess with Iran and left it wide open for Iran to finagal its way into that country and they are a major reason why we can not leave for decades because we lopped our nose to spite our face.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Wasn’t watching my n’s and q’s, but you know what mess I’m talking about. Hey, lifetime demos, meum pater et pater-in-lexus both say they’ll vote for Hillie, but not Obama, even though they have been bitching about Bush’s war for five years. Go figure? I called my dad a racist and he, said, “you bet!” What’s this country coming to?
April 12th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Well, isn’t that novel? The first counterargument trotted out is the thesis by Walt and Mearsheimer! They of the unsuccessful attempt to make those who understand Israel’s strategic importance to the West’s survival look like narrow-sighted zealots.
No, it wasn’t the “freedom bluffers” (which, as I understand it, is your term for conservatives mostly of the neo variety) who got us where we are regarding Iran. It was Mohammed El-Baradei of the IAEA who kept saying, “Let’s wait for one more meeting, one more inspection, before we impose any more sanctions. Let’s give Iran a little more time to respond and fully disclose what it’s up to.” So it was El-Baradei and the clowns at the European Union who listened to him.
EWell, now that I think about it, I guess it was some folks here who ought to know better as wee, for not speaking up during the middle part of this decade and telling El-Baradei, “Stand aside, bucko, we’re gonna bust a move.”
So your in-laws call this fight against the array of terrorist and rogue-state threats “Bush’s War?” Gives more weight to your question about what this country is coming to, if people in that age bracket are buying into a disconnect between what this country is doing to defend itself and the rest of what this country is about.
As for your dad, what occasioned your calling him a racist?
April 12th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I was joking about him voting for McCain if Obama heads the Demo ticket, but he was not. Neither he nor my father-in-law can abide a black man running this country.
As for El-Baradei, well, he was right and Cheney & Co. were clearly wrong. Pre-emptively striking any country, especially on false grounds, was the worst precedent imaginable by us, the big boy on the block, here in the 21st Century. I am of course abashed and ashamed.
April 12th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
El-Baradei was right? Excuse me, his job was to get Iran to give up uranium enrichment and abide by its obligations re: the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That’s turned out real well, hasn’t it?
I’d be keenly interested in your explanation of just what he was right about.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Excuse me. I thought perhaps El Baradi was involved in trying to wait before we attacked Iraq pre-emptively. So, let’s go, Joe, shock and awe the world again then.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
It may come to that. We have pretty much frittered away the sanctions and regime-change options.