Who Lost America?

I fear that may be the far more pertinent question in a few years as opposed to who lost France.  You can't blame Nicholas Sarkozy for making alternative arrangements to the close alliance he once enjoyed with President Bush.  With Barack Obama chasing after Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while pissing in the faces of Britain, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, et al, I don't think anybody could have imagined back in 2002 and 2003 that in just a few years it'd be Obamerika that was the cheese(burger)-eating surrender monkeys and the Fighting French rattling sabres in the face of the Iranian nuclear nightmare.  It's not like Sarkozy has much of a choice.

Dore Gold isn't French, but the ex-Israeli UN ambassador offers another aspect of the conflagration we have allowed to descend upon us (via Newsmax Insider):

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold warns that a nuclear-armed Iran would shift "the entire balance in the war on terror" by providing terrorists with a nuclear umbrella.

Speaking at a briefing at the British House of Commons on October 12, Dore — also a former adviser to Israeli prime ministers — said Iran's nuclear program endangers "the security not just of Israel but of the entire Middle East, and I would say the world."

Gold said that as of this past August, Iran had enough nuclear fuel to produce two atomic bombs, and a missile with the capability of striking Israel and Saudi Arabia.

"So if you take the fact that Iran is one of the largest supporters of international terrorism today, and you team that up with the nuclear capabilities that I’ve been describing, you have a security situation which the West has not yet seen," Gold said.

"The whole point of George W. Bush’s decision to remove the Taliban after 9/11 was to send a very clear message: 'You attack the American homeland and we will take down your regime.'

"But fast forward to 2012. Iran has operational nuclear weapons that can strike deep into Europe, and eventually towards the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Will the U.S., U.K., and NATO as a whole have the same freedom of maneuver to say to states that support terrorism, 'We will take you down if you attack us?'

"Will the U.S. Congress authorize sending forces abroad against a state armed with nuclear weapons? In other words, the entire balance in the war on terror shifts, because the state that is the largest global sponsor of terrorism today now has nuclear capabilities . . .

"This nuclear umbrella of Iran will unfurl and will be able to provide protection, not just to Shiite Hezbollah, but to Sunni organizations such as al-Qaida and Hamas."

Picture a series of suicide bombings across the country.  Or another 9/11-style mass casualty attack against multiple targets.  al Qaeda immediately claims credit for the attacks.  But...Iran has nuclear weapons.  Even if the mullahgarchy doesn't utter a peep about bin Laden's actions, do we go back into Afghanistan and turn it into a parking lot this time?  Could Pakistan be bullied into doing so the way Pervez Musharraf was last time with Tehran wielding nukes and already undermining them?

Or turn it around and ask this question: Wouldn't an Iranian nuclear umbrella enable the Taliban/al Qaeda axis to systematically take over Pakistan and ITS atomic arsenal with impunity?  Red Barry is retreating into lunatic fantasizing about "good" Taliban and "bad" Taliban and conceding vast stretches of the country to the enemy because he can't stomach sending forty thousand extra troops to Afghanistan to fuel another victory-clinching "Surge" counter-insurgency offensive.  Does anybody believe he'd risk a regional (at least) nuclear war with Islamist Armageddonists for ANY reason?

And once the two back-to-back radical Islamic nuclear powers are in place, irremovable, triumphant, with the Russians and ChiComms behind them, and holding all the cards against the self-neutered, moribund U.S. and its betrayed, abandoned allies, would we then not be looking at checkmate?

That's the context for the scenario depicted by Doug Ross, and depicted all too awfully by the History Channel's Day After Disaster:

This is precisely the scenario that made a pre-emptive, regime-changing invasion of Iran an absolute necessity before they could develop nuclear weapons of their own.  Take out the regime that would set off a Hiroshima-magnitude atomic device in Washington, D.C. and....guess what?  They'll never get the chance to do so.  Leave that regime in place, pursue endless, futile, suicidal "diplomacy" instead and that regime gains the time it needs to get nuclear weapons, distribute them to their terror networks (yes, including al Qaeda), smuggle them into our country, and, well, you can see the result above.

With Ambassador Gold confirming (if still a bit underestimated) what I projected two years ago, this die is cast.  Iran has joined the "nuclear club".  Except that unlike ourselves, Britain, Israel, and France, who would never use nuclear weapons under any circumstances (certainly not under current "management"), and unlike Russia and Red China, who are sufficiently rationalist that they can be deterred, there is no way to deter an apocalyptical theocratic regime that welcomes a nuclear holocaust believing that that will bring back their "Twelfth Imam" messiah.

And if the mullahs are less eager to collect their seventy-two virgins than their Geico Cavemanesque frontman advertises, well, they don't have to shoot ICBMs at us.  Just send in their teams to assemble the bomb materials, load them in a van, and park it in front of the Capitol, or mid-town Manhatten, or the port of Los Angeles, and pull the trigger.  If they are shrewd and clam up, maybe we can figure out who did it, maybe we can't.  Maybe it takes a while, with every passing day turning the shock and initial anger into burgeoning mass fear, helplessness, and national impotence.

If they are even shrewder, perhaps they send Ahmadinejad - maybe jointly with bin Laden and Mullah Omar - before the cameras to "take credit" for the "glorious, holy instrument of Allah's judgment against the Great Satan and its infidel hordes" etc., and deliver an ultimatum: "There are an undisclosed number of additional nuclear devices deployed in several other major American cities.  You must immediately force Israel's unconditional surrender, withdraw all American military forces from around the world back within the national borders of the United States, and institute sharia law over your country, or we will kill millions more of your people."

A bluff?  Maybe.  But would it be inconceivable for an administration as softheaded and roaringly incompetent as this one to let one or more additional atomic suicide teams slip through the HLS counter-terror dragnet?  More to the point, does anybody seriously believe that Barack Obama would have the courage to call such a bluff even if they hadn't?  Let alone retaliate by dusting Tehran?

I wish to God these were still hypothetical questions.  All we can do now is pray to God that they don't become a hideous reality, because we have forfeited our window of opportunity to prevent them ourselves.