Iran: October 2008 Archives

It's an eminently fair question to ask of any presidential candidate.  Yet, interestingly, the closer Barack Hoover Obama has gotten to Election Day, the less eager he has grown to candidly answer that question.  Months ago he spoke openly of massive tax increases; now all he can talk about is how he's going to "cut taxes for 95% of Americans" - including the more than half of Americans who aren't even ON the tax rolls.  Over a year ago he told us he would meet "unconditionally" with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim jong-Il, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Bashir Assad; now he says he wouldn't - not without the "normal advance low-level preparations," anyway.  And, of course, he was proud of his radical associations with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, et al, but has since either minimized or thrown all of them under the temporary bus.

But you know what Bruce Wayne said in Batman Begins: "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."  The Biblical corallary is: "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man."

So if he becomes president, what will Obama do?

Well, it appears that he'll be late a lot:

This may seem petty at first glance.  And yes, Bill Clinton also had a self-involved penchant for serial tardiness, and he served two terms without (quite) getting the country destroyed, though the families of 9/11 victims might have a few things to say about that.

But it does speak to the character, or lack thereof, of False Messiah.  When you can't be on time for anything, it bespeaks a self-centeredness, an egocentrism that everything is not only all about you, but that it SHOULD be all about you, that you being at the center of the universe is the natural order of things.  It suggests that you don't think anybody or anything else matters.  It implies that nobody and nothing else is important.  It indicates that you consider yourself to be bigger than the office you seek, and bigger than the country you lustfully want to rule .

It screams that you are highly unlikely to listen to anybody else's advice and counsel, PARTICULARLY if it differs from your "judgment".  And that you would be contemptuous of dissent, and seek to suppress it wherever it arose.

Now, to be "fair," there is another old saying, made famous by one-time pro wrestler Ken Patera: "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."  But in the case of this man who is a strange hybrid of Peter Pan and Satan, he's no longer playing in the proverbial sandbox, or even in the back-bencher minor leagues.  Unlike an unearned junior senate seat, one cannot treat the presidency like a hobby; whatever your "judgment" may be, experience - and the humble willingness to accept advice and counsel in lieu of it - is not optional, it is MANDATORY if you actually take being entrusted with the highest office in the land as the sacred trust and ultimate responsibility that it is.

Of all the images that Barack Hoover Obama has projected in this campaign, humility is most definitely NOT one of them.  Which leads to the meat of this RNC spot:

"Can we afford to wait while Barack Obama learns?"  It's an entirely fair question.  I would follow it up with an even more sinus-clearing, deodorant-testing query: Where is the evidence over the course of his adult life that Barack Hoover Obama is CAPABLE of learning?  Not in terms of assimilating information, but in terms of learning from his mistakes?  Learning from HISTORY? 

Socialism has been tried.  All over the world.  Repeatedly.  And it has ALWAYS failed.  The result has ALWAYS been poverty, disease, oppression, and death.  Foreign policy pacifism has been tried.  All over the world.  Repeatedly.  And it has ALWAYS resulted in bigger, bloodier wars.  Neville Chamberlain's and Eduard Daladier's appeasement of Adolph Hitler produced what is, to date, the biggest, bloodiest global conflagration in human history.  Jimmy Carter's appeasement of the old Soviet Union nearly got the U.S. "finlandized," conquered, and/or destroyed, and his sterling "judgment" turned Iran into an enemy that is now on the brink of going nuclear.

Which segues into this devastating McCain ad:

A cardinal rule of negotiating is that the side that can afford to wait the longest usually wins.  A corallary of that rule is that the side that needs the negotiations the least always comes to the table with the upper hand.  This is precisely why Euro-American diplomatic efforts to de-nuclearize Iran over the past several years have produced absolutely nothing.  The West very much wants these negotiations because they so very much do NOT want the alternative of military action to disarm the mullahgarchy.  The Iranians, on the other hand, have no desire to genuinely negotiate, and have therefore used the conspicuous Western "deal-cutting" eagerness to keep the diplodiddling going as a cover and time-buyer for their nuclear weapons program.  Once they conduct their first nuclear test - whether at a test range in their own territory or smack in the middle of Tel Aviv - the de-nuclearization negotiations will be over, and the "Get out of the Middle East or we'll nuke you" negotiations will begin.

Put Barry O in the White House, though, and the mullahs won't even need to prove their entrance into the nuclear club.  Why?  Because he'll be even more conspicuously eager to negotiate with the Iranians than the Bushies have been, and will lack by design the deterrence factor of being perceived as willing to restort to military options if sufficiently provoked.

Appeasers want agreements.  They want that piece of paper to wave around while grinningly proclaiming "peace in our time".  They don't want to think about the possibility that they got taken, and that their "partners in peace" may not share their idealism, may have other objectives, may have ulterior motives, and may not share their commitment to abiding by its sparkling, "world transforming" terms.  To question their own "judgment" is not just anathema to them, it NEVER OCCURS to them.  It is blind ideological faith.  It is the conductor's creed:

1) The conductor is never wrong.

2) If the conductor ever is wrong, refer to (1).

This is what makes the McCain ad, and the spectre of an Obama presidency, so chilling: History - RECENT history - has already proven him wrong across the issue board.  His adult lifetime began with the election of Ronald Reagan twenty-eight years ago; Reaganian ideals of small government, low taxes, individual freedom, and strong national defense and foreign policy has made not just America, but the entire planet freer, more peaceful, and more prosperous than at any time in human history.  And yet Barack Hoover Obama has learned NOTHING from it.  Ronald Reagan ALREADY "changed the world," and it is B.O. who wants to roll all of that back, not to Carter's late-'70s malaise, not to JFK's early-'60s "Camelot," but all the way back to what, for an Orthodox Marxist, is the golden age: the 1930s, when the entire world was in the throes of economic misery, burgeoning global war, and communism was "the wave of the future" even in the U.S. of A.

Yes, we know what Obama would do.  He wants that piece of paper; he wants that grinning photo-op with Adolph; so he'll give the mullahs everything they want.  The result will be at least regional Armageddon (because Israel isn't just going to sit there and wait to be annihilated), nuclear blackmail, skyrocketing oil prices, economic depression and renewed al Qaeda offensives here at home.

At worst, the result will be a global nuclear holocaust.  Because without the United States's benevolent global economic and military hegemony, the entire planet will destablize as the "bad guys" (Russia, Red China, the "rogues" gallery), no longer checked by Uncle Sam, will make their bids for the global power they seek.

It happened once before; history refers to it as "World War II".  The saving grace then was that (1) there wasn't yet the means for mass destruction on a planetary scale and (2) the United States was on the rise as a superpower.  The former long since ceased to be true, and if Barack Obama wins on Tuesday, the latter will go away as well.

The short answer to "What would Obama do?":  He'd get us all killed.

I don't like John McCain.  But I believe that, as Zell Miller said of President Bush four years ago, that he'll do everything in his power to keep my most precious possession - my family - safe.  And that's because he knows WHAT to do to do that.

Every four years the presidential election is shrilly and hyperbollically called "the most important in our lifetimes!"  This time it isn't just actually true - it's a matter of life and death.

The French, they are a funny race, parlez vou (via Newsmax Insider):

France is willing to help Venezuela develop a civilian [heh] nuclear energy program, the two countries’ foreign ministers announced.

Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro told reporters in Paris on Thursday that humanity’s future depended, in part, on nuclear energy, The Guardian in Britain reported.

France’s Bernard Kouchner also said France would like to use Venezuela — a staunch critic of the U.S. — as a go-between with Iran in discussions about its nuclear program, but Iran had so far proved unreceptive.

Venezuela is a major petroleum exporter, while France is home to nuclear giant Areva and is a leading exporter of nuclear technology.

So let's tally this up: Bill Clinton helped North Korea go nuclear in the '90s, the Russians are helping Iran go nuclear now, and the supposedly "pro-American" French government of Nicholas Sarkozy wants to help Hugo Chavez go nuclear tomorrow?  Is anybody on this planet even paying external lip service to the concept of nuclear non-proliferation any more?

Speaking of Iran, here's more "rhetoric of peace and friendship" from the man all-but-President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama just can't wait to break bread with:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched new verbal attacks against Israel, saying Zionist leaders are “germs of corruption” who will be wiped “off the face of the earth.”

Ahmadinejad’s recent comments on the Iranian News Channel were translated and released by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Thursday.

"The Zionists are crooks,” the Iranian leader declared.

“A small handful of Zionists, with a very intricate organization, have taken over the power centers of the world. According to our estimates, the main cadre of the Zionists consists of 2,000 individuals at most, and they have another 8,000 activists. In addition, they have several informants, who spy and provide them with intelligence information.”

This “cadre” controls the world’s financial centers and news and propaganda agencies, and spreads “propaganda as if they were the entire world, as if all the peoples supported them, and as if they were the majority ruling the world,” Ahmadinejad asserted.

"That is a great lie — just like their Jewishness is a great lie. They have no religion whatsoever. They are a handful of lying, power-greedy people who have no religion, who only want to take over all the peoples and countries, and to trample the rights of the peoples . . . 

"A Zionist organization with 2,000 [members] and with 7,000 or 8,000 activists has brought the world to a state of confusion. Let me tell them that if they themselves do not wrap up Zionism, the strong arm of the peoples will wipe these germs of corruption off the face of Earth."

Ahmadinejad also claimed that that Zionists “kidnap oppressed, destitute, ignorant people from other countries, and bring them to the occupied lands to serve as human shields."

I guess that "strong arm" will now include the newest member of the Axis of Evil to our south, where, if memory serves, we have no defenses against incoming missiles, nuclear-tipped or otherwise.

"Merci bo coup," indeed.

Two words, three letters - Iran and EMP:

Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon that could cripple the United States “in a blink of an eye,” says Frank Gaffney, a leading expert on U.S. national security....

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Gaffney warned that Iran’s nuclear program has progressed much further than most officials believe. The Islamic republic could attain a nuclear weapon “any day,” he said.

A single nuclear weapon exploded at the proper altitude would create a wave of energy sufficient to wipe out the entire U.S. electrical grid, causing “catastrophic disaster,” Gaffney said.

In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors global nuclear activities provided intelligence to diplomats indicating that Iran is trying to refit a long-distance missile so that it can carry a nuclear warhead.

“The missing piece as far as we know is the nuclear weapon, and they’re busily working to acquire that,” Gaffney told Newsmax. “And I am afraid they could at any day have the ability not only to obtain that nuclear weapon, but to mate it with a ballistic missile, and God forbid, use it.”

Experts agree that a nuclear detonation at a high altitude would generate an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would destroy most electrical systems. Gaffney predicts it would plunge the entire country into conditions similar to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The resulting social breakdown could ultimately lead to millions of American deaths from various causes, he said.

“Such an attack could really cripple our 21st-century society, and I would suggest sort of push us back into preindustrial society in the blink of an eye,” Gaffney said. “It would translate over time — not immediately but over time — into the deaths of perhaps as many as nine out of ten Americans, because our society simply can’t be sustained without electricity and all of the infrastructure that supports our urban settings.” [emphases added]

I was trying to explain this to my daughter yesterday, not because I thought I'd be able to convey the true horror of the implications, but as a test of a psychology theory I have of the uncommunicability of mortal national security threats.  My theory was borne out, not surprisingly.  But then it is difficult for even me to imagine the immensity of a successful EMP attack on the United States.

The best I can do is to ask you to imagine all the ways your life would change if there were no electricity.  All the applicances in your home, the lights, the heat, would be gone.  All the food in your fridge would spoil.  You couldn't go to the grocery store to replace it because your car wouldn't start, and even if it did, you couldn't refill the gas tank because the pumps at the local filling station wouldn't run, and the tanker trucks couldn't get to the filling station to delivery more gasoline - nor could eighteen wheelers deliver more groceries to the grocery store.  You might have a home generator for just such emergencies, except that they run on gas or kerosene or diesel fuel and that would dry up just like the gas for your car.

Freezing to death.  Starvation.  Chaos.  Let your imagination run wild from there.

The end result?  America would cease to exist as a coherent continental nation because it is simply too big to remain intact without an interconnected modern infrastructure to sustain it.  Civil order would break down.  The law of the jungle would return.  Most of us, rendered decedantly fat, dumb, and happy as the citizens of the late, great global hegomon, wouldn't have a clue as to what to do so survive in such dire circumstances.  Maybe the "over time" death toll wouldn't be quite as high as 90%, but it would be staggering nonetheless.  And there would be no FEMA to ride to the rescue, competently or otherwise, and certainly no international assistance coming our way.

That, of course, assumes that there wouldn't be any follow up from our enemies, whether that was via land invasion or simply nuking our crippled, defenseless homeland to irradiated oblivion.

But again, that hasn't happened - yet.  And because it hasn't happened, it's difficult to see through the prosperous normalcy of life in these United States to recognize the danger of it happening in the very near future.

It's base human nature.  People don't want to confront threats if doing so involves a signficant cost, even if the cost of not confronting them will be inestimably worse.  Far easier to convince yourself that gambling on the latter is the safer bet.  A psychological phenomenon colloquially known as "wishful thinking."

Wishful thinking dominated the foreign policy of the Western democracies in the 1930s even as Adolph Hitler was following his published blueprint for anti-Semitic genocide and world conquest to the letter.  There is arguably no war in human history that was more preventable than World War II, and yet Western leaders refused to believe the evidence of their eyes and ears and instead took comfort in self-generated pacifistic myths and delusions, no more infamously exemplified than the "tough direct diplomacy" that Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier undertook at Munich with Herr Hitler.  Until, of course, the German tanks rolled across Poland, and then France and Holland and Belgium, and then German bombers started raining fire down on London, six million Jews perished, and fifty-four million other human lives joined them, all because Western leaders didn't have the courage to recognize the futility of "diplomacy" and act pre-emptively against Hitler while they had the opportunity.

Happily for the world, the United States was there to (belatedly) intervene and eventually turn the tide against the Nazis.  Which, of course, leads inexorably to the question of who is going to bail out America after it has been decimated by a long-proclaimed EMP attack from the Islamist theocrats in Tehran whose enmity against the United States has been proclaimed non-stop for the past thirty years.  Once again we face an enemy that has told us they are going to bring us to our knees, told us how they're going to do it, and that they will not and cannot be talked out of doing it.  And once again we - and I mean the bipartisan "we" - are refusing to believe the evidence of our eyes and ears and instead are taking comfort in self-generated pacifistic myths and delusions, so much as that we are about to elect as our next president a man who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill.

I have said throughout this campaign that the reason above all others why I deathly fear a Barack Obama presidency is that he is going to get us all killed.  Frank Gaffney says B.O. won't get ALL of us killed, just "as many as ninety percent" of us.  Who'd have ever thought that the former Reagan Admistration official would have turned out to be such a wild-eyed optimist?