WarSclerotic

Bewitched:

It was little less than a year ago that I posted a video on Inauguration day from Aquasport in Eilat, Israel… the place I learned to scuba dive some 28 years ago.

Eilat was where my brother and I had opened a diving/deep sea fishing business only to be bankrupted 6 months later due to the impact of the first Lebanon  war on tourism.

In the video you can see just how overwhelmed I was by the euphoric sense of hope that this man represented a real chance for America to regain its sense of pride in its system; and maybe even help unify the world with a new sense of hope for peace even in this horrifically troubled region.

I had been one of those that had worked hard to convince Barack to run for president in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/…

Bothered

The euphoria was pretty short lived… Though I kept holding on to a belief that Barack had something up his sleeve that he would pull out at the right time.

I couldn’t believe that this man of the people would try to turn the economy around by bailing out unproductive parasitic companies that had caused a great part of our economic disorder in the first place, while allowing productive industries like GM to go bankrupt.

“Too big to fail” sounded like something Bush would have come up with, if he had had the ability to speak English.  It’s out and out “trickle down” Reaganomics.

But at least I KNEW he was serious about finally doing something to save the catastrophic health care system that the country had fallen into over the last 3 decades.

I refused to believe at first that he had made backroom deals with the Pharmaceutical industry, and then later with the Insurance industry.  These are the same industries that through their greed and malfeasance were the primary cause of the problems in our system in the first place.

I then watched in stunned disbelief as Barack stood on the sidelines while the House and the Senate squabbled endlessly.  Providing no leadership to the country or to his party, Obama actually left it up to the weakest sister of them all in the Democratic leadership, Harry Reed of all people to be the one to take a stand in favor of the “Public Option.”

Today, under the headline, “, Breakthrough: Health Care Talks Advance In Senate,” the Huffington Post is reporting that, “The discussion has focused on abandoning or greatly narrowing the public health insurance option. ”

Apparently the mandate that Obama was given with control of both the House and the Senate is going to result in a “solution” that essentially puts window dressing on our current health care system while ensuring the continued control of it by the same people who destroyed it in the first place.

Sigh…. !

Bewildered

Thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan?  To prop up a corrupt, ineffective government, elected through fraud, and representing only one ethnic group of a country completely divided by multiple tribes who have never actually viewed themselves as constituting a unified people?

That’s the real difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Vietnam had a deep historic national identity that could have been unified if the US policy had been focused on that rather than on the misplaced ideology of the Cold War known as the “domino theory.”

There’s no such unity in Afghanistan.  I can see no way that the force of American arms can make any long term difference there.

Obama’s policy is throwing our soldiers lives away in a hopeless attempt to turn Afghanistan into a “real” country; something it will never be until it adopts a pluralistic approach giving power and real autonomy to the various ethnic regions of which it is composed.

The argument that withdrawing would allow Al Queda to reconstitute itself there better than it has already done in Pakistan, Yemen and throughout the Islamic world from the Philippines to Gaza is unconvincing to the point of being laughable.

More laughable still is the notion that Al Queda, in any form it might take in the future represents a greater threat to the US than Iran.

One of the arguments given by Barack in his speech was that we needed to stay in Afghanistan to help prop up Pakistan to prevent their nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of Islamic extremists.

Meanwhile, within the next few months, Iran… A nation of 78 million people and with a radical Islamic ideology that differs from Al Queda only in that it seeks world domination of Shia rather than Sunni Islam will have atomic weapons within the next few months.

While one can hardly blame the Revolutionary Guards for wanting to acquire the one thing that they believe will deter the US from ultimately engineering their downfall, the impact of their acquiring nuclear weapons will have a destructive and destabilizing influence on the world that will make even 9/11 look like an episode of Captain Kangaroo.

Iran is already planning to close the straights of Hormuz should their nuclear institutions be attacked by either the US or Israel.  (See: The Naval Arena in the Struggle against Iran | Global Terrorism)

The effects of a radical regime like Iran acquiring Nuclear weapons represents a case of first instance in world history that is hard to predict, other than to know that it will cause instability and horrific consequences to the world economy as well as push the clock at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to one minute to 12.

(See: Lee Smith: How Iranian nukes would reshape the Middle East | News for Dallas, Texas)

(See also: The threat from Iran)

Am I…

While Barack focuses his energies on Afghanistan, Israel continues to prepare to “go it alone” against Iran.  The non-stop nightly air force exercises continue unabated.

Preperation is already being made to handle the missile attacks on Tel Aviv that Israel expects to come in retaliation not only from Iran, but from Hizballa to the north and Hamas to the south, both of which now have hundreds, if not thousands of Iranian supplied missile aimed at and capable of hitting my home town.  (See: Home Front Command readying for Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan missiles)

After the vitriolic onslaught that I endured when I published my last diary here detailing my fears of an oncoming Israel/Iran war whose viciousness actually made headlines in some journals concerning Kos’ anti-Israel bias, I expect to be once again attacked as a “right wing” misguided “warmonger.”

So be it.

Barack Obama has disappointed me as a progressive.  Kos has disappointed me as a Jew.  These disappointments pale in comparison to my trepidation regarding the conflagration that I can see just over the horizon.

May god have mercy on the human race if we can find no way to prevent it from happening.

Washington, 9 December (WashingtonTV)—Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Wednesday that Iran would strike Israeli weapons manufacturing sites and nuclear installations if Israel attacked the Islamic Republic.

Vahidi, who is in Damascus on an official visit, said that Israeli officials know that they are unable to carry out any of their threats against Iran.

Israel, believed to be the only nuclear-armed Middle East state, has not ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

“Iran’s armed forces are fully prepared to defend and Iran’s first response would be to attack this regime’s [Israel] centers that produce chemical, biological and dirty weapons and banned nuclear weapons,” Vahidi told reporters, according to the official IRNA news agency.

The defense minister said that threats by Israeli officials were aimed partly at gaining approval for an increased military budget.

Israeli officials “are well informed of their incapability to carry out any threat against Iran and Iran’s strong response,” said Vahidi.

Iran has repeatedly dismissed Israel’s military threats, and has warned it would retaliate if attacked. Iranian defense officials have said Iranian missiles can reach Israel.

Vahidi, who arrived in Damascus on Tuesday night, is expected to meet Syrian political and military officials during his three-day visit, reports the semi-official ISNA news agency.

He told reporters that the two sides would discuss ways to develop bilateral defense cooperation.

BY RICK MARTINEZ – Correspondent

Tags: news | opinion – editorial | rick martinez

The more I listened to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal yesterday, the more convinced I am that the United States is concentrating on the wrong war.

It just doesn’t make sense to tie up 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan digging wells and reading suspected terrorists their Miranda rights, while just across the border Iran races unimpeded toward a nuclear weapons capability.

We’ve gotten caught up in our failure to capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and that seems to have minimized our progress in the war against terror and, more importantly, inflated terrorism’s real threat.

It’s been eight years since we’ve been assaulted by a terrorist attack. That’s certainly no guarantee the U.S. won’t be hit again. Still, we’re a lot more security conscious today than we were in 2001, when flight students could tell instructors to skip the landing lesson without arousing much suspicion.

Despite our success, we seem hell-bent on devoting our best people, equipment and at least $100 billion a year chasing after a cave-dwelling ghost army for whom pickup trucks are the main transport. Meantime, just a few hundred miles away, a real army under the command of the most belligerent regime in the region test fires solid-fuel missiles that can reach Israel and southern Europe.

We have to hope that some Pentagon analyst has the guts to tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Barack Obama that the terrorism threat posed by bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban is marginal compared to the menacing nuclear ambitions of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and secular president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It’s no secret that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the map. What gets less attention here in the United States is Iran’s desire to dominate the Middle East, a promise the regime made after 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

It’s a threat the region’s Arab nations take seriously.

Former special diplomatic envoy Ambassador Dennis Ross has written that a weaponized Iran could trigger a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race. Tariq Khaitous of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is among many foreign policy experts who predict that, at the least, Arab nations would arm their militaries to the hilt with sophisticated conventional weapon systems to deter a nuclear Iran.

Then there’s Egypt, which didn’t sign on to the Chemical Weapons or Biological and Toxic Weapons conventions. Since Egypt has used such weapons in the past, it’s not a stretch to believe it would counter Iranian weapons of mass destruction with chemical and biological WMD.

If you think the Middle East is unstable today, imagine the tinderbox it would be with all this weaponry.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is among those who advocate that the United States develop a nuclear protection umbrella in the Mideast, similar to that deployed in Europe against the Soviet Union.

Good idea. Problem is, good ideas can work for the bad guys as well.

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., postulates a chilling use of the nuclear umbrella…by Iran. With development of its nuclear weapons and missile programs, Iran could provide a nuclear umbrella for al-Qaida or the Taliban. As Gold outlined it, had the September 11 attacks occurred in, say, 2011, Iran could offer the Taliban protection from American troops with nuclear or conventional missiles launched from within Iran. Iran didn’t have that capability in 2001. It has the conventional weapons capability today.

Working with terrorists groups is old hat to the Iranians. Last month the Israeli Navy seized a cargo ship with 500 tons of rockets, mortars, fragmentation grenades and rifle ammunition that Israel said were destined to Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army against Israel.

The Afghan war is a distraction that could force us to appease Tehran’s ayatollahs, who are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons because we’re too busy chasing militant-packed pickups outside of Kabul.

Contributing columnist Rick Martinez (rickjmartinez2@verizon.net) is director of news and programming at WPTF-AM.