WarSclerotic

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]]>Friday April 9, 2010

While the health care debate had the Congress and PresidentObama focused on this one issue, a considerable amount of international turmoil was boiling over elsewhere.

The president’s desire to have an administration that would deal with world issues in a more gentle, kinder and engaging manner was just not going to be the case. He had wished for his presidency to be void of the belligerence of his predecessor. In his first year in office he went around the world delivering speeches (and apologies) that his dealing with foreign issues would be much different. The question now is — did anyone listen? For starters, China hasn’t.

The tensions between us and that economic/military juggernaut are escalating on a daily basis. President Obama will be fortunate if he can escape the year without having to deal with a major trade war with China. There’s a war going on with China today, but it’s not with another country, it’s with a company — Google — and it has turned ugly.

And on the other side of the world, in the Middle East, the administration’s goal of kick-starting the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis has been derailed. Counter to what had been asked of them by the administration (and the U.N. and E.U.), the Israel government is continuing to build 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem. Headlines in a recent story on this topic read, “Israel rejects U.S. call to stop building.” So much for closer ties and

dialogue.It also did not help the fostering of closer Israel/U.S. relations when the president did not invite the Israeli prime minister for dinner during the week of March 21. After a private meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Mr. Obama left the oval office and Netanyahu was left to fend for himself.

These issues, as well as others, are sideshows to what is the “main issue” or as Alan Dershowitz wrote in the March 27 Wall Street Journal, “the gravest threat faced by the world today.” Professor Dershowitz was referring to the probability that Iran will soon have a nuclear bomb. The Harvard professor has not been alone in calling this issue out — I hope that the administration is listening.

The March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, notes on its cover “After Iran gets the bomb,” and then proceeds to devote 17 pages of the magazine to the issue as to what it means to the world, if indeed, Iran produces a nuclear bomb(s).

The authors of the Foreign Affairs’s article, James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, note, “even if Washington fails to prevent Iran from going nuclear, it can contain and mitigate the consequences of Iran’s nuclear defiance.”

The authors, who are senior officials at the Council on Foreign Affairs, conclude that, “containment could buy Washington time to persuade the Iranian ruling class that the revisionist game it has been playing is simply not worth the candle.”

They even believe that by waiting, Iran might change. I don’t think so — maybe the Obama administration does?

However, I’m not in any position to question the wisdom of the two experts from the Council on Foreign Affairs — I’ll leave that to Professor Dershowitz. He noted that Iran could use its nuclear arsenal to bomb Israel — Iran has previously stated that it wants Israel wiped off the map. Iran could also transfer the bombs to existing terrorist organizations, and let them do Iran’s bidding. Dershowitz also feels that Iran just by having WMD’s could be a menace by “constantly threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation.”

It was reported in the March 21 New York Times: “Obama’s message to Iran renews offer for dialogue.” The president was seeking (second time he has done so) to engage the Iranian government in diplomatic talks. A day later it was reported in the Wall Street Journal:

“Iran’s supreme leader sharply denounced the U.S. on Sunday, in a chilly response to an overture by President Obama for better cultural ties with Iran. Iran believes that the U.S. is being deceptive.”

In my Jan. 9 column I had written that President Obama should pay closer attention to what was going on in Iran. I also suggested that the president read Martin Gilbert’s book the “Wilderness Years” on how Winston Churchill had warned the world about the rise of Nazism. I wish to add another author’s warning, Professor Dershowitz’s, “Nevertheless, it is (Neville) Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister in 1939) who has come to symbolize the failure to prevent Hitler’s ascendancy. So too will Mr. Obama come to symbolize the failure of the West if Iran acquires nuclear weapons on his watch.”