WarSclerotic

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”

Kris Kristofferson’s lyrics to his classic song Bobby McGee have never been more appropriate than they are right now to an Israel facing a soon to become nuclear Iran.

Any hope that the West, led by the US and Barak Obama would succeed in preventing this terrifying threat to world order have by now been completely dashed.  The hysteria over Israel’s enforcement of it’s blockade against the Iranian proxy Hamas, removes all doubt that the West will find any and all excuses to avoid confronting the threat posed to the world by radical Islam.

The parallels to the catastrophic “appeasement” policy towards Nazi Germany prior to 1939 are more than an exaggerated overstatement.  In many ways the parallels are frighteningly similar.

Germany, a country of 78 million in 1939 laid before the world its dream of an Aryan empire that would last a thousand years.  They also blamed all the troubles of the world on the Jews and promised to put an end to them.

The West stood by and did nothing as the Nazis built up the most powerful war machine in the world in contravention to the Versailles treaty.  What resulted was the greatest cataclysm in the history of the world.

Iran today,  also a country of 78 million  has announced its intentions to bring the world under the domination of Islamic sharia law.  It also blames the Jews for all the troubles in the world, although it includes the US as well.  While its war machine cannot compare to that of the US, its acquisition of nuclear weapons would make it safe from any retaliation for its continuing and increasing support for terrorism world wide.

Look at the reaction to the direct act of war by North Korea in its unprovoked sinking of the South Korean destroyer.  While North Korea blithely denies having committed the act, they threaten the Korean peninsula with war if any response is made against them.

Other than mealy mouthed tut-tutting, what has been the response of the civilized world?  Nothing at all.  Nor will there be for the very simple reason that the North has nuclear weapons.

Understand that this is the very reason Iran is so intent on acquiring these weapons at any cost.  They know that it will insure the survival of their corrupt and hated regime against any and all threats whether from without or within.

Israel at this point has nothing left to lose by putting an end to this Iranian threat once and for all.  The endless pundits and military analysts who claim that the most Israel can do is slow down their progress for a few years do so out of their ignorance of the power of EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse).

A nuclear based EMP weapon launched on a Jericho III missile and detonated 150 miles above Iran would cause no casualties whatsoever to the people on the ground.  What it would do is destroy all electrical based equipment from radios to trucks to power grids to tanks to missiles to centrifuges.

The destruction is not temporary, it is permanent.  Every circuit board and electrical switching device in Iran would have to be replaced.  The net effect would be to remove Iran as a military threat on any level whatsoever for a minimum of one to two decades.

No more threats against the straights of Hormuz; their navy simply won’t function.  Their nuclear program would be permanently stopped dead its tracks.

The negative result would be an enormous humanitarian crisis as the basics for the functioning of a modern society in Iran would be wiped out.  The entire world would have to pitch in to help the Iranian people survive the loss of their 21st century technology.

However, the cost of doing this and the unavoidable suffering that would result pales in comparison to the potential for true Armageddon should the radical Islamic mullahs gain the power of nuclear weapons.

Of course Israel would be roundly condemned by the entire world for taking this action, the same way it was when it destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor.  Nonetheless, underneath the condemnation would be the biggest sigh of relief the world has ever experienced.  The only powers that would be truly upset by such an action would be Iran’s terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon and perhaps also North Korea.

Israel is a small country, but a great and powerful one at the same time.  Golda Meir is quoted as saying, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.”  That remains the truth to this day.  While the Western nations look the other way while Iran develops the power to destroy the Jewish state, Israel does not have that luxury.

The time has come to put an end to radical Islam’s threat to the world.  Almost every violent struggle in the world today has at its root this atavistic and intolerant ideology whose world leader and main source of funding worldwide is Iran.

It is a very frightening choice for Israel to make.  The sad truth is that the weak-willed and hypocritical governments of the world have forced Israel’s hand.  It is no longer a choice, it is a necessity.

The time has come…

Joseph Wouk
June 3, 2010

Iran’s Nuclear Progress – WSJ.com.

Even the U.N. now says Iran has enough fuel for two weapons.

Any day now, the U.N. Security Council will take up sanctions on Iran, which the Obama Administration considers a culmination of its year-plus-long diplomatic game plan. Alas in the real world beyond Turtle Bay, Iran moves ever closer to building an atomic bomb, and neither the U.S. nor its allies appear to possess any ideas, much less a serious strategy, to stop it.

Iran’s nuclear progress comes through clearly in the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Released Monday ahead of the sanctions vote, the U.N. agency reports that Iran now has produced enough nuclear fuel to make two atomic weapons. As the U.S. was trying to extend a hand to Tehran and engage in talks in the past year, the Iranians nearly doubled their stock of 5%-enriched uranium to 5,300 pounds. The IAEA also says Iran has started to enrich small but growing amounts of uranium up to 20%, installing new centrifuges for that purpose.

These steps take Iran closer to the nuclear brink. Enriching fuel from 20% to the 90% or so needed for a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb would take only a few weeks. Based on these numbers, some analysts estimate Iran could get the bomb in as little as 18 months. So much for that infamous December 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate that Iran had ceased work on an atomic weapon.

The IAEA reports that an important piece of lab equipment which could be used to extract plutonium for a bomb went missing from a research facility. The Iranians were conducting so-called pyro-processing experiments to remove impurities from uranium metal, thus opening another route for the mullahs to build a nuclear device. The IAEA complains as well that Iran blocked access to scientists and files and didn’t provide information about plans to build 10 new enrichment plants. As if Iran has ever made a good-faith effort to come clean about its intentions.

According to a certain sort of conventional wisdom, the IAEA report will “bolster” the Obama Administration’s case for sanctions at the U.N. To us, this is merely the latest indictment of years of diplomatic half-measures by the U.S. and Europe that has provided Iran with the cover to press ahead with its illicit program without fear of grave repercussions.

The coming sanctions are the fourth set put before the Security Council. During the Bush Administration, the previous three passed without any opposition but also with little impact. The Iranians refused to suspend enrichment, which was—before George W. Bush changed policy at the urging of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toward the end of his second term—the prerequisite even for any direct talks with Tehran.

The latest sanctions would ban Iran from pursuing “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” freeze the assets of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and other companies related to the program, and prohibit Iran from buying several categories of heavy weapons—except, notably, the surface-to-air S-300 missiles Iran bought from Russia, and still wants to have delivered. Washington threw in this bribe to win over Moscow.

The U.S. also watered down provisions on financial and energy-related sanctions to win over the Russians and Chinese. But Turkey and Brazil, which are pushing their own nuclear deal with Iran struck last month, oppose the measure, as does Lebanon. Their dissent will deprive the U.S. of the image of diplomatic unity on Iran, which had been so central to the Obama strategy.

If passed, the sanctions may bite the bottom lines of some Revolutionary Guard brass and force Iran to be even more creative about developing its atomic bomb and the missiles needed to deliver it. But Iran has gotten around similarly toothless U.N. measures in the past decade without much trouble, and nothing suggests this time will be different.

From Bush to Obama, the U.S. strategy toward Iran has oscillated between naive and unserious. We now stand months from Iran reaching a nuclear breakout capability. Unless credible options to stop Iran are put on the table, the risk of violent confrontation with Tehran—instigated by Israel or not—rises with each day.

American Thinker Blog: Israel = Iran?.

Peter Wilson

Daniel Henninger: Beating Up on Israel – WSJ.com.

The world’s powers find it easier to denounce small nations like Israel than take on large and difficult problems like Iran or North Korea.

The ease with which the world’s governments condemned Israel over the flotilla incident has been something to behold. The Jerusalem-based correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail could not help but notice: “The speed and intensity with which governments around the world condemned the Israeli behavior appear unprecedented.” Why?

For starters, denouncing Israel for something like this is convenient for leaders who have failed repeatedly to do anything about more important and difficult problems such as Iran, North Korea or sovereign debt. Also, lesser nations learn by example: The Obama administration’s unrestrained criticism of the Israeli government in March over East Jerusalem settlements lowered the threshold for teeing off on Israel.

Still, I can’t think of any other nation, no matter how scummy and uncivilized its practices, that produces this response. Or any other event, such as testing a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu to International Community: Stop the Hypocrisy | FrontPage Magazine.

The IDF has released two more videos from the incident Monday morning on theMavi Marmara, the largest in the Turkish-organized six-ship flotilla that challenged Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and the only one to prepare a violent ambush. One of these two videos is even more dramatic than the one released on Monday, now viewed by over a million on YouTube, that shows Mavi Marmara“peace activists” among other things beating the soldiers with iron bars.

The relatively less dramatic of the two newly released videos shows the “activists”—actually jihadists seeking “martyrdom”—attacking the soldiers with a stun grenade, a box of plates, and water hoses as they try to board the ship. The other newly released video is actually almost purely audial footage of a frenetic exchange between soldiers on the Mavi Marmara and the nearby IDF ship. The former, in a state of acute panic, shout that they need reinforcements, are being fired at from all directions, and have to be evacuated immediately. For a while the jihadists can be heard chanting something in the background.

The iron-bars video was released only late Monday afternoon after the “Israel kills peace activists” media-storm had already swept through the world for eight or nine hours, and some in Israel have bitterly charged that releasing it a good deal earlier, if not immediately, could have saved Israel much of the media and diplomatic damage. The reason for the delay was a concern for military morale: seeing soldiers of the Naval Commandos—one of the most legendary of all IDF units—being abjectly beaten, and in one case thrown over the side of the boat, is not the sort of imagery the IDF and Israel itself want to project of these fighters.

But if the iron-bars video is problematic in that regard, the new one in which the soldiers shout, in panic, for their lives is even more so. Why, then, was it released now, when the UN Security Council, with President Obama’s acquiescence, has already condemned Israel over the incident, the UN Human Rights Council is preparing another Goldstone-type “investigation,” and Israel has generally been dragged through another worldwide round of condemnation? This new video proves beyond a doubt to any reasonable human being that the soldiers finally opened fired, killing nine of their attackers, solely to save their own lives. But what good could it do at this point?

The answer is that Israel realizes its troubles from this incident are not over and indeed are just beginning. Another ship, the Rachel Corrie (named after the young anti-Israeli activist accidentally killed by an IDF bulldozer in 2003), isalready on its way to Gaza from Malta; while carrying only fifteen activists, Irish prime minister Brian Cowen has described it as Irish-owned and is calling on Israel to let it through. A group called the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza claims to be planning a new, much larger flotilla than the one intercepted by Israel this week. Newly elected British prime minister David Cameron is calling on Israel to lift the Gaza blockade altogether.

In other words, the democratic world is now getting into the act too—with a vengeance. It was one thing for increasingly-Islamist, Iran- and Syria-friendly, Hamas-supporting Turkey to send the first flotilla. It is quite another thing—and well beyond the usual, de rigueur, but shameful cooperation with Arab-, Islamic-, and “nonaligned”-bloc calumny against Israel in the UN—for Western governments to start getting on this bandwagon as well.

It was in response to the increasingly alarming situation that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave a brief, terse statement to the nation Wednesday night in which he said: “The state of Israel faces an attack of international hypocrisy. This is not the first time we have faced this; two years ago we faced a massive attack of missiles fired by Hamas who hid behind civilians. Israel went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties; but whom did the UN condemn? It condemned Israel.”

Noting that “It is our right according to international law to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza and that is why the naval blockade was put in place,” Netanyahu pointed out that two ships intercepted by the Israeli navy in recent years—the Francop in 2009 and the Karine-A in 2002—were carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian-supplied weapons, and that while the smuggling of Iranian weapons into Gaza through tunnels continues, what can be delivered by sea is incomparably vaster and would result in an Iranian port in Gaza threatening not only Tel Aviv but also “other countries in the region.”

Turning finally to the uproar over the Mavi Marmara, Netanyahu, noting that he had talked personally with the wounded soldiers and heard firsthand accounts of how their lives were endangered, stated:

The soldiers defended their lives with incomparable restraint. What would any other country do?… I ask the international community, what would you do instead? We’ll continue to defend our citizens and assert our right to self-defense, which is my first duty as prime minister.

It is important that we stay united on this issue, which is a matter of life and death.

The questions Netanyahu raised are indeed very much open. It is no longer clear whether the international community, including its democratic component, is prepared to tolerate the soldiers of the Jewish state shooting back when shot at by a mob, and no longer clear whether it is prepared to countenance the Jewish state defending itself, or existing, at all. Israel, meanwhile, is still trying to make its case, hardly confident that it makes a difference

Israel bashing hits new peak | Mindelle Jacobs | Columnists | Comment | Calgary Sun.

It’s amazing how many people who don’t live next door to a terrorist state threatening their destruction jump on the propaganda bandwagon to delegitimize Israel.

These armchair critics can sleep quietly in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge they won’t have to dash into bomb shelters as rockets rain down on their heads from a few kilometres away.

Nor will they likely have to worry that a psychopath is going to blow himself up in a crowded downtown spot in an orgy of wanton blood lust.

Israel-bashing reached a new peak this week after nine activists were killed when Israeli navy commandos raided a Turkish ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The spectre of mighty Israel going up against a boatload of peaceniks, with resulting bloodshed, has unleashed world outrage and condemnation of Israel, left the Jewish state’s relationship with Turkey in tatters and made Israel even more of a pariah.

It doesn’t matter that, as videos clearly show, the Israeli marines were acting in self-defence after being attacked by a mob wielding clubs and other weapons.

Apparently, it would have been better, from a public relations perspective, if the Israeli commandos had offered no resistance and the mob was allowed to kill them.

PR disaster

Instead, the marines had the temerity to fight back. They are alive, nine activists are tragically dead and Israel has a PR disaster on its hands.

Militarily, Israel may have won this latest skirmish but it lost another propaganda war in what has become a lengthy battle for public opinion.

Questions abound as to whether Israel had the right to stop the Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters.

There was no indication, after all, that Israel was under imminent attack. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Post reported a search of the boat unearthed a cache of bullet-proof vests, night-vision goggles and gas masks.

Strange peaceniks, these people.

One also has to wonder why the flotilla organizers didn’t dock in Israel or Egypt to permit Israeli or Egyptian officials to check for weapons.

Humanitarian goods could have then been transported by land to Gaza. (In fact, Israel routinely transfers humanitarian supplies, including food and medicine, to Gaza.) So the reason for the flotilla was not to get humanitarian goods to Gaza but to break the blockade and force Israel to respond.

Israel’s lengthy marine embargo of Gaza — to prevent the shipment of weapons — may be a terrible tactic because it does more harm than good by further blackening Israel’s reputation.

Hamas happy

It’s a terrific strategy for Hamas supporters because the more people Israel kills — however reluctantly — the happier Hamas is.

Unfortunately, it puts Israel in the impossible situation of being the only country in the world not permitted to defend itself. If it retaliates against thousands of rockets, it’s condemned for unintended civilian casualties. But Hamas terrorists deliberately operate amid civilians, so innocents will die.

No matter how few people Israel kills, it’s always described as a “massacre” in the Arab world. When Muslims slaughter many more Muslims, as in the murder of about 90 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan last Friday, the Arab street is silent.

The Muslim world is awash in internecine terrorism and the world takes no notice. But when a Jew kills a Muslim, Israel-bashers are apoplectic.

These anti-Semites conveniently gloss over the fact that Hamas wants Israel destroyed. That’s like the IRA demanding England as well, or the Tibetans wanting to overrun China or the Kurds vowing to take over Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The mind boggles.