Posted on 01/04/2006 9:00:29 AM PST by pickrell
By their efforts and threats, the Iranian power structure has effectively stripped themselves of the most effective guarantees that their children will live to see tomorrow.
During any conflict, while opposing forces are prepped and equipped, the final trigger for conflict is tripped according to the graveness of the forces assembled in opposition. A mature and restrained father might turn the other cheek when a drunken or otherwise mentally incapacitated antagonist throws a glancing blow, because the father knows that the only damage done, and likely to recur, is insufficient to justify beating the drunk into submission or worse. And this restraint a father can afford, because his children's lives are not held in the balance. But a far different reaction will occur when the drunk approaches the children at play in their back yard, hurling imprecations about the grievous harm he intends to inflict on the children. Coupling this with the time the drunk has spent publically waving a new baseball bat around, and threatening great bodily harm, most likely will extinguish all remaining options. In such a case, the result could quite well be the death of the man, with many a modern jury unwilling to convict. Defense of children equals carte blanche on the father's actions.
During the cold war, the launch status of the U.S. nuclear arsenal varied according to the threat level, from launch-on-impact, when we felt it possible, to launch-on-warning, when we felt the threat had risen to that level. Fortunately for the Soviets and the entire world, we never quite reached the dark Armageddon of launch-on-threat. Much of the world, however, had no clue as to the complexities of the calculations involved.
A country under threat, which has sufficient room to disperse its weaponry around a 3 million square mile territory, and which can harden the launch areas against first strike by the enemy, can afford the luxury of delay, in order to avoid catastrophic mistake. It will not launch on threat, and perhaps not even launch on warning, realizing that computer systems and radar have given false indications of attack in our own past, but rather will steadfastly assure any who would think to annihilate it in a quick "Pearl Harbor" strike, that it has the survivability, the weaponry, and the gravest certainty to respond with overwhelming destruction to the aggressor, up to and including the capability of annihilation of it's entire civilian population.
This we could do because of the advantage we enjoyed by being many thousands of miles away from our enemies, and having the time and survivability to do so. This we could also do because we faced an adversary in the Soviet Union, irrespective of their brutality, nonetheless composed of fathers with their own children.
Israel has none of these advantages, being barely a few minutes from annihilation by missile attack, being small enough to literally allow a nuclear-armed Iran to wipe it from the survivable habitat of the earth, and by the disadvantage of lack of survivability of it's retaliatory systems. The most chilling disadvantage to the Israelis, is the known quantity of the Arabs actually strapping bombs onto their children and cheering as they immolated themselves. Distance, time, rationality... all missing from the Middle East. These quantities which served recently to enable avoidance of absolute destruction in the rest of the world, even to the extent of enabling India and Pakistan the time to realize the utter uselessness of the weaponry they so expensively acquired, and to back away from the brink... Do Not Exist in the Middle Eastern conflict.
In a nuclear strike on a country in such a situation, every strategist knows that it is "use them or lose them". Even submarine-borne missile systems have vulnerabilities, such as communications, authorization and exposure during launch phase. A delay of seconds means the death of an entire country and virtually all of its children, without cost to the aggressor.
What the world seems to forget is that trading the death of your entire race for the retaliatory incineration of the enemy may not be acceptable to fathers. Fathers will not wait until their children have been beaten to death by the drunk.. or vaporized by the mad clerics. And fathers have their fingers on the launch triggers. By striking first, the Israelis will have to trade total annihilation for trade embargo and U.N. sanctioned disapproval.
Guess how much hesitation the Iranians have bought for themselves, in their collossal stupidity? Those persians who wish for a life for their grandchildren may have only days to throw down the theocracy in their country and avoid immolation. The real ballot will be the actions of those who don't relish the coming return of the 12th Imam, and the end of their world. They have the first veto. The Israelis have the second. And we have the third.
The Europeans have chosen to avoid understanding the grave consequences of their business dealings with Iran. Either through ignorance or distance from a receding memory of the realities of the cold war, they have assumed that Israel will have to "do something" about Iran, and that afterwards the Arabs will be mollified by the stern reaction of the fearless Europeans to the Israeli action. Therefore, no harm comes from selling nuclear related tolling to madmen. Like a lynch mob steeling itself in a tavern to drink away the consequences of what they are about to do, and have already done, they assume that if handled properly, the Israeli children down the block are the only ones at risk, and after all- they're only jews.
Much like Clinton's reaction to the bombing of the Cole and other attacks on the U.S.military over a number of years- that of "Fortunately no people were hurt- only soldiers"-, the Europeans hope to avoid any risk, by threatening the Iranians with escalating negotiation, while privately praying for the Israelis to act. What they fail to understand is that the reaction of the Israelis will likely be more horrific that even Europeans can stomach.
The geography and fanaticism of the Middle East, have always precluded launch-on-impact and even launch-on-warning. The recent insanity of the Iranians is inching towards the precipice of launch-on-threat, and the results of 200 or more Israeli nuclear weapons being unleashed will have consequences unimaginable by Americans and Frenchmen busily exposing our most secret intelligence operations in the world media, and announcing to the press that, in Murtha's words, "no one should join the military now."
George Bush's gamble that "rather than kill all of them, we might be able to turn them towards democracy and co-existence", like we mastered in the cold war until the Soviets finally collapsed, might even have worked. It was the wisest, most compassionate, and least destructive gamble we have taken since the Marshall Plan rebuilt post-WW2 europe.
Who knows what the outcome might have been if the treachery of the liberals had not been so effective? Who knows how many deaths might have been avoided? No matter the outcome, over 2000 Americans and many others including Iraqis, gave their lives on the gamble that millions of children might live. Their nobility will live forever.
There are even threads of hope that it could still work and prevent tens of millions of incinerations across the globe.
But those threads have been so efficiently unraveled by treacherous Democrats who think themselves insulated from the harm they wreak, that the point of no return may even now be past.
The Iranians, and any others who threaten us need understand...
When you attack our homeland, you will re-awaken Yamamoto's nightmare. This sleeping giant that you mistake for weakness, will probably suffer body blows such as we have never known before, and are insulated from now, being a country suffering under a leftist controlled press. You may deliver weapons into the hands of terrorists, or make the mistake of leaving a return address on your launch. And as such, we will suffer hundreds of thousands, or even a few millions of deaths.
And then, the John Murthas and the John Kerrys and the Cindy Sheehans will be swept away in shame. And we will be forced to do that which we hoped, spent treasure on, and suffered Marine deaths, to somehow avoid.
We will annihilate you. And we will leave the Democrats, who thought to ally themselves in an unholy marriage of convenience to you, to explain to the world why they made that necessary.
That is, if the Israelis are not forced to do the same first.
For those who scoff that a hundred million deaths is a preposterous fear-mongering advanced by the worst of chicken-littles- read what was predicted to result from the worlds' inaction in 1932 when Japan invaded Manchuria, and a scant few years later when the Germans re-occupied the Rhineland.
A hundred million? "Yeah..., " smirk those who weren't even born yet, "we can spare that many... if it brings George Bush down...."
Mutual Assured Destruction doesn't work when 1 side is a bunch of suicidal fanatical religious zealots.
The Soviets were still human enough to have the desire to stay alive.
Chilling. I wish I could say he's overstating the situation. But I'm not so sure now.
Where does this quote come from?
Not true. Israel has nukes on cruise missiles on (Dolphin class) submarines, nukes on ballistic missiles in hardened silos, and nukes on bombers. No way could a country like Iran eliminate the threats from this "nuclear triangle." In fact, it's extremely doubtful they'd be able to take out even one leg.
I don't know if this one item is true because I was reading up on this and found this on Israel Defense Forces
It has also been speculated that the Israeli Navy's three 1,925 ton Type 800 Dolphin class submarines may be capable of carrying nuclear-armed specially-modified Popeye Turbo cruise missiles. These missiles are purported to have a 1,500 km range and are supposedly fired out of what are suspected to be unusually-sized additional torpedo tubes that were allegedly installed on the Dolphin submarine and are otherwise larger than what is required to accommodate any currently known western torpedo design in existence. A test of such a missile is alleged to have taken place off the coast of Sri Lanka in May 2000. Nevertheless, some military analysts have labeled such rumors to be highly unlikely and impossible given the logistics of the submarines. Furthermore, there is no factual basis for the origins of the alleged test firing.
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What a great and brief summary!
I reject the suggestion that Iranians are "helpless" against their clerics. Sow the wind reap the whirlwind...
I don't ythink it is a quote. It is a paraphrase of many MSM and liberal pronouncements after such incidents.
This is one of those cases when you ask yourself, "Why else would Israel have a fleet of submarines, if not for a second-strike capability?"
Israel has no need of submarines to interdict enemy shipping. Nor for a remote early-warning mission. Nor are they going to find themselves at war with a country relying on a surface fleet.
There is one reason, and one reason only, for Israel to maintain a submarine fleet: nuclear response.
The lesson of the holocaust: if someone says they are going to kill you, pay attention.
Given that the Koran is pretty much a plagiarized OT, I wonder what Sura corresponds to Hosea 8:7?
GREAT POST BUMP!
I don’t see a connection between your posts opening paragraph and the reality of the situation. Antagonists don’t exist without latent conflict. The Iranian regime is an anathema to the modern world and the showdown between the modern and the medieval looms. Do the fathers in this scenario not see what the purge of sane Iranians from Iran has done? They’ve had more than a quarter century to open their eyes. The sane children of Iran have been warning these so called fathers of the days to come for years, yet the fathers have made no significant preparations besides building bigger fences. What difference does a fence make when your enemies are inside your walls? But like any parent, ignorant of the threats that face their children, they will either learn or suffer the most devastating of human experiences, the loss of a child.
There is but one constant and that constant is change. Even the will of the mightiest father is disarmed in the face of it.
"The lesson of the holocaust: if someone says they are going to kill you, pay attention."
Yes indeed. While diplomats were arriving in Washington from Japan in the 30's and we began heavy trade, the Japanese generals were saying that they were going to annihalate us. Well they sure did try, didn't they? China is repeating the above mentioned history. Iran is stating their intentions to the world. When we invaded Iraq, North Korea really ramped up their "we will turn LA into cinders" rehtoric. We deployed a dozen nuclear armed B2 bombers.
It is too late for Iran to take back this message of nuclear annihalation for Israel. They have made their intentions quite clear. Israel is our closest global ally, second to Britain. I feel we must act also, but am discouraged that we have not sent Iran the same kind of message we sent the Kim Jong-ill.
Bump and ping. Great read.
Glad the author feels better. But all this assumes that Israel can wipe out all Iranian assets first, that Iran has nothing to shoot back with, and they don't have any nukes yet -- a lot of assumptions when just one lucky shot with a surviving Iranian warhead can turn all of Israel into a desert. People who yak on about the Samson Option forget that Samson still ended up dead.
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