Posted on 01/26/2006 2:38:37 PM PST by Dark Skies
THE UNIMAGINABLE but ultimately inescapable truth is that we are going to have to get ready for war with Iran. Being of a free-speaking, free-thinking disposition, we generally find in the West that hand-wringing, finger-pointing and second-guessing come more easily to us than cold, strategic thinking. Confronted with nightmarish perils we instinctively choose to seize the opportunity to blame each other, cursing our domestic opponents for the situation they’ve put us in.
The rapidly intensifying crisis with regard to Iran exemplifies the phenomenon. On the right, it is said that the decision to let the Europeans play nuclear footsie with the mullahs in Iran for more than two years was a terrible blunder. Pacifist evasion is what the world has come to expect from continental Europe, but the decision by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to become an enabler to their procrastinations was of a different order of strategic error. An emboldened Tehran seized the chance to play them all along while advancing its ambitions in great leaps.
On the left the hands are being wrung over Iraq. It is argued that the decision to invade the wrong country has made our situation intolerably worse. Iran was always the bigger threat. While we were chasing phantom nuclear weapons in Mesopotamia, next door Iran was busy building real ones. Now we are enfeebled, militarily and politically, our diplomatic tools blunted beyond repair by the errors in Iraq.
I tend to side more with the former crowd (though let it not be said that the latter do not have a point) but it is important for all of us to understand that this debate is now for the birds. All that matters now is what we do.
The unavoidable reality is that we now need urgently to steel ourselves to the ugly probability that diplomacy will not now suffice: one or way or another, unconscionable acts of war may now be unavoidable.
Those who say war is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. They will, quite probably entrench and harden the Iranian regime. Even the young, hopeful democrats who despise their theocratic rulers and crave the freedoms of the West will pause at the sight of their country burnt and humiliated by the infidels.
A war, even a limited one, will almost certainly raise oil prices to recession-inducing levels, as Iran cuts itself off from global markets. The loss of Iranian supply and the already stretched nature of production in the Arab world and elsewhere means prices of $150 per barrel are easily imaginable. Military strikes will foster more violence in the Middle East, strengthen the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuel anti-Western sentiment among Muslims everywhere and encourage more terrorism against us at home.
All true. All fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. What the country itself may do with those weapons, given its pledges, its recent history and its strategic objectives with regard to the US, Israel and their allies, is well known. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance (“Now this is what we call a holocaust”). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem.
If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.
No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.
Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.
And the kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima.
Something short of military action may yet prevail on Iran. Perhaps sanctions will turn their leadership from its doomsday ambitions. Perhaps Russia can somehow be persuaded to give them an incentive to think again. But we can’t count on this optimistic scenario now. And so we must ready ourselves for what may be the unthinkable necessity.
Because in the end, preparation for war, by which I mean not military feasibility planning, or political and diplomatic manoeuvres but a psychological readiness, a personal willingness on all our parts to bear the terrible burdens that it will surely impose, may be our last real chance to ensure that we can avoid one.
W's axis of evil, ridiculed at the time, is looking more and more prescient.
I think Kim Jong Il loves his big screen TV and Russian prostitutes too much to do the unthinkable, but the Iranians are nuclear suicide bombers and must be stopped.
LOL! Yeah, our brass is so stupid that our soldiers will die en masse. Happens all of the time!
We would massacre Iranian fighters.
Did you lift that from Pravda or the NYT? LOL!
That's how I see it. Why do we have to do it, especially with few allies or unilaterally?
I'd say let them slug it out for themselves, but we'd get drawn in one way or another. We need the oil.
What do we have now? Hamas in Palestine is an ugly development, China, North Korea, Russia a wild card, want to trust them, but don't know what they will do.
I'm sorry, but I do not want any more American lives lost unless and until the rest of the free world pulls their share of the load and most of them are causing more trouble than helping.
We cannot go to war JUST to defend Israel. Let them do what they have to do.
Doing nothing.
If it's Iran, I think we can count on them.
We won't be alone (ok we had the British going into Iraq as well) this time around.
While the international community was debating about Saddam, there isn't ANY debate over Iran. Of course they are being very blatant in their proclamations too, unlike Saddam.
"We cannot go to war JUST to defend Israel"
???????
In liberaltrashspeak, that means sending two Jimmy Carters to NK and sending them twice as much money.
No, I'm not kidding.
You are not suggesting that the only way an Iranian warhead can be utilized is by ballistic propulsion?? Have you seen the desert on our southern boarder and the tree lines on the northern?
Once Iran masters manufacture of nucs, tactical or strategic, do you think they will not disperse that technology to other groups? Then together attempt to muggle them into the 'Big Satan', or anchor them off-shore?
"The US? Hardly"
How do you figure that?
Geez and I always thought it would be the North Koreans that we had to keep our eye on. Seems Iran needs to have their lights put out first.
I expect the Iranian terror squads already in this country have orders to go after these sites as soon as they hear that the strait of Hormuz is blocked.
a billion dollar aircraft 50 ft off the water at Mach 1. Yeah, sure.
What, the guy who said, on record, that the American Revolution was illegal?
Nah.
I notice that the Brits are taking more of the load in Afghanistan under the NATO banner.
they are...
and the Aussies have started putting people back in Afghanistan as well....
Hopefully Iran won't need to be invaded to abandon it's course here.
But if that does happen, I think that now is the time to do it.
The Jihadis are getting their clocks cleaned in Iraq. They won't be able to successfully fight a 2 front war, so to speak.
True, but Afghanistan should not be the main thrust. Too hard to move supplies either through Pakistan or from the former Soviet Republics. Not that many good ports and too hard to move supplies by air. Movement from Iraq lets us use our established bases in Kuwait and the ports in both Kuwait and Iraq.
Repelling an Iranian invasion or Iraq would be easy. To invade they would have to move massive amounts of troops and equipment. As soon as they start to move we know where they are and here come the airstrikes. Lots of dead Iranians all over the desert. If they (Iran) thought they lost a lot of troops against Iraq, they ain't seen nothing yet.
Been there, done that.
TAR is old hat, but many accidents have happened doing that exact thing.- and to the B1B more than to any other aircraft.
And it is 100 feet.
Done over water because that is where TAR is the most safety effective.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.