It appears Iran feels they have won the coin toss
...and they have elected to receive.
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.
"Unthinkable"..."Unimaginable" These Europeons are incapable of defending themselves, much less anything else. If it wasn't for Israel, I'd say let Teheran have the bomb. "The left says this...The right says that." What a pathetic parody of civilization Europe has become.
And, since so few people see/understand it, so is Afghanistan.
Very, very deep and spread out. But I'll bet the allied brass (U.S., U.K., IDF et al) are working overtime on it.
Assassination is your friend.
Decap Iranian C&C. That's all. Just do it.
See, you got it down to one sentence.
Push has come to shove.
It appears Iran feels they have won the coin toss
...and they have elected to receive.
After Afghanistan, the country we had the best rationale to overthrow was Iraq. While taking care of Saddam and his Ba'athist remnants, and the Islamofascists drawn into the meat grinder, world opinion has now solidified against Iran and Syria. Looks to me like things are working very well.
True. We're well positioned to hit Iran on two fronts.
I can't figure out why Europoeans don't make the obvious comparison, except European public schools may not be better than US public schools...in the lump, that is. How would the folks in England feel if Adolf Hitler had waited until his heavy water efforts had been completed, or even the Me262 before the Battle of Britain began. That battle would have been over in about 15 minutes and German would be the official language spoken in London these days.
I guess in war I'm starting to appreciate the thoughts of US Grant. You can be magnanimous in victory, but before that happens you had better win, and win so the bad guys can't look back and ask: What if? There can't be any "what ifs," or the war really isn't over.
Then why is Muqtada still breathing?
unlikely bushgov planning in iraq including an active insurgency of native and foreign insurgents, suicide bombers, IED's, etc., at this level of activity 3 years out. This impacts the operational forces available for iran i assume.
So Condi was an "enabler" for letting the UN and Europeans take the lead in diplomacy with Iran (whom they have been busily wheeling and dealing with for the past 25 years as the US attempted to maintain unilateral sanctions.
But the same talking heads in Europe scorn George Bush as a "cowboy" for not letting the UN handle Iraq with diplomacy.
Fine. Let Britain France and Gemany declare war on Iran and ask the US to join in a coalition. Our response will not likely resemble theirs of 2003.
This may be true in England, but I haven't heard a peep out of the Democrats to this effect. Many of them are saying that the Iraq war was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they sure as hell aren't saying what the right war would have been.
We have come down this road to this point because a) the Euros have turned into effete cowards, and b) the mass media and the Democrat fifth column have done everything humanly possible to undermine President Bush on the issue of war.
I don't think we took on the wrong country first. But I do think we have delayed several years too long to take on the next countries on the list: Syria and Iraq. That was self-evidently the list from the very first. And if not for the Demoncrats, we would already be much further down that list.
There's still time, but not a whole lot, especially with Israel now seemingly paralyzed.
It's a fake, but nice all the same.
Push has come to shove.
Agreed. I see lots of discussion of "invading Iran." The more immediate issue will be repelling an Iranian invasion of Iraq.
Great article and very sobering.
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