Posted on 06/05/2008 7:17:44 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober — if not grim — assessment of where we are.
Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When Election Day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world — Iran — is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran’s nuclear bomb will be the terrorists’ nuclear bomb — and they can make 9/11 look like child’s play.
All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand — however outrageous those demands might be — or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.
They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden’s threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s — and our “leaders” and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the “leaders” and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River, oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
What does this have to do with today’s presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.
One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear— or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West’s lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West’s industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes president of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
“But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes president of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.”
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
Anyone wanting 4 or more years of Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas as Potus to punish the republicans has a real problem mentally and ego wise or they want the destruction of America as we know it. That same bs got us 8 years of the Clintoons and the current rat controlled congress. Anyone who thinks losing is winning is mentally ill.
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“That’s a scenario that makes a lot more sense to me but not American cities first.”
You hope but it may be your city that gets hit first.
Sowell never misses the obvious, for sure.
And here I was worrying about the looters getting everything I’ve worked for...
and Sowell brings up the possibility of total annihilation.
Your sentiments on this issue are identical to mine. This is not the time for conservatives to blow their nose off, to spite their face.
I don't think that even if Iran does become nuclear weapons capable that it will mean that they will be handing out nuclear weapons to terrorists like candy to tots on Halloween.
In the first place, the uranium/plutonium needed to create a nuclear weapon can be traced back to the reactor that created it.
If an American city were to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon and the nuclear portion of it was traced back to Iran, Iran would quickly be American owned. Even if it was owned as a glass parking lot, it would be American owned.
In the second place, if you continue to be led to the left and you don't resist, eventually you will be on the side of the left with a mighty fight in front of you to go back to the right.
The GOP has been led to the left since President Reagan left office.
John McCain will do nothing to bring the GOP back to the right. The last decade shows where John McCain's leadership will take us.
If you reward the right for going to the left, the right will continue to go to the left even faster than it has to this point.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with Mr. Sowell this time.
Nah, they’ll get you before they get me. ;-)
“When Election Day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home. “
Well, he gives cover and justification to every person who likes niether Obama or McCain. Unfortunate.
Unless the US and other nations start to get serious about their dealings with islam, this planet faces some dark times. The elimination of Ahmanutjob, Bin Laden, AQ or any of these so called radicals will mean nothing unless islam is wiped from the face of the earth.
I don’t want to hear any nonsense about needing 1 billion + body bags. We wiped out fascism without killing all the Germans...hell, we didn’t even need to kill all the Nazis. So long as islam exists, we are in mortal danger.
Once Iran tests a nuke, it needs only to say that it has another in a large US city, that it may not detonate if we do what they say.
The Obamas, Clintons, Schumers, Pelosis of the left would roll-over obediently, and meet with them to discuss terms of a "peaceful" solution (surrender by stages?) and call it a very fair outcome.
Dr. Sowell has a valid concern.
What about the SCOTUS? Them there’s 30-40 years of law making, not the 4 that BO has if he wins. Oh, and the WOT. Think BO’s anti-American clan is going to pursue that with any vigor? I’m not a McCain fan, believe me, but Sowell is right. Way too much at stake...
I agree with you about your assessment of what Iran can do and can’t do with a bomb. It’s Israel who should be worried. I disagree that putting Obmaa in the White House will somehow show the world that conservatives were right all along and help elect the Great Pumpkin Conservative to make things right. That seems as flimsy as Linus’s security blanket.
Surely, following 9/11, we have radiological detectors in our major cities...
Leadership isn't about acting on what others believe.
That will never happen.
The Chinese are not out of their minds, and a first strike by the US would erase more than 75% of China's very tightly packed population along with 100% of its industrial base and 100% of its agricultural land.
The problem with Iran is that Ahmadinejad, unlike Jintao, is actually insane. Completely bonkers.
“Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand — however outrageous those demands might be — or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.”
Mutually assured destruction worked in the cold war and could work in the ME. Terrorists cannot build/attain an atomic bomb without govt help. As long as the consequences of an atomic blast in America are spelled out well ahead of time, our enemies can be deterred. For example, lets say the Iranian, syrian, and a few other likely suspects are notified that in the case of atomic terrorism, their nations will be obliterated, regardless of the source of the bomb. I think we would soon see the bodys of aspiring nuclear terrorists showing up in landfills.
Rather unemotionally, I do not perceive Obama to be much worse. Personally in what he will try, this is true. In what they will accomplish, McCain is worse. Any opposition to the Leftist agenda he will push and the activist judges he will appoint will melt away because he is the head of the Party. He would be another Jimmy Carter and take the Republican Party to new lows.
First, the Obamas, Clintons, Schumers, and Pelosis are rolling over now. With a demonstrated Iranian nuke I think they'd have a harder time rolling over but I'll concede maybe not. Second, I was speaking politically. People just aren't going to buy the Iranian threat when it is presented the way Dr. Swell presented it, i.e., American Cities blowing up from nuclear explosions. You may think it a valid concern but politically I think that approach is a loser... right now. Of course between now and November something could happen and people might be more concerned about it but right now? They'll just say that is Bush-McCain fear mongering and blow it off and of course the media will help downplay any danger.
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