Surely a conservative voice can calm the war-mongers.
We can hope. (H/T friday-lunch-club)
It would help things if Western elites started seeing Iran as Darfur. Teheran has butchered thousands of its own, kills the innocent in Iraq, and has stated that it would like to see the equivalent of a second Holocaust — all surely some grounds for at least a dig from Bono or a frown from Brad Pitt.
It doesn’t help Ahmadinejad that his supposedly successful, rocket-propelled proxy war against Israel a year ago, not only was not followed up by a round-two jihad this season, but seems on careful autopsy to have been a costly blunder that nearly destroyed the infrastructure of his southern Lebanese allies. No Iranian in a gas line wants to learn that his scrimping went to pay for rebuilding the atomized apartment buildings of Arabs in Lebanon.
The oddest development of all is Iranian outrage at the U.N. — a sentiment almost impossible to entertain for any such corrupt, anti-American regime. But Iran’s chief delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Ashgar Soltanieh, keeps screaming about international monitoring. He threatens this and that, which can only mean Iran fears the global humiliation of having inspectors expose the fact that puritanical, live-by-Koran clerics are serial liars.
Of course, there is no reason yet to believe that Iran’s megalomaniac plans are stalled. There is much less reason to think that the world is galvanizing fast or furiously enough against the loony Ahmadinejad. But there are some positive signs that Iran is not nearly as strong as it thinks, and the general winds of the world are blowing against it, ever so slowly — and thanks in large part to careful U.S. policy and the innately self-destructive tendencies of Iranian theocracy.
We can hope. (H/T friday-lunch-club)
It would help things if Western elites started seeing Iran as Darfur. Teheran has butchered thousands of its own, kills the innocent in Iraq, and has stated that it would like to see the equivalent of a second Holocaust — all surely some grounds for at least a dig from Bono or a frown from Brad Pitt.
It doesn’t help Ahmadinejad that his supposedly successful, rocket-propelled proxy war against Israel a year ago, not only was not followed up by a round-two jihad this season, but seems on careful autopsy to have been a costly blunder that nearly destroyed the infrastructure of his southern Lebanese allies. No Iranian in a gas line wants to learn that his scrimping went to pay for rebuilding the atomized apartment buildings of Arabs in Lebanon.
The oddest development of all is Iranian outrage at the U.N. — a sentiment almost impossible to entertain for any such corrupt, anti-American regime. But Iran’s chief delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Ashgar Soltanieh, keeps screaming about international monitoring. He threatens this and that, which can only mean Iran fears the global humiliation of having inspectors expose the fact that puritanical, live-by-Koran clerics are serial liars.
Of course, there is no reason yet to believe that Iran’s megalomaniac plans are stalled. There is much less reason to think that the world is galvanizing fast or furiously enough against the loony Ahmadinejad. But there are some positive signs that Iran is not nearly as strong as it thinks, and the general winds of the world are blowing against it, ever so slowly — and thanks in large part to careful U.S. policy and the innately self-destructive tendencies of Iranian theocracy.
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Welcome Tom Watson readers.
I notice he just posted a link here as well as to Lance Mannion.
His post is spot on. Go read it, too.
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The mark of a neocon is the absolute inability to tolerate the idea that there are other nations who might get in the way of the United States doing whatever we want whenever we want to protect what the neocon intelligensia has decided is in our vital interest.
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The guiding principle behind neocon thinking has been that America's military might can and should scare the living daylights out of any potential enemy and that we should use it to do that anytime we feel our interests are threatened.
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These were the geniuses who thought that our goal in the Cold War should have been not containment but rollback. They itched, even pushed, for a confrontation with the Soviet Union because they believed that when push came to shove the Soviets would get all scared and back down.
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When sensible people pointed out that the Russians have a long history of not getting all scared and backing down (cf. World War II, Eastern Front, Stalingrad; Napoleon, retreat from Moscow) and they might very well react to our pushing by shoving back and start World War III in the process, the neocons would roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth but that was for show. Their real response was a shrug and a half-concealed smile. They wanted a war.
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They were sure we would win it. If a bunch of European capitals and a few American cities were vaporized in the process, well, that was the price we had to pay.
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Neocons have always been very brave about sacrificing other people's lives.
1 comment:
Obadiah Shoher's post is literally about Darfur as it relates to Israel. Hanson's reference to Darfur is an allegory. The two are not connected.
Moreover, Shoher's thesis (that only a Pax Israelia will stabilize the Middle East) is too far-fetched to contemplate.
Hanson urges patience and counsels against war. Shoher's position strikes me as diametrically opposite.
Sorry. Nice try.
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