The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Dark (Mushroom?) Cloud(s) on the Horizon
First I came across this from Ace:
The Gathering Nuclear Storm
Must read piece in the Washington Times.
War is inevitable, and a nuclear war is almost inevitable.
I know a lot of people consider that a fanciful or alarmist idea, but it's coming.
The fact that it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Iran's psychopathic leadership considers it its national mission to destroy Israel and then, to the extent it can, cripple the Great Satan.
And, of course, nuclear war has happened before, way back in 1945.
Why so many are unwilling to conceive this as a genuine possibility is understandable -- something too horrible to imagine cannot be imagined -- but it's time to put aside such psychological defense mechanisms and confront the world as it actually is.
Here is a portion of the Washington Times article Ace is referring to:Leading conservatives have said World War III -- the ultimate clash of civilizations -- has been under way since September 11, 2001. Some neocons say it started when the mullahs forced the shah into exile and seized power in Iran in early 1979 -- and that President Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair are treading water among the appeasers. They remind Mr. Bush he vowed not to leave office without first ensuring that "the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands" and thus Iran cannot become a nuclear power. Their ideological guide Richard Perle goes so far as to accuse Mr. Bush, who knows Iran has pursued a secret nuclear weapons program for the last 19 years, of opting for "ignominious retreat."
Overlooked in this calculus is Mr. Bush's burden of two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, and a much-diminished U.S. military. A third front against Iran, an ancient civilization of 70 million with global retaliatory capabilities (e.g., Hezbollah), is a frightening prospect that conjures up the nightmare of a return to the draft.
Mr. Bush believes deeply that Iran poses an existential threat to close ally Israel. Congress recently voted a resolution that said an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States. Mr. Bush also believes Iran is determined to sabotage American hopes of establishing a new democratic Middle East.
In Iraq, clandestine Iranian aid, from sophisticated "Improvised Explosive Devices" to funds and weapons to the two main Shi'ite militias, may be designed to maneuver the U.S. into a humiliating, Vietnamlike withdrawal from Iraq.
Given Mr. Bush's overarching dedication to "winning the Global War on Terrorism," said one former senior intelligence analyst, the neutralization of Iran has become a sine qua non, "equal if not higher on his list of priorities than 'victory' in Iraq, another impossibility that he is unwilling to recognize, even privately, much less acknowledge publicly."
Mr. Bush's national security advisers have also pointed out that an escalating danger of U.S.-Iran military confrontation automatically intensifies internal and regional opposition to U.S. objectives in Iraq. The president keeps reminding private interlocutors to think of how history will judge this critical period 15 to 20 years hence. He sees personal and national humiliation if he were to leave office having acquiesced to an embryonic Iranian nuclear arsenal.
So odds makers bet sometime before the end of his second term President Bush will order a massive air attack on a wide range of carefully selected targets in Iran, in partnership with Israel, and against the advice of many of his advisers. Mr. Bush is convinced a nuclear Iran would pose an intolerable threat to U.S. national security and, as one former intelligence topsider put it, "he is firm in his faith that God agrees with him on that point, and certain that history will eventually recognize and properly appreciate his courageous and visionary leadership."
Meanwhile, the Editors of National Review seem to echo the advice of those suggesting the President needs to take meaningful action (translation: something other than reliance on the utterly impotent UN):
At midnight tonight, the U.N. Security Council’s deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium will pass, but the centrifuges at Natanz will keep spinning. That Iran has defied the deadline should surprise no one. What does surprise us is that the president who swore he would not “permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons” does not show more urgency in fulfilling that pledge.
According to a senior administration official, the U.S. will hold off on seeking sanctions through the U.N. for at least a month while trying to hammer out the details of a Security Council resolution with Europe. The charitable (and highly implausible) interpretation is that Condoleezza Rice and her top aide, R. Nicholas Burns, have good reason to believe that Europe is finally ready to break with its four-year history of appeasement and back some meaningful penalties. But as a display of resolve, the delay is rather less than impressive. If the West were really united against the mullahs — and if the U.S. and its allies really agreed on how to thwart them — the Iranian regime would see a draft resolution Friday morning. Instead, it will see a Security Council so irresolute that its members take weeks, even months, to agree with each other, and a United States that gives no clear signal of its willingness to move beyond fruitless and feckless diplomacy.
We’re glad to learn that the U.S. will press European financial institutions to end their lending to Iran. And we hope it will go further: expanding such efforts to include non-European countries (for example, Japan), and pushing for tighter enforcement of the Security Proliferation Initiative (an international pact to prevent the transit of banned weapon components). But these would be mere speed bumps on Iran’s road to the nuclear club. Likewise the ban on exporting nuclear materials and equipment to Iran that American and European officials reportedly plan to seek. The A. Q. Khan network showed how easily rogue states can buy nuclear technology on the sly. The one sanction that might work — because it would threaten the regime’s survival — is a blockade of Iranian oil. But this is a diplomatic impossibility.
Moreover, China and Russia are unlikely to support even modest sanctions. Russia in particular has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in the construction of an Iranian nuclear reactor. Both nations promised the U.S. that they would back sanctions if Iran failed to halt enrichment, but neither shows any intention of keeping its word. Iran understood from the beginning that the Security Council’s supposed unity was a façade, and its 21-page response to the incentive package it was offered in June — a response that stonewalled on the question of enrichment but spoke vaguely of resolving the dispute through dialogue — seemed calculated to give Russia and China a pretext for splitting with the U.S. and Europe.
We would be fools to take comfort in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report, released today, that suggests Iran’s enrichment activities are proceeding slowly and producing uranium of a quality too low for weaponization. Given enough time, the regime will build its nukes. The paramount mission of the Bush administration in its remaining two years should therefore be twofold: to keep the mullahs from going nuclear, and to speed their fall from power. Unfortunately, these objectives do not admit of a single solution. We should redouble our aid the Iranian democracy movement, but we quite obviously cannot assume that the revolution will come before the bomb.
Stopping the bomb will require us instead to hasten the diplomacy to its inglorious denouement and think very seriously about our military options. A preemptive air strike is a nasty thing to contemplate. The mullahs could retaliate against us in Iraq (either by attacking our forces or by increasing their support for the Shiite militias). They could sabotage tanker shipments in the Persian Gulf, causing a spike in crude-oil prices. They could back terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. But the alternative — a nuclear Iran — is vastly worse. Even if the mullahs never used their arsenal, its simple existence would deal a catastrophic blow to U.S. interests. It would effectively give Tehran a veto over U.S. military action in the region. Since the nuclear facilities are protected by the Revolutionary Guard — rabid ideologues who operate with a high degree of autonomy — a weapon could conceivably be transferred to terrorists without the central government’s okay. And an Iranian bomb would likely produce a regional arms race and multiply the number of Middle Eastern nuclear powers. This too would raise the likelihood that a weapon of mass destruction will fall into terrorist hands; and by making it harder to determine where a detonated bomb had originated and retaliate against the guilty party, it would give the jihad that much more incentive to push the button.
Bush has made forfending that possibility his presidency’s raison d’être. We believe he means it. But we wonder how much longer he will wait before abandoning “solutions” that are anything but.
Finally we highlight A Warning for Islamo Fascist Terrorists from Jacques Dhervillez and The American Thinker (highlights are mine):
I suspect that you have found recent events in Lebanon rather disconcerting. One of your leaders, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezb’allah, is quoted as saying:
“We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons. Neither I, Hezb’allah, prisoners in Israeli jails nor the families of the prisoners would accept it.”
Your traditional strategy, of using terrorist tactics while counting on your enemies to adhere to the rules of diplomacy and formal warfare, doesn’t seem to be working any more.
What you have really done, by past decades of terrorism, is open a Pandora’s Box of horrors that may ultimately harm you and your people more than anyone else. This toughening of the tactics of Western powers is merely an example of Magruder’s Law that:
“Combat inevitably sinks to the lowest common denominator of the combatants. If you like to wrestle in the mud and your opponent likes to gouge out eyes, then sooner or later you will both be eye-gouging in the mud.”
Civilization is essentially a compact of non-violence, a mutual agreement that certain measures will not be used by any party under any circumstances. Pieces of paper like the Geneva conventions are merely reiterations of that agreement.
But whenever this covenant is broken by one party for a sufficiently long period, it is inevitable that their opponents, and eventually everybody else, will break it too. The end result is Magruder’s Law, which applies whenever terrorism is countered by escalation. In essence, the terrorist teaches his enemies to use his own tactics against himself.
When the Germans started to use poison gas in WWI, it was regarded by the English and French with numb horror as something unthinkably cruel. But within months, they were using poison gas against the Germans, with improvements of their own. By the end of the war, gas warfare had claimed over a million casualties, many of them German.
At the start of WWII, England fought in a gentlemanly fashion, not hitting until they were first hit and scrupulously confining themselves to military targets. Then Hitler flagrantly violated that covenant by bombing civilian neighborhoods in London and other British cities, with the sole objective of terrorizing the British people. It took a few years but when the Allies had the power to retaliate they used it, bombing German cities with a rather half-hearted regard for whether targets were military or civilian and needlessly annihilating Dresden in what many think was a payback for Coventry. In the end, over ten percent of Germany’s people died in the war.
Japan pulled off the ultimate terrorist attack at Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 people. Our immediate response was what would nowadays be called “proportionate”—Doolttle’s daylight raid on Tokyo. But our anger festered over the years and was fed by news of later atrocities such as the Bataan death march. The end result was Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nearly a million dead Japanese.. I know that all sorts of pragmatic arguments were advanced, even cogent ones, but I contend that if Pearl Harbor had not occurred, we probably would not have used our atomic weapons.
Magruder’s Law may not apply during a short combat. It sometimes takes years or even a generation. During the Viet Nam War, when American troops were exposed for the first time to dirty no-holds-barred guerrilla warfare, the first signs of retaliation under stress appeared only near the end, in incidents such as the My Lai massacre, which may have been inspired by the Viet Cong’s prior massacre of Montagnard refugees at Dak Son.
And already in Iraq, there have been isolated ugly incidents that indicate that the patience of the US forces may be wearing thin. Although you may think that this will be to your advantage, you are mistaken. You don’t want escalation when dealing with an enemy with our resources, resolution, and (as cited above) our penchant for delayed but massive “disproportionate” retaliation.
You seem to have forgotten that the basic purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, to make your enemy cower, panic, and flee. Thus, successful terrorism is always a conspicuous exception to Magruder’s Law. On the other hand, when terrorism does not frighten the enemy but makes him more angry, the consequent escalation may be more than the terrorist bargained for and may work to his downfall—especially if his resources are inferior to those of his enemy.
But you have gone even further. First, by persisting in attempts to terrorize the Israeli people, who after sixty years of such tactics are uniquely resistant to them, you have succeeded only in goading them to increased aggressiveness. Second, by embarking upon policies such as the use of human shields, you are actually terrorizing your own people by exposing them to ever increasing danger and thereby weakening their resolve.
And there are signs that you may try to employ this suicidal procedure against the United States. I am particularly alarmed by the recent news that Iran has been trying to acquire cesium, for the obvious purpose of instigating some sort of radioisotope terrorist atrocity. Bear in mind that you are planning such an attack against the biggest nuclear power in the world and the only one that has actually used nuclear weapons against an enemy. The only thing that restrained us during the Cold War, aside from fear of reprisal, was a mutually agreed upon taboo. If an Islamic power violates that taboo and uses nuclear weapons against the US, what form do you think our retaliation will take? And how “proportionate” do you think it will be?
Is that what you really want? Does the prospect of your wives and children becoming martyrs of Jihad fill you with joy? If so, then I suppose I have nothing more to say. But if you are expecting the U.S. to continue to exercise Judeo-Christian restraint and compassion in response to your attacks, then according your own accusations, you are wrong. If what you have been saying about our degeneracy is true; then we are no longer a morally restrained Judeo-Christian nation. If most of us are, as you claim, hedonistic materialists, then we are just as capable of vengeance and cruelty as you are.
I do not mean this as a threat, but as an urgent warning. I am trying to make you realize that you—and your families—are at the edge of a slope, a steep muddy slope that slides down irreversibly into an unthinkably horrible pit in which the people of Islam may ultimately perish.
I do not think there is any question whatsoever that we are almost at the point Dhervillez is talking about. As much as this President may seem "weakened" and "wanting diplomacy to work", I still feel that in President Bush we still have a man of deep conviction and principle who is prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent madmen from getting nuclear arms and using them against the West. And I think he will.
Will he be completely successful--i.e. will we be able to go through the crucible of total war without much sacrifice and perhaps more horrific attacks on our own soil? Maybe, maybe not. During the Civil War, America lost 25% of its male population. The carnage and the horror was real and terrible. But at the end the Republic prevailed. And if I were the mullahs I would consider this: if it does get to the point where it is us or you, the United States will bring weapons and resources to bear such as the world has never seen. You may think you know what hell is like from reading your Koran and imagining, but this hell will be real--and you and your loved ones will feel it. I no longer gamble on sporting events as I once did. But if I had to bet my life on either one side or the other ultimately prevailing, I know where I would be placing my chips.
I do not know what all these signs and warnings mean. I know what I think they mean and I know the heaviness of the decision that must be weighing on the President now. I think history will prove how fortunate we were to have elected and re-elected President Bush, because I think he too knows what the right thing to do is--whereas his opponents in both previous elections would not have had the strength; it may seem like he does not have the will right now, but somehow in the end I think he will do what must be done--we may have reached the moment in history when the United States has to go "all in". I wish it did not have to be so; I wish the evil ideology of madness that is the Islamist Fascist vision would just fade away quietly and peacefully--but I know better. This is collective madness and it will take a terrible price to make it go away for good. But it really is down to them or us now--I really believe that in my heart of hearts. And so I am willing to stand behind our President if and when he has to make the momentous decisions I feel are on the horizon.
