The highly insightful political analyst Ilana Mercer has an excellent article about the situation in Iran, in WorldNetDaily. Mercer, who is a libertarian who opposed the United States' incursion into Iraq, points out that the current sanguine attitude in the American media and policy communities toward Iran is dangerously misguided, for in Mercer's view, Iran is much more dangerous than Iraq was. She notes that conforming one's opinion of the situation in Iraq according to what policy one would prefer to pursue, as opposed to basing one's preferred policy on the reality of the situation, is ideological and stupid.
She is perfectly correct. Mercer notes, referring in particular to those who oppose President Bush's policy toward Iraq (as she herself has done from the start):
That Bush has made the world safer for aggression and bears a great deal of responsibility for the recent escalation ... does nothing to diminish the threat from Iran.
While continuing to adhere to her opposition to Bush's Iraq policy, Mercer takes an objective look at Iran and its intentions and refuses to ignore what should be evident to all. To wit:
[B]esides the last letters of their names, Iran and the pre-invasion, hobbled, Third-World country we pulverized differ vastly on the menace scale. Iran is jihad central – it's a gaily open supporter of terrorism across the Islamic world. It finances Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and Syria and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority; its tentacles innervate Iraq, Bosnia and Croatia – and beyond.
Iran is also the last nation on Earth that needs nuclear power, and the first to have solemnly promised to atomically annihilate a regional neighbor.
Mercer is right. Iran is a serious danger. We should certainly discuss all options in considering what to do about it, including doing nothing at all. But we should not hide our heads in the sand and pretend the danger does not exist.
3 comments:
So, in other words, Mercer validates the prevailing Democrat and liberal critique of the Iraq misadventure: Namely that it distracted attention and pulled resources from far greater threats. Glad to hear you're on-board with the rest of us, Sam.
A conventional military intervention in Iran was never in the cards. It is mountainous like Afghanistan, and has more than twice the population of Iraq. Geez. Even if Rumsfeld and Bush are incompetent, they're not stupid.
The US is just doing its moral duty in trying to wake up the EUers, and Russia, for that matter. It is they who will suffer.
We know they will not hear, just as they would not hear about Hitler.
But we try, anyway, even though they are corrupt, and weak, because it would be immoral not to. The result of an Iranian/Islamic bomb will probably not even be the explosion of one. Instead, it will be the subjugation of secularism and the Enlightenment to dhimmitude: Islamic law and Balkanization will creep into the polity. Family matters will get their separate Islamic courts, as is already happening in Canada. Freedom of the press slits its wrists in the face of a palpable threat to home and family. Cracking down on "street" protests will become impossible, as if France's nightly, brightly aflame automobiles hasn't already proven that it is.
Jihad is but a crude, unnuanced form of Islamism. Like the man said, it'll go down not with a bang but a whimper. Since Hiroshima, the efficacy of nuclear weapons lies not in their unspeakable but measurable reality as weapons, but in their threat.
The threat of violence has more power than violence itself. That's what this is all about.
Sanctions on Investment, rather than full fleged sanctions were argued for by Fred Kaplan in Slate. Aren't both measures likely to take oil to $100/barrel?
This might, nay, will probably give moderates in Iran more time to reform the country.
Another good article by Kaplan.
And as for reality, covered by the alternative media... it's more of the same, covert ops, and more politics.
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