Dance of the Turtles

In today's Washington Times, William Hawkins asks what is probably the most rhetorical of questions: Is the Bush Administration, by getting the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Islazi Iran to the U.N. Security Council for "possible" economic sanctions in retaliation for Tehran's defiance in persisting with its nuclear weapons program, walking into a trap being set by Russia, Red China, and the "international community"?

I describe that as a rhetorical question because I take it for granted that Mr. Hawkins, a senior fellow for national security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, is not prone to queries of the stupid variety. The refusal of the UNSC to approve Operation Iraqi Freedom, another corrective action that needed to be undertaken but which the same gang of weasels opposed for the same corrupt, anti-American reasons, should have established the precedent that is, as Hawkins details, so plainly obvious one country to the east. With Moscow making money aiding the mullahs' nuclear program, Beijing wielding an unquenchable thirst for Iranian oil and natural gas, Europe glomming over 40% of Iran's overseas trade, and all of the above seeking to use UN "diplomacy" as the lilleputian ropes to bind the American Gulliver, luring the newly "realist" Bushies in with a Security Council reference makes perfect sense. The White House doesn't get the SCR it wants and, just as three years ago, either has to humiliatingly retreat or press ahead without the worthless "multilateralist" figleaf, starting the whole miserable cycle all over again.

That's what makes the President's Kerryesque Iran policy so inexplicable. They HAVE to know that it will work the same way it did last time. This is the same UN that refused to enforce its eighteen SCRs against Saddam Hussein, the same UN that did its level best to gut the Proliferation Security Initiative, and the same UN whose so-called "Human Rights Commission" just today called for the closing of Gitmo and the release of all five hundred-plus jihadi prisoners by their "torturers." To put the military action against the Iranian nuclear program that now cannot be avoided if a nuclear mullagharchy is to be averted up for "world" approval is, to coin a phrase, "wrong, it is dangerous, it is futile." It is a pure waste of time that can only worsen our international standing and telegraph our intentions. And if the inevitable "diplomatic" ambush could "modify" our intentions, then we are already beaten.

In an interview with Human Events magazine, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it this way:

Gingrich, a noted historian, compared the President’s handling of the Iran problem to the way British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin handled Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, when Baldwin refused to rearm or recognize the threat Adolf Hitler posed to Britain and Europe. He contrasted Baldwin's polcies with those of another prime minister, Winston Churchill, who adopted a hard-line stance against the Nazi dictator’s ambitions.

"This is 1935 and [Iranian president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we’ve seen. We now know who they are - the question is who we are. Are we Baldwin or Churchill?"...

Asked what Churchill would do about Ahmadinejad, Gingrich said he had just read the opening passages of Churchill’s book, The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his World War II memoir. In the book Churchill recalled that President Franklin D. Roosevelt once asked him "What should they call the war?.” Churchill’s reply: "We should call it "The Unnecessary War,” noting that "had we done simple, practical things in 1935, 1936, we would have saved 100 million lives.”

"Simple, practical things" that clearly did not include ceding the initiative to the UN of the day, the League of Nations - which is really an insult to the League, because it wasn't under the active control of the West's enemies and their treacherous collaborators.

And yet we keep hearings whsiperings here and there that the Administration is quietly putting away its Baldwin and whipping out its Churchill:

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington.

However, one still wonders - are these actual plans, or is it just sabre-rattling designed to inspire Iranian democrats to rise up against the mullahs, something the Bushies have done utterly nothing to encourage or support up to now? Is it the real deal or is it a lame bluff? Does Dubya have the stomach for the next campaign in the GWOT that he has, quite frankly, ducked for the past three years, or will the "simple, practical things" be ignored in favor of the suicidal path of least resistance?

I think it's more like summer, 1939 myself. Israel, the Poland of 2006, lies in the crosshairs of another Jew-hating madman. If we allow this Hitler to get his hands on the magnitude of weapons the original narrowly missed....let's just say George Bush will be remembered a lot less favorably than Stanley Baldwin.

[HT: B4B, CQ]