War News

This passage that Hugh Hewitt posted on Iran the other day should be graven in stone tablets and force-fed into the mid-brain of every American (even if it takes water-boarding):

It is against that backdrop [of the most violent and deadly century by far in human history, the twentieth] that Iran's thrust for nukes must be understood. All of the carnage of the previous century was completed with the only uses of a WMD at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Project forward the same level of violence of the last century into the new one, but imagine even four or five of the aggressors or factions possessing WMD, and the picture of what is ahead in the next 93 years is bleak beyond description.

There is no persuasive reason to believe the world will be a better place over the next 100 years than it was in the past 100. Indeed, given the willingness of some to erase the past in order to better prepare to repeat it and the rise of a suicidal fanaticism among large numbers of industrial-age, educated people, there are many reasons to expect that their will be many people eager for the violence of the 21st century to far outstrip that of the 20th.

Thus history compels the United States to deny WMD to those most likely to use them in wars or civil wars. Saddam was one such tyrant, and Iraq even in its chaos and its toll in American lives is much less dangerous to the world and the U.S. than Saddam's Iraq or the Iraq of his sons when they succeeded him.

Iran is another such country, its leaders tyrants with intentions of piece with the worst of the last century's murderers. They want nukes and are moving very quickly and publicly towards that goal. Because the Soviets, the Chinese, the Indians and the Pakistanis have never used their deadliest weapons does not mean that Iran and those to whom it transfers these weapons will not. Reading [Niall] Ferguson's litany ought to remind people that Americans live in splendid isolation from the awful realities of the world, but 9/11 ought to have done that for at least a period of decades. The latter failed to impress, so the history lesson is unlikely to do so either.

That won't excuse the political leadership of the United States and the West though. The Security Council's resolution isn't going to stop Iran. If that is going to occur, the U.S. and its allies will have to do the stopping.

Correction: Double-H's with-the-bark-on pronouncement should have been drilled into George W. Bush's head five years ago, thence to be relentlessly pounded home to the American people who were, instead, allowed to doze off again and finally vote accordingly seven weeks ago.

Hugh's contention that the overriding issue of the 2008 campaign should be stopping the mullahs from acquiring nuclear warheads and ICBMs to deliver them is, of course, smack on target. But as even he concedes, it almost certainly will not be. Rather, the Republicans will be scrambling like at no time since 1996 (except, perhaps, pre-Florida 2000) to compete with "America's Mom" at political lactation and menstruation. Hell, I'd lay even money that at least one GOP contender will get breast implants.

And Ahmadinejad? The mad mullahs? Osama bin Laden? They'll just be friends Mrs. Clinton hasn't made us yet - a courtship guaranteed to end with a bang. And then, perhaps, another window of strategic opportunity will open - if there's enough of a window-frame left to hold it.

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The unconstitutional police state manifestation of the neoGestapo also known as the National Security Agency Terrorist Surveillance Program is now 17-1 in various and sundry federal courts before judges running the gamut from Reagan appointees to Clinton appointees. And that lone defeat was at the hands of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, whose ruling was universally panned as a joke that will be easily overturned on appeal.

But it will still be outlawed by the incoming, rampagingly vengeful Democrats, who do, after all, know all about police state tactics, as the center-right, and Christian evangelicals in particular, are about to be reminded - if the Islamists let any of us live that long.

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Looks like the Ethiopians are doing the LORD's work in Islamist-occupied Somalia. At least there's one government left in the world that takes the war seriously. Not that the lazy, vaccuous, seditious, dhimmized Western media will ever inform us of that blessed fact.

Perhaps the two are related somehow....

UPDATE: Looks like the Somali Islamists who were vowing jihad to the death just a few days ago have cut & run after discovering that their Ethiopian foes weren't screwing around:

The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.

In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.

Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.

Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said.

Cap'n Ed grasps the lesson of the Ethiopian blitzkrieg:

This shows the result of a full military response to Islamist provocations. After watching half of their comrades torn to pieces by combat helicopters, one deserter told the Times that the Islamists assumed that the war would be fought like the others in their experience, which meant hardly fought at all. Ethiopia had no intent to allow the Islamists to give tit-for-tat terrorist responses to measured military action, and the Islamists quit when they started dying in droves....

This loss crushes the reputation of the Islamists as dedicated to fighting to the death. They will if they see an advantage in it, and that advantage has been gained by Western reluctance to fight an all-out war against them. Ethiopia, after having been threatened by both a traditional attack from Somalia and a guerilla/terrorist war, responded with overwhelming force, and they crumbled.

Somewhere there is a lesson for the West.

Indeed there is: sometimes, war - decisive, all-out, no-holds-barred, "bleep 'diplomacy'" war -really is the only solution. But it's going to take another massive attack here at home to wake us up again, if our collective coma can be interrupted at all.