Truffles for Tehran.
The delusional dictator Ahmadinejad at the UN is a comic opening act that is impossible to top, so the US chair Susan Rice left the room. The game is to pretend that the Obama administration is unhappy with Tehran even while it sends kisses and chocolates to all manner of cretinous ops who pass messages along with only one small bite out of the truffles. The new script at the NSC is to press for a de-nuclear Middle East. In sum, pretend that the US is working with Egypt to make the Middle East a safer place. Knowing that Israel will not surrender its nukes, POTUS can pretend that the problem with the region is not Tehran but the nuke arms race, and that all stakeholders must be at the table. This is appeasement squared.
Israel.
No one is fooled by the Obama team shenanigans. No one is fooled by the Tehran bloody-mindedness. John Bolton writes that the Obama administration calculation is that Tehran can be managed as a nuke power in the same fashion as the US managed the Soviets. What is wrong with this assumption is that the Soviets, after Stalin, became a rational actor with predictable motives and reactions, with much to risk in a confrontation, while Tehran remains a delusional super-weakling with an uncertain and unpredictable regime of men who promote suicide and sadism. The Obama team seeks a retreat from its opposition to nukes in the hands of gangsters and their spiritual co-dependents. Review the 20th century. No good comes of handing off security to the camp of sycophants and liars such as the UN and its NPT regimen.
JB:
Since no one is fooled, then the path is clear, no?
I have never thought Ahmadinejad delusional. He seems to know far better what he’s all about than we do. I do believe that Iran wants to be a major player in the Middle East. In order to do this they have to do two things: First, they have to demonstrate that they can stand up to the U.S. This is the easy part. They have already shown their contempt for us in a myriad of ways. Neither do they take our threats seriously. Why? Because they know we’re on the ropes. We are unable to govern ourselves; unable to save ourselves; spiraling down into irrelevance. This is something our own citizens have yet to grasp. But it’s true nonetheless. We’re proving it every day. Just today, we announced to the world the exact number of nukes we have; something, that had heretofore been a closely guarded secret. (Imagine if Israel did that!)
Second, they have to destroy Israel because (1) Israel remains in a position to destroy them and (2) because Israel stands in stark contrast to their own wretched country. Add to this the clear signal it would send to every Middle Eastern nation that they are indeed the ones to be reckoned with.
Support flows to power. No nation in its right mind would align itself with a basket case except, perhaps, to bolster the number of its friends for public consumption. Once upon a time, there was the free world vs. all the others. The free world was vibrant and successful. It was the envy of all the others who refused to believe that their cult of personality system of governance was strictly second rate. We were the leaders and could count a sizable contingent of allies who favored us over the others.
We have since abandoned our allies and sought to form alliances with hostile nations. This has weakened us and caused our allies to flee our orbit. The hostile nations to which we’ve made overtures rejected our outstretched hand. Now we stand alone – a laughing stock.
Iran mocks us openly. They have offered to help stem our bleeding in the Gulf of Mexico. It is something we might have done had it happened anywhere else in the world.
By the way, how’s it going over in Haiti? We haven’t heard anything in a while. It can’t be very good. Otherwise we would have heard.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Everyone thought they could deal with Hitler. The NY Times wrote glowing reports of Stalin's Soviet Union, It too the Times 50 years to weakly apologize.
"Trust but Verify" was Gospel in US foreign policy until the Mighty and Nobel-ized Obama ascended to his heavenly palace on Pennsylvania Avenue. We have traveled back 71 years to Munich and Neville Chamberlains Agreement with Mr. Hitler.
Obama will get his own "piece of paper" moment with Iran. He wants it, his holy followers want it, Thy will be done.
The model so many NPT-devotees and government strategists use is all wrong. They think Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are Russians in quaint Romantic Arabian Nights' garb. They aren't. They are suicide bombers running a state.
Back in 2005, before Jim Webb switched to the pacfist Democratic party in a fit of spite, he was interviewed for a program on suicide bombing as a political/military tactic. He offered the following analysis: "It is the most difficult situation in any military environment because when someone wants to die, when they want to die, there's not a whole lot you can do other than kill them." The best solution to suicide bombers is to kill them before they act, because once they start on their trajectory, it's too late to try to talk them into peaceful co-existence with their target.
The US has been trying for 20 years to fight wars under Rules of Engagement devised by Europeans who don't fight wars any more during the 60 years they were sheltered by the American defense umbrella. Those ROEs are not intended to fight wars; they are intended to ensure that wars are not fought. The enemies of the West can't be defeated using them.
Speaking of delusional public figures, some unpatriotic naysayers contend that John Bolton is himself a crackpot who sees Weapons of Mass Destruction in his morning bowl of Rice Krispies, but I say that they judge the poor man too harshly. I mean, look at the vast arsenals of nerve gas, plague vials, and cobalt bombs that we uncovered in Iraq.
Indeed, this very evening I came across mention of an authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly piece that predicted that Iran would indeed have a nuclear weapon within two years. Of course, the article was from 1984, but what's a mere twenty-six years among true believers, eh?