How concerned would this make you if you lived in Israel, or had family there:- the president of your near neighbour is a holocaust-denier;
- To loud public cheers he declares your country should be wiped off the map;
- his country's scientists and industry are working rapidly towards making that country the next nuclear state;
- worldwide reaction to all this would embarrass Neville Chamberlain: The US State Department for example wonders whether this country "is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community." The UN's chief hand-wringer Koffi Annan expresses "dismay." Ouch. That'll worry them in Tehran, eh?
Linked Articles: Naked aggression - Cox & Forkum
But seriously folks, this clown is dangerous - Mark Steyn
Kofi Annan and eliminating Israel -- politely - Daniel Pipes
5 comments:
Well Israel could certainly do with a few less nukes and bulldozers, and trying to get along with their neighbours.
Besides, in an objectivist sense, wouldn't you want to wipe all countries off the map? ;-)
(for the record, I think this action is deplorable, but then so is the presence of nukes in Israel as are the actions of the people who supplied them and the factions leading to the cold war that led to the conditions that allowed Israel to play the parties against one another until they got them. *phew*)
I suggest Israel get rid of some of its nukes in Iran before the reverse occurs.
I am glad Israel has nukes (which I thought they had developed without internation aid) - they are an island of civilisation in a sea of regressive collectivist oppression and, as the only real rule-of-law country in the region, they are the only state that should legitimately have them.
Get along with its neighbours? There can be no appeasing people whose ultimate end is your destruction. You can do deals with those whom share a common ground with you, recognising your right to exist for your own sake. That cannot be said of Israel's neighbours - only the nukes (and perhaps American military aid) keep them from launching another all-out military assault.
I'm not entirely sure whether Bush and Sharon are planning to utterly appease Iran.
There are whispers over here about secret US military war plans being developed to wipe out Iran's Nuke facilities.
This may be a case of Bush learning from the Iraq war prelude-fuckup (where the US went to war with 2 divisions still at sea enroute to the theatre - 2 divisions that would have been handy in establishing law and order the instant that Baghdad surrendered) and deciding to tip-toe up to Ahmadinejad until his big stick is in range.
This strategy has some merit. Best not give the Iranians too much warning because they have 40 army brigades on the Iraqi border and have been recruiting for more human wave Pasdaran and Basij forces of the sort that overwhelmed the Iraqis in 1982.
All in all, it's a tricky situation for the US, and I'm not surprised that they are using soft-diplomacy in their dealings with Nth Korea and Iran. Their regular military forces are stretched with their current deployments to the extent that National guard forces form ~40% of the troops deployed to Iraq.
Yes, it would be nice to hear some hard talking from those Western who still have a vestigial spine. Unfortunately they know damn well that they don't have enough "trigger-pullers" in place to easily repel an all-out Iranian attack on Iraq.
And it isn't as if the Iranians give a crap about the welfare of their people and the effect of trade sanctions. Their PM has just moved to ban western music being played in Iraq. Won't belong before Western imports are banned too IMHO. Now if Vlad-Putin could be convinced to stop pandering to them that might help. Why Vlad is doing this escapes me. Who the hell does he think is funding the Chechen's who are blowing up Russian school kiddies etc.?
Give the US another year to get the Iraqi military back on it's feet (something they should have done at the beginning but didn't because they couldn't believe how big and organised the terrorists were) and the situation will change again. Of course that means Bush has one fewer years in power with the prospect of him being replaced by Hillary Clinton...
What I do know is that Bush is fighting hard to stop the Dumocrats from painting Iraq as a total US defeat - and that Congressional elections are coming...
As you can see, it's so much easier to threaten military action when you are a fuck-stick dictator without a conscience.
"There are whispers over here about secret US military war plans being developed to wipe out Iran's Nuke facilities."
Not that secret if they're being whispered around the blogosphere, eh Robert?
It makes you realise once again the farsightedness years ago of the Israeli Air Force's aerial destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction back in 1981 - whatever the bitching done at the time about the air strike and its justification, you can be sure that when Iraqi Scud missiles were falling around Tel Aviv ten years later that everyone was bloody happy there was no plutonium or U238 available to put in those warheads. Iran's nuclear programme now seems from this distance to be at a similar stage to where Baghdad's was back in 1981...
Andrew, your idea of history in the Middle East seems very different to mine. Does yours extend back to the forceful formation of the state of Israel?
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