While Hillary and Barack want to sit around holding hands with the Iranians, Syrians, Palistinians, Cubans and the North Koreans, the practice of tip toeing around North Korea for fear of offending the Chinese pre-dates Obama.

Talking loudly and carrying a vey small stick was the Bush model with his 6 party talks. It is a clear demonstration of how our global authority is a function of our economic strength, rather than our military power or our principles. The more dependent we become on foreign energy and foreign manufacturing, and the more in debt we go to finance that give-away, the fewer options we will have in dealing with threats from rogue states. At the pace we are going economically, it won’t be long before Kumbaya is the only foreign policy tool left.

And why is it precisely when the US military operations have been so successful in achieving their goals in the region that Obama starts his appeasing, shoe-licking, cuasi-chamberlanian policy towards Iran? The one thing I will not be surprised now is if Hillary Clinton ends up in Teran to personally apologize for America´s values and devilish culture, that´s coming, mark my words. Even though the Obama administration is perfectly aware that the Iranians and Syrians have been and still are very actively supporting, and not only with their prayers, the criminal terrorists (read insurgents) in Iraq who were responsible for the deaths of many Iraqis and also American soldiers.

And it just sucks that now the American office in Havana has turned off the message board, I really enjoyed that in my last trip to the island, it was the only voice against the brutal totalitarian regime that controls everything in that poor country, but Obama listens and c theaters to the Cuban regime more than to an oppressed people, the messages in the board about the lack of freedom of speech and human rights in the island were too offensive apparently for Obama´s new foreing policy, oh yes sir, this is yet another one of those satanic cow-boy-like brutal and offensive and interventionist foreign policy decisions of Bush. Obama is different.

The lack of confidence and fortitude that started in the late 1950s created the GW Bushes and Barack Obamas we see today and gives rise to your type of thinking (“But we must never forget that these things are the instruments of nightmares, and words like “deterrence” and “nuclear umbrella” and “massive retaliation” should never be allowed to hide the underlying realities”). In reality, that Minuteman/Trident is no different than the stones and sticks used by cavemen.

Perhaps fortunately for US policy makers, Israel has much more at stake here and understands the logic of deterrence perfectly well. So assuming that the US government will behave as Colindale wishes them to – acquiescing in Iran’s acquisition of nukes and restraining Israel from preempting – then we will have two regional states putting MAD into practice once again. Let us hope that it proves as stabilizing as it did between the US and USSR.

One thing missing in this, however, is other gulf states that find a nuclear Iran unacceptable, but lack Israel’s option of preemption. Such states will certainly seek their own nukes. I am not sure that MAD is even theoretically stable when the number of parties is greater than 2.

Do you really think the brutality of the Iranian regime is the result of the actions of “one single politician?” Do you think that the apocalyptic religious beliefs that drive this regime are limited to a single individual?

Ralph Peters: “One of the most consistently disheartening experiences an adult can have today is to listen to the endless attempts by our intellectuals and intelligence professionals to explain religious terrorism in clinical terms, assigning rational motives to men who have moved irrevocably beyond reason. We suffer under layers of intellectual asymmetries that hinder us from an intuititive recognition of our enemies.”

Iran’s likely response to an unprovoked attack, will be to close the Straits of Hormuz meaning the global price of oil will double or quadruple; stock markets around the world will crash; Iranian cells in the US and Europe will activate; Iran will fire long-range missiles at Israel who will then have no option but to escalate the conflict with a massive nuclear strike that will turn the entire Gulf region into a giant fireball.

From Alaska to Mexico and from London to Oman and Karachi, the eventual consequences are unknown – but the world will have changed and we will all have to bear the cost of scarce oil, sky-high prices, falling investments and damaged economies.

To this scenario must be added the massive loss of life through the use of nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction with the resultant contaminating radiation and genetic damage.

All this because one single politician, from a country that hasn’t initiated a war with anyone for hundreds of years, indulged in rhetorical hyperbole which has been used as an excuse by others to further a self-serving, nationalist agenda to retain hegemony in the region.

In the early 1960s, US Secretary of Defence, the late Robert McNamara made a similar foreign policy error of enormous magnitude which resulted in over 4 million deaths that included 58,000 Americans. It took him more than 20 years to admit to his catastrophic error. He died, racked with guilt and remorse.

However, in that terribly tragic and futile conflict, no nuclear WMD were deployed by either side. Today, would be very different.

We need to use our voice to prevent this so-called pre-emptive attack. We need to talk and negotiate – not to bomb, kill and terminate the lives of thousands of innocent men, woman and children.

But while the Bush adminstration´s stand on Iran was hard, it was also intended to keep israel away from attacking or engaging Iran, Israel remained calmed for the most part.

Conversely, Obama´s soft approach to Iran is causing the Israel leaders to worry about the Iran growing more confident and bolder in their goals to produce nuclear devices.

In the absence of strong world leaders opposing and discouraging Iran from obtaining nuclear capability, Israel will feel they are by themselves facing the threat.

The reality, I suspect, would be … “And, gentlemen, there is nothing for us to do about it because Israel already fired off massive retaliatory nuclear strikes before the Iranian missiles were halfway across Iraq on theor way to Israel.”

Isarael is neither ‘realpolitics’ not ‘deterence’ minded. They are old Testament, and in such circumstances, I don’t think they would wait around to hear Barrack or Hillary’s opinion.

Because they don’t take such things seriously and they’re not fun?

Interesting how in a situation where the rationale for MAD does not apply, and we really could defend ourselves and our allies (at least against missiles and airplanes), the liberal who posture as peace-loving want to apply the rules of MAD to foreclose any option except Armageddon. Because, y’know, it’s more important to score moral or debating points (like with cap-and-trade, too).

Real-world consequences are someone else’s problem, tho when the liberals are the ones in power, it’s not at all obvious who that someone ese might be. It was easy to posture against Bush-Cheney for 8 years, because in the end they were responsible.

Of course, looking at Hillary’s utterly idiotic statement about how the Industrial Reviolution was a mistake because it was based on CO2-emitting technology, Occam’s Razor suggests maybe the simplest answer to all this is just that they are lazy, ignorant and stupid when it comes to foreign policy and defense.

“Israel hardened its insistence Monday that it would do anything it felt necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, just the ultimatum the United States hoped not to hear as it tried to nudge Iran to the bargaining table.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reassured Israel that the new Obama administration was not naive about Iran’s intentions, and that Washington would press for new, tougher sanctions against the Iranians if they balk. He didn’t say what those might include.”

whole thing here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090727/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/ml_israel_us

“Gentlemen, Iran has nuclear bombed Tel Aviv, Haifa, and a few other cities in Israel. Shall we retaliate? I think not, because killing more millions of people cannot help the dead. We must go forward with the living.”

Under deterrence, a future meeting goes like this:

“Shall we retaliate? We must, as our honor and duty, and to deter anyone else from doing such a heinous act.”

Here we are now, before such nuclear action and death. Which philosophy is more likely to prevent such a future tragedy?