Tuesday, August 22, 2006

THEN: THE ADVENT OF THE NAZI LUFTWAFFE - AND NOW: THE ADVENT OF IRANIAN NUKES

WE ARE FAST APPROACHING THE POINT OF NO RETURN WITH IRAN, AND IF WE BLINK, THEN THE RESULT COULD BE DISASTEROUS. Thomas Sowell:
What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives?

These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves?

Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with "land for peace" -- a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory?

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations -- land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west.
If the West had mustered the necessary courage to preemptively attack Hitler in 1938 for violating the treaty which ended WW1, then WW2 would have never occured. Millions and millions of people would have lived; millions and millions more spared the horrors and degradation of the war and of what followed.

In 1938, the costs in blood and gold for defanging and overthrowing Hitler would have been much much lower than the costs of WW2: Hitler's war machine was consideably weaker. After 1939 his Luftwaffe was up to speed and we were cornered: only Churhcill and the UK stood between civilization and barbarism.

We are faced with a similar opportunity now: we can preemptively attack Iran, destroy it's nuclear infrastructure, and overhrow the mullahs (maybe), or we can fight them later - AFTER they're nuclear-armed.

I think the costs for attacking them now are lower than the costs of war with them later.

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