Body Parts

Miscalculations About Iran's Nuclear Weapon Program

Every analysis I have read about Iran's nuclear weapon program is based, I believe, on a mistaken assumption. We can best view this mistake by referring to analyses of a related issue, which is whether Israel is likely unilaterally and by itself to attack Iran's nuclear weapons production sites in an effort to destroy or set back the program. Analysts correctly state that that Israel's perspective on the issue is "existential"; that is, that for Israel, Israel's national existence, as well as existence of a significant portion of the world's Jews, who live in Israel, is at stake. Iran has consistently said it wishes to destroy the Jewish state and Jews along with it. Iran has stated this goal in credible terms.

When analysts turn to American-led efforts to compel Iran by sanctions to abandon its nuclear weapon's program, analysts explain Iran's program in practical - not existential - terms. They think Iran could abandon its program in order, e.g., to maintain certain international relations the sanctions curtail. The analysts do not speak of Iran as perceiving its nuclear weapons program as an existential issue for the Iranian state. That is a mistake. The Iranian state is the political manifestation of a religious regime in perpetual political and social revolution. By "revolution", I mean that the Muslim state sponsors continual change and alternation, in the name of a radical religious ideology, of the historical, social, political, and religious relations of its citizens and of Iranian relations with other states. That religious revolution is the essence of the state. It is also the source of existential enmity between Iran and its Muslim neighbors, Western democracies, and Israel.

Without the ongoing revolution, the Iranian state would transform into a static, administrative state, exposed to political reformism (evidence of which we saw in the recent Iranian reform uprising). For the Iranian state, the purpose of possession of a nuclear weapon is protect the existence of the revolution and the state that sponsors it. Possessing a nuclear arsenal would successfully deter other nations from attacking Iran, leaving the state free to perpetuate its revolution.

Iran and Israel have equal stakes in their horrific struggle. For both, the issue is existential. They are in a death struggle. This death struggle can only be ended by the complete destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons program and the transformation of the Iranian state. It would not end should Iran destroy Israel, for the revolution would be extended against other Muslim states and against democratic societies outself the Middle East, including the US.  Military action must be taken, as soon as possible against the Iranian weapons sites.

One Degree of Separation From the Bombings in Mumbai

In the November 26, 2008, Muslim attacks on Mumbai's city center, the Chabad Nariman Community Center was deliberately targeted. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg, six months pregnant, were viciously killed in a torture murder so horrible that it cannot be described. The Rabbi was a close childhood friend our our Rabbi. The personal connection brought emotional intensity to the services held after the attack. The July 13, 2011, Mumbai attacks occurred 4 blocks from the ancestral home of my son's wife's father's family, where 3 of her paternal aunts still live and which my son's wife visited in her childhood on family visits to their home. Visiting my son's family recently on the occasion of the birth of their first child (and our first grandchild), we talked with his wife's mother at length about the family home and its proximity to the bombings. Such emotional closeness to distant tragedy and its accompanying grief is taken into consideration by the plotters of terrorism. Terrorism affects many people who are emotionally close to the event, even though geographically distant. That is why it is a weapon of choice in warfare.

Creation of a State for the So-called Palestinians would be Immoral and Unwise

Both the PLO and Hammas have, as major principles of their charters, commitment to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. It is immoral to create a Palestinian state (or any other organization) dedicated to the destruction of another state. If the UN were to create such a state, or sanction its creation, the UN would be extending legitimacy to state terror. Further, creation of such a state would be unwise, as it would reward terrorism and war-making. International peace and comity is not advanced by rewarding terrorism and war-making. These arguments and others are ably explained by Alan Derschowitz, The Case for Israel. Read it.

The so-called Palestinians must renounce their stated ambitions to destroy the Jewish state before they can legitimately apply for statehood. They must renounce such ambitions by amending their charter documents in word and deed, in Arabic, in Hebrew, and in English, in their domestic and foreign policies, and in their entire civic deportment toward Jews and Israel. Anything less is immoral.

Will Hezbollah's Missiles That Can Reach Tel Aviv Provoke Or Deter War With Israel?

Hezbollah's fantasy of destroying Israel might have created a situation in which Hezbollah would be afraid to do so. With the Hez now possessing Syrian missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and other major Israeli population centers, any future war with Israel would be existential. As a result, Israel would have, in either a pre-emptive strike or a counter-strike, to go all out to destroy Hezbollah. It would have to invade Lebanon for long-term occupation, in order to root out Hezbollah and destroy its arsenal. Hezbollah has over-reached. It has stepped up to MAD. And MAD kept the Cold War peace between the US and the USSR. I don't believe it will keep the peace, in the end, between the Hez and Israel, because of the irrational and ideological elements in Islamism about Jews; but it is a ground-changer. What we need to think about is what Hez might do should it realize it has over-armed itself and can't really attack Israel without being totally wiped out. What kind of a future would Hez decide it might want? Would MAD compel Hezbollah to become rational?

Geert Wilders Defense of Israel and Setting the Record Straight on the so-called Palestinians

JoshuaPundit does a great service by reprinting the text and providing videos of a recent speech by Wilders defending Israel against the many false charges made against it by the so-called Palestinians. A must read if you wish to be educated on the Middle East. (Rest assured, it's not being read in the White House.)

TSA and the End of Public Space

I had not shared the outrage at full body scans at airports. And I still think that the such search is a justifiable intrusion into privacy in order to protect passengers from attacks on a traditional high value terrorist target. But ... but. The end argument for such search has appeared. The TSA argument has become a self-contradictory reductio ad absurdum. TSA has indicated that its search function must be extended to trains and subways and has begun pilot programs for the Washington, D.C metro system. The question is, where does such search end? The TSA's argument is based on public safety in large gatherings of people. Will it demand to search, with full body scans, at the major train stations and terminals, say, for instance, in New York City's Grand Central Station and Los Angeles Union Station? What about major football stadiums? What about Times Square on New Year's Eve? What about St. Patrick's Day parade, Thanksgiving Day parade, and opening day of Macy's Department store special sales in New York City? What about major rock concerts in the California desert? All of these venues draw huge crowds and are inviting targets for terrorists.

Of course, it is absurd that TSA and/or Homeland Security searches would be done at each and every public space which gathers masses of people. Doing so would be opposed to the Federal Constititution on three grounds.

• It would be a permanent intrusion of the Federal government into personal privacy.
• It would require a totalitarian government.
• It would turn every public space into government space.

Security is about protecting the public in public spaces.There is a difference between public space and governmental space. Obama and TSA have forgotten (if they ever knew, we suspect, given their Big Government philosophy) that public space and government space are not identical. Freedom requires protection and expansion of public space--physical and social space where freedoms are exercised without prior restraint. Government space destroys public space. And the Constitution prohibits passage of laws that contradict the Constitution. It is time for Congress to require TSA to step back and for Congress to create a new paradigm and legal arrangement for the protection of America from terrorist attack.

North Korea Reveals New Nuclear Enrichment Plant--Thanks, Obama!

We don't know whethe US intelligence, State, and the White House knew that North Korea had developed another nuclear enrichment plant (ultimately from The New York Times.) But North Korea decided to reveal its presence. Why? Perhaps to protect the country from attack during the transition to a new Dear Leader. It took years to build this plant, certainly during Bush's presidency, perhaps during Clinton's. But the revelation is another indication that it will be during Obama's presidency that nuclear proliferation dramatically increased around the world. And why? Because Obama's policy of a nuclear-free world misunderstood the nuclear strategy that had minimized nuclear proliferation for two generations and Obama's Marxist-Internationalist dislike for the United States led him to mistake the role that US military superiority played in minimizing nuclear proliferation. North Korea was crucial to Pakistan's nuclear weaponry, to Iran's, perhaps to Syria's. Iranian nuclear weapons will nuclearize the Middle East. Iran will probably assist the spread of nuclear weapons to South America, referring to Chavez, of course. And if Chavez develops nuclear weapons, could Brazil fail not to do so in reaction. The nuclear umbrella is folding and shall soon disappear. We will be faced with the ultimate law of human history: If a weapon is invented, it will be used. Eventually is now sooner rather than later.

Here are all Obama's Stalinist New Left Goals, lifted from the 1960s, run together. Listen and weep:

 

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

What Comes After the New TSA Airport Security Searches?

I'm not excited about the new body searches; but. Better they search my body at the airport than someone has to search for my body in a field somewhere. But the controversy over the body searches raises an important question. What's next? Well, I presume what comes next is terror attacks on railroads and subways. England had a subway attack and Spain had train attacks. Germany is today warning of attacks on railroads. It is only sensible to assume that US trains and subways will be attacked also. Let's suppose there is a major hit--something on the order of the Madrid attack--in New York City, or San Francisco, or Chicago. How would we apply security to the entire US rail and subway system? Surely, we can't construct something like the TSA airport searches for all the rail and subway stations in the country. We would need a new security paradigm. We should start thinking about one now. If profiling is out, for all the usual reasons, then what?

The Muslim Brotherhood Endorses Al Qaeda's War On US

The Muslim Brotherhood is the main oppositional force in Egypt. Its founding thinkers created much of the Muslim Jihadist totalitarian ideology on which Bin Laden drew. It provides intellectual inspiration for Islamists in Europe and the Middle East. Endorsement of Al Qaeda's goals is significant. It broadens the authority of those goals and should stimulate terrorist activity, in its name, in Europe and the US. Barry Rubin discusses the situation.

(H/T Infidel Bloggers Alliance)

We're in "The Long War", as the GWOT is, as Afghanistan Expands to Pakistan

The war against Islamist terror is not limited to Afghanistan, but is now active in Pakistan. Belmont Club discusses the wide-ranging combat of US forces in Pakistan and its implictations. And its not limited to Pakistan. The Russians are fighting Muslim terrorism, terrorism that has repeatedly struck at the heart of its cities more often than in London or Madrid or New York, and defined new levels of horror at Belsan. The Indians are fighting Muslim terrorism in northern India and Delhi, terrorism that, in Mumbai, morphed into new forms of urban combat--roaming small unit infiltrated terrorists coordinated by tweets and cell phones murdering at will and targeting Jews. And it is Mumbai style urban terror massacres that US and European intelligence agencies believe was to be used in terror attacks in the past week in Europe. Belmont Club points out, Obama thinks he can define all of this warfare as not war and not about terrorism and not about Islam; but those making war against us keep insisting it is. Guess whose definition is going to prevail. Not the presidential ostrich who sticks his head in the sand.