Nuclear Iran as winter falls upon Copenhagen

World leaders fiddled in Denmark this past week over issues debatable while a threatening certainty continued to move toward nuclear armament thousands of miles to the southeast. 

You make the call.  What should have been discussed in Copenhagen?  A threat over which there is no debate or a threat over which there is only debate.

Jay Nordlinger's perspicacious take on global warming, a nuclear Iran, and wintry Copenhagen:

Every now and then, reality breaks through dreamland, as in this bit of news: “Iran on Wednesday test-fired an upgraded version of its most advanced missile, which is capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe, in a new show of strength aimed at preventing any military strike against it amid the nuclear standoff with the West.” Iranian missiles that can hit Europe: Will this development concentrate the European mind, no matter what that mind thinks of Israel?

I have quoted from this report. It goes on to quote Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown, who said that the Iranian test showed the need for tougher U.N. sanctions. Well, best of luck with that. Brown said, “This is a matter of serious concern to the international community,” blah, blah, blah. And he made his statement, according to the report, “after talks with U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon in Copenhagen.”

That is just perfect. The panjandrums of the world were in Copenhagen to talk about global warming, and the alleged giant threat that comes from the same. But there is a definite threat, an urgent one: the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the threat of rising, armed Islamofascism generally. I remember being at a particular Davos meeting where everyone was gravely concerned about global warming, saying we had to act now now now. A nuclear Iran and its associated menaces seemed to be an afterthought, at best. In other words, the wolf was at the door — but the world’s elites were looking past the wolf to some gauzy threat out in the blue.

I made this observation, at the time: Confronting global warming is relatively easy, because it means confronting good Western capitalists and industrialists. Confronting Islamofascism is much harder, for some: because it means confronting Third World radicals, about whom good Westerners harbor all sorts of myths and hopes.

In August, Ban-ki Moon said, “We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.” What did he mean? He meant that there were four months until these climate talks in Copenhagen. If only the world’s elites felt half the urgency about a nuclear Iran. Our priorities, and sense of reality, seem terribly askew.

It is interesting to hear Iran’s defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, on television — on Iranian state TV. He said the following about his country’s new missile: “Given its high speed, it is impossible to destroy the missile with anti-missile systems because of its radar-evading ability.” True? I wonder what the state of U.S. missile defense is at the moment — and what it would have been if we had gone all-out after Reagan’s original call. I wonder, relatedly, how Israel is doing in this field.

One more thing, before I leave this subject. Iran’s new missile is called the Sajjil-2. And, according to the report I have linked to, “the name ‘Sajjil’ means ‘baked clay,’ a reference to a story in the Quran, Islam’s holy book, in which birds sent by God drive off an enemy army attacking the holy city of Mecca by pelting them with stones of baked clay.”

These are interesting times, ladies and gentlemen, and, of course, all too interesting. (Pardon the triteness.)

Read his entire Impromptus here.

Comedy from a man named Mohammed

It seems that the UN has as tight a hold over its classified information as does our own National Archives. Isn't that right, Mr. Berger? A recently leaked "secret" (shhh) report contained the following tidbits about Iran's recent push for nuclear energy and its ironically timed testing of medium range ballistic missiles:

The Agency assesses that the development work to design a suitable chamber inside the re-entry vehicle is intended to accommodate a new warhead payload that is quite likely to be nuclear.

That would be troublesome except for the fact that we have been assured over and over again that despite one of the largest global oil reserves sitting beneath its sun-baked crust, Iran pursues nuclear technology to bolster its meager energy supply. Breath easy, right? Mahmoud has been as true-blue as a Boy Scout, right?

The Agency is concerned that Iran may have nuclear weapon design information which could be used in a specific nuclear package which would fit within the mass and volume constraints as seen in (that re-entry vehicle).

I do like the qualitative "may" used in the previous excerpt but there's more to indicate that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons is imminent. The report does end on this oddly happy note:

Overall the Agency does not believe that Iran has yet achieved the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 missile with any confidence that it would work (whew!). Nonetheless (rats, knew that was coming), with further effort it is likely that Iran will overcome problems and confidence will be built up.

Doesn't it make you feel better that Iran's confidence will be built up, like old Mahmoud's been taking it on the international chin and needs a hug?

You think that was wry, try this on.

The president of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a group with as much moral fiber as the UN but tasked with the ho-hum job of tracking the nuclear exploits of nations round the world, announced today which country he believes to be the greatest nuclear threat to the Middle East. The envelop, please...

"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses."

No, you're not seeing things. I typed that correctly. That's what he said. To my knowledge Israel has never threatened to annihilate another nation or threatened that said nation would soon be no more, but Mssr. Ahmadinejad threatens more than that by the time he finishes his Cous-Cous Puffs.

You might think IAEA president Mohammed ElBaradei was doing a little hashish to aver such anti-Israel propoganda (the complete article here). He does his moderate Egyptian roots no favor by not indiciting the Looney Toon, Ahmadinejad, but rather focusing his eyes upon Israel. Worse than that he makes an even greater mockery of his own IAEA, the organization that Han Blix headed when it couldn't figure out Iraq's nuclear temperature. With Iran giving the wrenches the final turn, the IAEA has its back to them, the greatest threat to actually use nuclear weapons, and is focusing on the nation with the bullseye on its chest, Israel.

Israel, the muscle of the Middle East, has shown incredible discretion over the last three decades. It could have destroyed any of its neighbors at any time. Because the neighbors understood that, they have caused no issues, but in light of Iran's idiocy, Israel may be left with little recourse but to use tactical nukes to neuter Iran's nuclear threat.

Should that Rubicon be crossed, I don't believe we have the imagination to comprehend the consequences.

The folded tent

Early into Barack Obama's presidency, North Korea through down the gauntlet by launching a ballistic missile test. Over the homeland of our Japanese Islands. Testing a missile with legs to reach the United States. The president stared at the gauntlet with furrowed brow.

Then Hugo Chavez (pronounced "OO-go" or so the Hollywood lovefest so indicates) gets cozy with Vlad Putin, striking up an alliance between the surly Russian Bear and inviting them to have a presence in our hemisphere. Rather than taking a Kennedy-esque, iron-willed stance against the Bear and the Bozo, America's leadership pursed its lips.

Now Iran doesn't care who knows their dirty little secret. "We're building nukes." Israel frantically scans the international horizon for someone to do more than shake their head. They look like the pitiful NFL receiver who just gets punched in the mouth but sees no penaltly flag against the infraction. So they turn to the West, to America, their most stalwart ally over the decades for some righteous indignation. The President provided the furrowed brow AND pursed lips.

I've got to tell you that I have no desire for the United States to be the police force for the world, but at the same time, counting to ten with your belligerent child in Wal-Mart will avail you nothing but agony. In the realm of international citizenship, some folks just aren't playing well with others and need to be taught some old fashioned manners.

But America is folding its tent as leader to the free world. President Obama's speech to the UN (brilliantly critiqued here by Mark Steyn...once you get past the title) showed everyone our cards. We're part of the international community. Why can't we all just get along? You know, we really don't have any right to impose our way of life in your hemisphere because your way of life is just as valid as ours. Hey, Israel! You're on your own. Sure hope it really is a power plant those wacky Iranians are building.

This will be the first time in the history of man that the most powerful nation on the face of the earth neutered itself. On purpose.

I guess that's what happen when the Age of Aquarius comes to power in Washington. They want to play global t-ball while the folks on the other side look to inflict real harm with their baseball bats. We'll be singing "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," and we'll never see what hits us.

China: A post-Olympic hangover

China's been mighty quiet since Beijing closed down their games. Beyond pouring money into our tottering economy, buying up our banks and government bonds, they've been as quiet as Buddhist temple mice.

I read an article today slapped me out of my Sino-complacency.

You've probably heard about their one-child policy, the one that's created a veritable boom in their abortion industry and in orphanages for infant girls (and little boys born with deformities). The fact the implementation occurred a generation ago has led to all those baby boys growing in marrying age men only to find that there are 40 million more of them than there are potential brides. Self-inflicted societal catastrophe.

That's not what the article was about. No, I'd heard plenty about the former issue. This one had me thinking back to the Holocaust museums I'd visited (can you use so tame a verb about such a place?) in Jerusalem and in Washington D.C. It appears that what they do to their political prisoners makes Gitmo seem like the Ritz-Carlton with room service.

To keep up with the growing need for human organs for transplant, they turned to the logical place a totalitarian state would turn - its political prisons. The Falun Gong, the religious thorn in the Chinese posterior, have been on the giving end of this assembly line. Organs. And lives. Seems to satisfy the Chinese state on both counts.

Read the disturbing article here...and then wonder why you haven't heard about it before now.

Who's on first? A question of trusting the news

We judge the credibility of what we hear based upon how what we hear corresponds with the reality around us and based upon the tested truthfulness of the herald. If you are unfamiliar with the person, you will be more skeptical of their story.

So it goes with the news. Truthfulness does not generally prove itself the moment a story breaks. Over time as we glean more and more about the event, we learn whether or not the particular media component has handled has handled it in an honest and unbiased manner. That's a good reason to try and collect your ideas about what's going on in the world from a number of typically reputable sources.

When the crisis in Georgia broke, I didn't know to whom I should listen or who would paint the clearest canvas? Did Georgia provoke Russia's wrath? Were horrors against humanity being perpetrated against the South Ossetians?

The fog lifted when I read Pravda and other Russian news outlets accuse the New York Times and the LA Times of being tools of Western propaganda. An example from Pravda today:

"The opinion piece in the online version of the Los Angeles Times (2008.08.12) is a clear and classic example of the type of material western readers are being bombarded with in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign of disinformation to shape public opinion against Russia."

After I'd picked myself off the floor and wiped the remnant tears of one of the best laughs I have had all summer, my continued reading of the neo-Soviet opinion led me to believe they were completely serious.

Over time, I have come to learn that the Times of either coast, LA or NY, paints in a brush that richly favors liberal ideology, socialist even. Statistical analysis bears that out. So when the Stalinists began asserting that their greatest allies in the west were churning out right-wing-pro-West propaganda, it was like trying to deny the cookie heist while chomping down the evidence.

Go Georgia!

The brink

(**Sweeping generality warning**) Assassination is never a good thing. It makes for interesting cinema, but in real life, it's glorified murder perpetrated by a) thugs or b) cowards, sometimes both. When the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated on June 28, 1914, I suspect most Americans wondered, "Who?"

Likewise, when the scrawny leader of Germany started stretching his arms around a sliver of ground called Sudetenland in 1938, most folks between Bangor and Burbank shrugged, "So?"

Ah, the early machinations of global chaos. It's kind of like that pain and tingling in the left arm. Discomfort. A little annoying. Then--click--out go the lights. What happened?

For those of you who regularly scan these ramblings, you've likely plussed yourself up on where Georgia is. Frankly, a week ago, had you spun a globe in front of me, it's unlikely that my finger would have landed within 1000 miles of where I believed the former Soviet Socialist Republic to be. Now I know.

Today's news indicates that the country is split in two, the Russo-friendly territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within the protective, iron grasp of Vladimir Putin and the southern half of the country (oddly South Ossetia is in northern Georgia. North Ossetia is in Russia) is ducking for cover.

"Who? So?"

I've got to say, the situation gives me a gnarly foreboding. Here's why:

1. Road Block. That wedge of land, slightly larger than West Virginia serves as a western friendly buffer between the Russian Bear and the Middle East. Should Russian have designs toward any country in the Southwest Asia, only the desolate mass of western Turkey stands between it Iraq, Syria (Russian ally), Iran (Russian ally), and Israel (not so much a Russian ally).

2. Timing is everything. Does it strike anyone else as odd that this boil ruptured during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? Is the world sufficiently distracted? How's the chai?

3. Who's the Boss? It's not Tony Danza. It doesn't look like it's the recently elected president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, either. Seems the old president, the new "prime minister," Vladimir Putin's calling the shots on Russia's southern border.

4. Playing "Chicken." Somebody's got to flinch. If not, the crash (clash?) will hospitalize many at best and most likely kill the participants. Georgia is an ally of the West, an ally of the United States. Russia's suggesting this conflict has been provoked by the White House (Obama fodder? WMD revisited?). Putin's already peeved that America transported Georgian troops out of Iraq and back to Tblisi to support their homeland. So here's the Scylla and Charybdis we find ourselves between. If we flinch, we let Russia have its way in Georgia, and we essentially cede all of the former Soviet states back to the Bear's paws. America will show itself too weakened to stand against its Cold War foe. If we hold the wheel steady and we intervene on behalf of Georgia, the bounds of escalation are unimaginable.

And so, Georgia burns and Vlad fiddles. Somebody pass the Tums.

Photo by Reuters

Georgia on my mind

Kumbaya...

We are the world...

I love you, you love me...

I'd like to teach the world to sing...

Yes, indeed, the Olympics are kicking off again. If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium.

During the opening ceremonies Beijing's Olympics, NBC had an interesting shot of President Bush leaning back and chatting with Czar Vladimir Putin of Russia who was sitting just behind him and to his right. Do presidents and emperors just chat?

It seemed odd to me that Mr. Putin would be sharing a quiet evening at the Olympiad while his nation's fighter jets were waylaying Georgia, a territory that was formerly a Soviet Socialist Republic. Tanks and MiGs are not intended to win friends but to influence people. And Mr. Putin sips his chai.

When we think Georgia, we think peaches, the Braves, and the Masters. When Mr. Putin thinks Georgia, he thinks buffer zone and access to the Middle East. Georgia (not ours) sits just the east of the Black Sea with Russia to the north and Turkey to the south. What else is within 100 miles? Iran. Hmmm...

Georgia, Georgia
No peace, no peace I find
Just this old, sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind.

Ray Charles

The Bear rears its ugly head

The Czech Republic has agreed to place a US missile defense system on its soil. Similar in nature to a Patriot missile battery, this system would target and knockdown incoming missiles both conventional and nuclear.

Who dislikes this measure? Russia (UPI story here). They seem none too happy that any of its former Socialist Republics would have any type of missile defense. The question is why? It's a defensive system. It has no ulterior offensive capability. It's not created to target cities.

As the Bear continues to tone up and beef up its atrophied muscles and as Vladimir Putin moves from the role of president to prime minister, one can only wonder what's going on with the Russian discomfort.

In fact, it's gone beyond discomfort. “We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a released statement. That would be like Washington DC incarcerating its citizens for having guns to protect their homes. Wait a minute. Bad example.

Some may compare this to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I hope the differences are obvious. The USSR attempted to place nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. Canned sunshine a stone's throw from Miami beach?? Nuclear missiles, when last I looked, turn cities into glass. Defensive? Not so much.

The US missile defense shield? Conventional weaponry (i.e. no nukes). No fallout. Intended to destroy only incoming threats.

Perhaps the most disconcerting scenario sees the Czechs setting up the defense and the Russians blowing it to bits. Now what? My fear that the US would do nothing. The Bear would bloody the nose of the West, and the strongest western player (America) would do nothing, not because we do not have the military capability (oh, we do!), but because I do not believe that our nation has the belly to stand against a direct challenge from a formidable foe. I fear, like Neville Chamberlain, we would try and make nice, seeking (personal) peace (and affluence) in our time as the ultimate good.

So why the bluster? Why the baring of the incisors? Have the hammer and sickle returned?

What gives in the land of Gog?

Just another day: The thermonuclear variety

Let's see. When Iraq started toying with "nuclear power plants," Israel sent in an air strike bringing a punctuated halt to Sadam's desire for atomic energy.

This calendar year, Syria had a similar venture interrupted by the Israeli Air Force.

Seems the tiny nation, a nation bordered by rabid jackals, has little patience for its neighbors developing the ability to drop "canned sunshine" into downtown Capernaum.

So when Iran began its bluster these past couple of years thanks to the always jolly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel began suggesting on the diplomatic front that that might not be such a good idea.

Ahmadinejad, like an undersized, sixth grade loudmouth backed down by the saner, more civil side of the sixth grade class, called in his bully big brother of the Russian variety, Alexander Putin. The bully big brother began shipping nuclear material to the elementary school. Uh-oh.

Earlier this week, our country, also one of the saner members of the sixth grade class, leaked that Israel executed an exercise of such magnitude that it was in fact strategizing about the termination of the Iranian wack-job's quest for the Big Heat, leaving Israel trying to figure out whose team we are on.

Analysis? This Breitbart headline sums it up nicely:

'Ball of fire' if Iran attacked

It does leave you wondering, though. Would Israel turn Iran into a ball of fire? Unlikely the pipsqueak could land a punch on its neighbor to the distant west. That would leave the bully big brother entering the fray and that's not out of the question either.

Keep your pages opened to Ezekiel 38 & 39 and stay tuned...