Lileks has some thoughts. He also comments on the vapid stupidities of the left in the matter:
This is not the time to lament the dictator, but of course that’s what many did. As his appointed hour grew nigh, the humanitarians of the world found a new champion.
“He held the country together!” Well, if President Bush gassed New York and California and outlawed the Democratic Party, he could impose the same sort of remarkable cohesion.
“He was a counterweight to Iran!” Yes. But perhaps it’s better to have a struggling democracy with American bases as the counterweight. If the U.S. had occupied Iraq in the 1980s, it’s doubtful that millions of Iraqis would have been sent to their death so Ronald Reagan could wear a military uniform and wave a shotgun for the cameras.
“We put him in power!” Hmm. How did that work, exactly? Right: We smuggled him into the country in Donald Rumsfeld’s steamer trunk with instructions to buy Russian weapons and a French reactor, then invade countries we really liked.
“He was relentlessly opposed to Islamist terrorists!” Except for those he paid and sheltered, of course. If he was sending money to people who blew up buses in New York instead of Jerusalem, people might have been more exercised.
Josh Trevino has the latest on the newest front on the war against Islamism, in Somalia, and on the media’s nonreporting and misreporting of it.
(I expect Anonymous “Chickenhawk” Moron in comments will now demand that I, and Josh, go to Mogadishu, since we’re not allowed to inform our readership or express an opinion without being on the scene.)
You shouldn’t need a think tank to figure this out, even though many foolish diplomats, at Foggy Bottom and in Europe, don’t get it.
“There is no longer a possibility for effective sanctions to stop Iran,” retired Brig.-Gen. Zvi Shtauber, of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post.
“Our conclusion is that without military action you won’t be able to stop Iran,” Shtauber said.
We have a very grim choice before us, and the administration doesn’t seem to be doing anything to prepare the American people for it. We will have a war with Iran, or we will have a nuclear-armed Iran (with a nuclear arms race in the rest of the Middle East). That’s it.
You shouldn’t need a think tank to figure this out, even though many foolish diplomats, at Foggy Bottom and in Europe, don’t get it.
“There is no longer a possibility for effective sanctions to stop Iran,” retired Brig.-Gen. Zvi Shtauber, of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post.
“Our conclusion is that without military action you won’t be able to stop Iran,” Shtauber said.
We have a very grim choice before us, and the administration doesn’t seem to be doing anything to prepare the American people for it. We will have a war with Iran, or we will have a nuclear-armed Iran (with a nuclear arms race in the rest of the Middle East). That’s it.
You shouldn’t need a think tank to figure this out, even though many foolish diplomats, at Foggy Bottom and in Europe, don’t get it.
“There is no longer a possibility for effective sanctions to stop Iran,” retired Brig.-Gen. Zvi Shtauber, of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post.
“Our conclusion is that without military action you won’t be able to stop Iran,” Shtauber said.
We have a very grim choice before us, and the administration doesn’t seem to be doing anything to prepare the American people for it. We will have a war with Iran, or we will have a nuclear-armed Iran (with a nuclear arms race in the rest of the Middle East). That’s it.