Gerard Vanderleun writes about the return of history.

This is an article from January, but I was just thinking about this issue again in the context of an email discussion, on whether or not Iran can be trusted with nukes.

All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour – denied by the government but widely believed – is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a “contract” pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.

Iran’s dominant “Twelver” sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.

He is said to have gone into “occlusion” in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?

Now here’s the funny thing (at least to me). During the eighties, many accused Ronald Reagan of exactly this–thinking the Apocalypse at hand, and being willing and even eager to hurry it along with his itchy nuclear trigger finger, because we all know what a Christy bible-banging nutbag he was. It should be added, of course, that no credible evidence that he actually believed this was ever produced, and in fact we not only survived the Cold War under Reagan, but won it decisively, without a shot being fired, let alone initiation of the End Times.

Yet somehow, I don’t see much in the way of expressions of concern from any of the people who were shopping this nonsense about Reagan then, about another nation’s leader who actually does believe this, and whose every word and action confirms such a belief. This seems to be the same mindset that feverishly sees a theocracy continually descending on America, but never seems to notice that it somehow (to paraphrase Tom Wolfe) always lands in the Middle East. As Dennis Prager pointed out the other day, MAD (ironically) requires sane people.

Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.

That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life — they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines — and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran’s current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.

There is great room for doubt that this is a description of the folks currently in power in Iran. Despite the nasty options facing us, none of them good, the worst outcome would be if they get their hands on nukes (if indeed, they haven’t already, as some have suggested, via North Korea). It should be additionally worrying that they seem determined to develop launchers (which implies ICBMs) But some people are too busy trying to get us to disarm to be worried about them.

Here’s a long (but as usual, worthwhile) essay from Dr. Dalrymple on the future of Islam. He’s not optimistic.

One sign of the increasing weakness of Islam

For some reason, they think that “pressure on Iran may spur attacks“:

As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

This will make a big boom:

The test, named “Divine Strake,” will involve nearly 40 times the amount of commercial ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosive set off in the largest open-air, non-nuclear blast at the site to date. In 2002, 18 tons of explosives were set off at the Nevada Test Site.

700 tons of explosives. This isn’t a weapons test–there’d be no way to deliver that size of ordnance. I’ve got to think that they’re trying to figure out just how small they can size a nuke to (pardon the inadvertent alliteration) bust a bomb-building bunker.

…need to be fired for monumental, criminal incompetence. In fact, I’d go further, and say that the entire organization needs to be overhauled from the top down. Same thing for the CIA.

While Samit was spending a solid three weeks trying to get Washington to act on his pre-9/11 terror fears, future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour was raising suspicions with his flight training in Phoenix (suspicions Samit was not told about until after 9/11). Margaret Chevrette of the Pan Am International Flight Academy reported her worries to the FAA and somehow those concerns also made their way to CIA chief Tenet and into CIA memos of August 2001, but the FBI never acted on them. Yet on September 12, FBI agents interviewed Chevrette for more information on Hanjour

Well, not so new–it’s probably as old as history, and it’s against women. And it’s aided and abetted by the cultural relativists, who can never bring themselves to judge anything, except the (obvious) evil that is Amerikkka:

Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values – an “Asian,” “African” or “Islamic” approach to human rights.

This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.

So-called “feminists” who complain about western gender oppression and “dead white European males,” but turn a blind eye to this out of a misguided but fashionable leftist sensibility, brutally betray the ideals they pretend to, and their supposed “sisters.”

This is an interesting pre-war Iraqi document, if the translation is accurate:

He mentioned that a meeting in Beijing in the beginning of this month was held between the Prime minister of China and the German Chancellor Schroeder in the occasion of the opening project for the fast train and the latter was asked about the information that was obtained by the Chinese intelligence and it says that Iraq has moved his mass of destruction weapon to Syria and the German Chancellor told him that the German intelligence did indicate this. And after two days the US state secretary went to Damascus to check on this with the Syrian government that in turn denied this news…

Well, the fact that they denied it provides no information as to whether or not it’s true.

[Update at 11:20 AM EST]

Colonel Gordon Cucullu writes about the tipping point of truth:

Reams of documents

This is an interesting pre-war Iraqi document, if the translation is accurate:

He mentioned that a meeting in Beijing in the beginning of this month was held between the Prime minister of China and the German Chancellor Schroeder in the occasion of the opening project for the fast train and the latter was asked about the information that was obtained by the Chinese intelligence and it says that Iraq has moved his mass of destruction weapon to Syria and the German Chancellor told him that the German intelligence did indicate this. And after two days the US state secretary went to Damascus to check on this with the Syrian government that in turn denied this news…

Well, the fact that they denied it provides no information as to whether or not it’s true.

[Update at 11:20 AM EST]

Colonel Gordon Cucullu writes about the tipping point of truth:

Reams of documents

This is an interesting pre-war Iraqi document, if the translation is accurate:

He mentioned that a meeting in Beijing in the beginning of this month was held between the Prime minister of China and the German Chancellor Schroeder in the occasion of the opening project for the fast train and the latter was asked about the information that was obtained by the Chinese intelligence and it says that Iraq has moved his mass of destruction weapon to Syria and the German Chancellor told him that the German intelligence did indicate this. And after two days the US state secretary went to Damascus to check on this with the Syrian government that in turn denied this news…

Well, the fact that they denied it provides no information as to whether or not it’s true.

[Update at 11:20 AM EST]

Colonel Gordon Cucullu writes about the tipping point of truth:

Reams of documents