Roger L. Simon: US Congress - Land of the Uneducated

I'll wager the risible Mr. Silvestri isn't the only US Congressman who doesn't really know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni. In the onrushing flow of events out of Iran, I'd further bet almost none (or none) of them have read Amir Taheri's The Spirit of Allah, arguably the finest biography of Khomeini and analysis of his Iranian revolution. I'll go further. I bet very few have even read the Wikipedia entry under Khomeini. If they had, they would have read the following:

Khomeini adamantly opposed the provisional government of Shapour Bakhtiar, promising 'I shall kick their teeth in.'[21] On February 11, Khomeini appointed his own competing interim prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, demanding 'since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed.' It was 'God's government,' he warned, disobedience against which was a 'revolt against God.'[22]

On the airplane on his way to Iran Khomeini was asked by reporter Peter Jennings: "What do you feel in returning to Iran?" Khomeini answered "Hic ehsasi nadaram" (I don't feel a thing).

In other words, Khomeini (and most of his followers) are not Iranian nationalists. They are Islamists doing "God's work." National borders do not exist in their eyes. There can be no separation of church and state, because there is no state. Parts of Iraq like Najaf and Kerbala are God's territory to them. They are key Shiite holy places.

And yet the semi-literate partisans in our Congress voted yesterday to withdraw from Iraq and give the mullahs what they originally sought in the Iran-Iraq War (those same holy places). Moreover, that same Islamic Republic of Iran will soon be nuclear.

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I hope, Roger, you aren't one of those who has signed onto the folly of bombing Iran, thus assuring a resurgence of popular support for its government.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth, Grumpy Old Man. (Not appreciated, I assure you.)

What I do support is genuine backing for their student democracy movement. I met one of their leaders, recently escaped from Iran, in Washington. His faced had been bashed in by his torturers in Tehran's Evan Prison and his brother murdered there. They used to torture the brothers in front of each other. Makes Abu Ghraib seem like a rose garden.

George Santayana famously said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Unfortunately, it seems we have elected too many of "those" to governmental office.

They keep comparing Iraq to Vietnam, but conveniently forget (or ignore) what happened when we bugged out and then cut off aid to South Vietnam. I am very afraid that we're about to see a reprise of that sad episode; if it happens the effects will be orders of magnitude worse, and much longer lasting.

I don't want to bomb Iran, but I think it woujld be very bad idea to do what the mullahs want. And the mullahs, like the Democrats are calling for a timetable for withdrawl.

We have been hearing from the Student Revolt and it's incipient success since 1990.

Iran is our enemy. The people of Iran are our enemies. They are intent on killing as many of us as possible and converting the rest of us or keeping us as slaves.

We should bomb Iran, and bomb it thoroughly. Remove the possibility of even the slightest bit of electricity or fuel being used in that country, so that nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development is impossible. We should not care a whit about casualties on the ground and return Iran to the pre-Industrial era. No roads. No transport. No power. And keep it that way.

1. Prevent development of nuclear weapons by a hostile regime.
2. Demonstrate to Pakistan next door that a coup by bin Laden would be a VERY BAD IDEA: look what happened to Iran.
3. Remind everyone that US naval and air supremacy matters, and can ruin a whole people.
4. Show a willingness to punish a people and nation terribly to deter others like the Saudis and Egyptians that PC multi-culti moral relativism only goes so far, that Americans may dislike casualties on the ground but could care less about "them"
5. Deter WMD attacks on the US by showing the US able and willing to punish whole nations (what good is to have power if you can't flush your toilet)? Particularly needed with non-state actors having lots of influence over weak or non-existent states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

Against these very positive outcomes we would have the predictable and useless twaddle associated with Darfur (i.e. some moralizing at a safe distance, nothing more). You'll notice George Clooney doesn't DARE demonstrate in front of the Chinese Embassy because his ass will be shot off with impunity I might add. The Chinese being the great enablers of the Darfur disaster.

But perhaps the greatest argument for bombing Iran until not a single brick lies on top of another is that it would prevent us from being nuked. If we show such a terrible resolve, alone, unilaterally, it undermines bin Laden's and Khomeni/Ahmadinejad's argument that the West and specifically America is too weak and cowardly to present any threat when attacked. That kill enough of us and we will surrender to Islam and give money to them.

Bin Laden, and Khomeni/Ahamdinejad have been proven right in Beirut 1983, Gulf War 1 1991 (Saddam won, i.e. the US refrained from toppling him out of fear), WTC bombing 1993, Khobar Towers 1996, Tanzania and Kenya Embassy bombings 1998, the Cole 2000, and 9/11 (Pakistan and Iran and Saudi were unscathed). Unless we want to be nuked we have to start making examples.

[The logic of nuclear weapons is: once a US city is nuked, it will happen again and again unless the US starts wiping out whole nations. How else can it be? Killing not millions but hundreds of millions. To deter further attacks. I would prefer killing thousands now to wiping out hundreds of millions later which bombing Iran would do. It would send a signal that could not be interpreted any other way that the US would wipe out nations if nuked. Thus saving hundreds of millions of lives. Ugly but that's human history over the ages.]

Particularly now after the Defeat/Surrender Congress has voted to surrender to bin Laden the US to avoid being nuked MUST bomb the hell out of Iran. Yes it will make us enemies. So what? They hate us all anyway. We are not Muslims. They'll always hate us for that fact alone. Even the "reformers" if they got power would merely handle the whip differently.

Chamber of Clowns? More like the anti-war Democrats are the clowns. The vote was 218 - 212, the only Republicans voting for were Wayne Gilchrest and Walter Jones. Some Democrats voted no, with Republicans, because the bill does not immediately cut off funding, which is what those Democrats demand. The American voters who voted for Democrats in the House are responsible for this vote and this bill language.

What this Chamber of Clowns vote proves that the current Democrat party cannot be entrusted with national security. Not at any time in the foreseeable future.

President Jimmy Carter brought us Iran in its current incarnation, and I've spent the past 27 years trying to clean up after the foreign policy mess that is his legacy. There are a great many foreign policy folk who intimately understand Iran and its poisonous influence throughout our world. (For instance, the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina.) Of course, Democrats in the House and Senate don't have such people as advisors.

All that said, the current anti-war left ire has very little to do with national security and foreign policy. They are mainly concerned with current domestic policy. They've proven, especially with this vote, that nothing is more important to them than being in political power so they can implement their vision of domestic policy. And a great deal of this revolves around U.S. Supreme Court appointments.

Currently, there are a great number of American voters who are less than interested in Terrorism, Pakistan, Indonesia, and don't even get me started on Robert Mugabe, who's hell bent on killing more people than Pol Pot. Sometimes, I wonder what they are interested in.

Anyway, we've seen this kind of myopia before throughout the historical record. Freedom is never free, and each generation has choices to make. As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people... There will be a reckoning coming. And I'm not very damn happy about that.

On the "bright" side, it's rarely Americans who suffer first when the American voter forgets their responsibilities. On the "dark" side, it's always the most vulnerable overseas who pays, often with their own lives, and the lives and hellish future of their children.

Want a really hellish vision? How many nuclear devices would it take, going off in just two Israeli cities, to make Israel economically unviable? Not many. Israelis are far more aware of this than the average American.

I recommend Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah" for Congressman Sivestre and others to read.

Seeing Iranian president Almadinejahad on the front of the London Times online holding up his arm like some modern day Mideast Hitler expressing his government's intent to try the 15 British soldiers for spying, one can fairly conclude that not much has changed in Iran since the 1978 hostage taking.

The comparisons are apt; they are impossible to deal with in a civilized manner. Once that base point is understood as reality and Bowden's book does a fine job in laying out that marker; the next step is air tight UN sanctions and vigorous financial support for pro democracy forces in overthrowing these maniacs.

Islam cannot be appeased as some would like to believe. Many are also naive about our ability to reason with Iran and that would somehow change the future. That is simply projecting our values on people who do not recognize reason or reasonableness as values.

I see little chance of a student led revolution because the Iranian dictatorship will simply oppress and kill its opposition before it can gain critical mass. People may hate this but they will be unable to change it unless Iranian society as a whole resisted (and this would be very bloody).

For your scenario to happen, either Bush is going to have to do this before he leaves office or the next President will need to have the vision, courage and ability to articulate the risk of inaction to Americans in a way where something like that could happen.

Part of the problem today it that America has no respect in the world. In part, because of what just happened in this anti-war vote. Our friends can't trust us and our enemies know we are strong militarily but weak in terms of resolve.

While I have not yet decided to commit myself to your strategy, I do believe that if we leave Iraq to the Islamists, we will (i) set up the foundation of the Caliphate, (ii) concentrate enormous economic power (i.e. oil) with the enemy, (iii) embolden the enemy and his belief that the USA can be defeated, (iv) further drive friends like John Howard in Australia away, (v) potentially sacrifice the Iraqis who voted and who will become internal targets of the Islamists (i.e. eliminate the opposition), (vi) pay at least tenfold in additional lost American and western lives.

We do need to develop a plan. The only politician with a multitude of articulated ideas ranging from the Islamists to healthcare/entitlement spending to restoring fiscal health is Gingrich. It would be nice to see a real debate of ideas.

Meanwhile, the Democrats who are so busy looking to kill Bush and entrench themselves in power don't even know who the real enemy is (e.g. Silvestri).

Every generation has their turn to lead and be in power. Now is the time of those who came of age in the 1960s. Well, welcome to the age of flower power. What a bunch of morons!

Roger, I said I hoped you WEREN'T advocating bombing Iran, not that you did. Apparently you aren't.

It's a helluva sorry note that the free world and the American military has to fight an anti-war movement in the United States Congress with one hand while trying to fight the world terror jihad with the other.

Please read the VP's March 24 Manalapan, Florida speech. He directly and very eloquently addresses the anti-war "four myths".

Also, here is an excellent, link-rich, Flopping Aces post compiling evidence against the most pernicious of those myths.

What Jim Rockford recommends should be done -- 100%.
That it will be done -- zero%.
No, we're going to sit here and wait to be nuked.
And then, even after we're nuked, it remains a very real question whether we will respond as we should.
Too many have bought into the notion that niceness trumps survival.

March 24, 2007: US Congress - Land of the Uneducated

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