You know we’re following the wrong game plan when the threats of Iran’s rulers are more credible than the response of our own politicians. Tehran is racing ahead with its illicit nuclear bomb program; training, funding and backing terrorists; subverting with mayhem and murder the dearly won openings for democracy in Lebanon and Iraq; and has been advertising its aims of annihilating Israel and destroying the United States. To all this, we have replied with words, words, words.
It’s now 10 days since Iran seized 15 British hostages at gunpoint, and to this latest act of war, we have replied with “disgust” (Tony Blair), “grave concern” (UN Security Council) and by scolding Iran’s regime for “inexcusable behavior” (George Bush). The European Union probably said something as well, but it was not audible over the ka-ching of cash registers as the EU refused to back Britain’s call to freeze its $28 billion export trade with Iran.
Our politicians have spent so much time arguing themselves into the absurd and dangerous position that there can be no military response to Iran that by now — despite the trillions spent on our military and munitions — they seem to believe it. Tehran’s rulers have every reason to believe that they face enemies who for all practical purposes, and despite any number of maneuvers in the Gulf, field no force that will strike Iran itself.
Forgotten in all this is yet another hostage crisis — one that has now stretched on for more than eight months, involving the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped last July by the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah. They are still missing, and despite a UN Security Council resolution requiring their unconditional return, no one has called Hezbollah’s terror-masters in Iran to account.
We are left with such joke measures as watered-down UN “sanctions” on Iran. We are left with the U.S. Treasury trying gamely to track down and stop the flow of Iranian terror and WMD money, even as State undercuts even this by staging a preemptive grand giveaway of crime-tainted millions to North Korea’s bomb-testing Kim Jong Il — who while tallying his income from missile sales to Tehran must be watching Iran’s latest hostage parade with bemusement.
If this is the most the Free World will do in its own defense, then there is perhaps one measure more useful than spouting more words, words, words. Tehran is already more than familiar with the usual hostage-crisis script, as first played out on Jimmy Carter’s watch. Our politicians, if they truly have no will to act, should have the wisdom to shut up. In silence, Iran’s rulers might to our own advantage at least read the possibility –however misleading — that we are done with talk, and instead considering a real response.
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5 Comments
1. Brian:I must admit to wondering if the kidnapping of the Brits would have occurred 2 years ago, before our commitment to Iraq and President Bush became as unpopular as they now are.
It seems to me the Iranians must have been paying attention to the polls which tracked the falling popularity of both, and may have half-way believed them.
But when the Dems took over congress, and when they began behaving as irresponsibly as they now are, the Iranians must have taken heart and felt now is the time to gamble.
After all, Bush is weakened if not outright impotent, and there’s every reason to believe that any attempt to engage Iran militarily would result in highly publicized hearings to determine whether or not he should be impeached.
Given all the things that are going badly in Iran (inflation; teachers unrest; defections of high-ranking security people; guerilla attacks on Quds busses; the pitiful UN sanctions; high-ranking guys being caught red-handed in Iraq), I can imagine that the Iranian leadership might see the benefits of a distraction to divert attention from the bad things in their world to events they could represent as transgressions of their enemies and their stiff resolve and courage in countering it.
I think the Iranians made a really, really good bet. The British lack the military might (and by themselves) the economic clout to do anything about this crisis; the EU won’t help (you’re right — ka-ching, and also because of a blind hope that the alligator won’t eat them after they’ve sacrificed all others to it); the UN is both unable and unwilling to do anything of substance; and the US is paralyzed politically.
Apr 1, 2007 - 3:30 pm 2. Alex Reed:We live in strange times. The “elites” comfortably ensconced in Western democracies, laden with a surfeit of Marxism, double-think, entitlement, greed, and self-loathing, and expensively mulled in a broth of multi-culti, smug UN-think, and arrogance, are so deeply mired in lethal denial that they cling to policies of appeasement-at-all-costs. I wonder how they will adapt when Sharia law comes to their neck of the woods with beheadings on the town green, or when an Iranian mushroom cloud sprouts where Trafalgar Square, or the Louvre, or Times Square used to be. A certain amount of discomfort may well abruptly appear in those cosseted lives. Who will they blame then? George Bush? No doubt. As for the rest of the populaces of the Free World, they seem, for the most part, anesthetized and unable to grasp the enormity of the dangers we all face. Take your pick for the reasons for this daze.
Given this backdrop, the hollow verbal flailings, and impotent démarches that Ms. Rosett mordantly describes seem to be all that can be expected from this crowd. What will it take for these sleepers to awake? Will they ever awake?
An excellent editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, Rue Britannia, reviews further the sad decline of Britain and the West. “Britain’s response to Iran suggests the British lion now keeps its teeth in a jar.” – the entire truth of the situation in one painful sentence. The editorial ends with a quotation from Winston Churchill’s book, The Gathering Storm, about the years before the start of World War II. The whole editorial should be read again and again.
Would that our Government had, and will read, take to heart, and act upon Churchill’s sound advice to the House of Commons in his 14 March 1938 speech (after the annexation of Austria by the Nazis):
“Long delay would be harmful. Why should we assume that time is on our side? I know of nothing to convince me that if the evil forces now at work are suffered to feed upon their successes and upon their victims our task will be easier when finally we are all united. Not only do we need a clear declaration of the Government’s policy, but we require to set to work to rally the whole country behind that declared policy, in order that there may not be shifts and changes, as well as that there may not be any doubt or hesitation. It will certainly be no easier for us to face the problems with which we are confronted a year hence than it is today. Indeed, we might easily delay resistance to a point where continued resistance and true collective security would become impossible.”
Passover begins tonight. This year, as the world is at war, but refuses to believe it, with the survival of the tenets of democratic society in the balance, Passover affords everyone the opportunity to reflect upon the nature of freedom, what it brings to our lives, its sweetness, the vibrant creativity it nurtures, and, yes, its cost, lest we end up tasting the bitter herbs of slavery on a planetary level.
Apr 2, 2007 - 4:04 am 3. Knickerbocker:This whole debacle is also a powerful reminder of just how meaningful symbolic acts are to people in the region. It seems crazy to us sitting here in the US that a country would rally around taking hostages, but old habits die hard in Tehran. Hostage-taking has a way of happening at politically convenient times when polarization serves their leaders’ purposes. It’s practically “comfort food” over there.
Apr 2, 2007 - 4:43 am 4. smittyhere:Sadly I beleive the US population in general is following Europe. The people in the US voted in the Democratic party, the people in the US voted for defeat and retreat. We do not have the will to win the Iraqi war. It is a sad time for western civilization as we appease all our rights to Islamists terrorists.
Now you cannot refer to them as “hostages”. I guess they are “guests”.
Apr 2, 2007 - 1:53 pm 5. Gil:Claudia,
Apr 2, 2007 - 4:54 pmThanks for remembering the Israeli soldier hostages. No-one else in the media tends to.
And keep up the good work!