Nuclear Iran

Thomas Sowell began his column for the January 2, 2006, Town Hall this way:

When you are boating on the Niagara River, there are signs marking the point at which you must go ashore or else you will be sucked over the falls. With Iran moving toward the development of nuclear weapons, we are getting dangerously close to that fatal point of no return on the world stage.

Yet there are few signs of alarm in our public discourse, whether among politicians, the media, or the intelligentsia. There is much more discussion of whether government anti-terrorism agents should be able to look at the records of books borrowed from public libraries.

Mark Steyn had some similar criticisms back in mid-December. While the president of Iran calls for the destruction if Israel (and, presumably, the rest of the West once Israel is gone), our diplomats spout diplomatic diplomacy with no fangs behind it. Not even any teeth. Just useless gums.

Thomas Sowell continues:

We could deter the nuclear power of the Soviet Union with our own nuclear power. But you cannot deter suicidal terrorists. You can only kill them or stop them from getting what they need to kill you.

We are killing them in Iraq, though our media seem wholly uninterested in that part of the story, just as they seem uninterested in the fact that the fate of Western civilization may be at stake just across the border in Iran.

Of course they would like us to prevent Iran from going nuclear -- if it can be done nicely by diplomacy, with the approval of the U.N., and in ways that do not offend "world opinion."

It is as if we were on the Niagara River and wanted to go ashore before it was too late, but did not want to turn on the motors for fear of disturbing the neighbors with excessive noise.

But at that point, the choice is between being serious or being suicidal.

The Republicans (most of them, anyway) have decided to be serious when it comes to Afghanistan and Iraq. The Democrats have chosen the other option about the entire Global War On Terror. But when it comes to Iran, even the Bush administration looks as though it's sliding on past the warning signs and heading for the falls.

Chris Malott at Malott's Blog has a great post about what he calls "Lethal Peace," an excellent term. He concludes this way:

Even with all our weapons and soldiers, we are only as powerful and effective as our political system allows us to be. Its sad that the radical base of a party that controls neither the White House nor either body of Congress can team with the liberal media to effectively emasculate our defense and foreign policy. I suggest that it may be a very "lethal peace" that they procure.

Do you think maybe if a nuclear bomb was detonated on American soil the Democrats might approve of the NSA wiretaps? It would definitely be harder for them to convince the country that we are not at war.