Joel's Rant

I’ve never been in a combat zone and I’ve never been in the military.  I avoided that in the 60’s when I was lucky enough, like many other men my age, to be safely ensconced in school.  Now, in my later years, I’m sorry I didn’t serve but I understand those words ring hollow today when I’m here in the present and some of my college classmates are remembered when I visit their names engraved in a wall. 

Tomorrow the nation will be treated once again to the display of our president bringing his yearly “State of the Union” message to Congress and the American people, as required by the Constitution of the United States.  Yes, it’s actually mandatory that the president do this. 

This constitutional requirement might come as a surprise to some in our political class, like John Conyers, Democrat Congressman for 40 years, and until recently Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, who when asked defended ObamaCare’s constitutionality by sighting the “good and welfare clause”.  Note to Congressman Conyers; there is no “good and welfare clause.”  Does Conyers even understand the Constitution?  Don’t ask long time veteran Democrat Congressman John L. Lewis, who apparently believes the Constitution justifies Obamacare’s mandate that people must buy health insurance because of the “pursuit of happiness clause”.  Note to Congressman Lewis; there is no “pursuit of happiness clause” and besides, the famous phrase “pursuit of happiness” appears in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.  This spectacle would be downright laughable if the men making complete fools of themselves weren’t so powerful and disdainful of the laws that make our country the only indispensable nation on Earth.

One may think these are merely minor misstatements, but are they?  These people are among those making decisions that affect the lives of you and your family and the security of our nation.  Do they know where their authority to govern us comes from?  Do they know that the Constitution protects individual liberty, not the public good, whatever that is?

It’s interesting that just a few weeks ago the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to begin their first session, as the majority, with a reading of the Constitution of the United States.  As you’ll recall Democrats of all stripes, liberals and progressive pundits and mainstream media sycophants called the action stupid and mindless and even implied that the most important political document ever written in the history of man had become irrelevant.   Did they forget that they took an oath to protect and defend the concepts written in this very document?  I find it pretty ironic that recently shot Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was one of those who agreed to read some of the Constitution, as the Republican caucus requested, and in fact read from the First Amendment, the one guaranteeing the right to free speech. 

No sooner had the smoke cleared than Democrats and their media minions began to promulgate a scurrilous lie, filled with wishful hate, a blood libel, that somehow rhetoric from the political right had spawned this tragic carnage.  No sooner had the smoke cleared than leftist pundits and reporters clamored for more “civility” (code word for “conservative political censorship”) from those on the right.

(You might want to click on http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/10/the-progressive-climate-of-hate-an-illustrated-primer-2000-2010/ if you want an astonishing and detestable review of the rhetoric that came from the political left over the past 10 years.  It’s really quite contemptible.)

I for one believe the vitriolic rhetoric, in fact, is not high enough.  Our voices, the voices of the conservative right, need to be heard.  Those who occupy the highest political offices in our country repeatedly lie to us, yet the president will appear tomorrow to talk about his agenda, going forward, as if the past two years had never happened; as if he became president only yesterday.  Yes, the new branding of Barack Obama is in full swing by the vampires in the mainstream media.  Yes, Barack’s a centrist, he’s concerned about the nation’s debt, he’s concerned about America being competitive, he’s very concerned.

Well, it just so happens that the truth has no agenda.  As the president gives his speech, let’s remember what he has done to our country.

Let’s remember ObamaCare.  Just for a moment, leave the issue of this law’s constitutionality aside; leave the CBO’s scoring of this law using corrupt and purposely fraudulent figures aside; leave aside the fact that ObamaCare will change forever the relationship every citizen of this country has with the government.  Did you know that come 2013, that 3.8% of the profit you realize from selling your home will go to pay for ObamaCare?  Did you know illegal immigrants are covered?  Did you know the government will have electronic access to all of your bank accounts and can transfer funds out without you even being advised?  Did you know that doctors will not be allowed to build new hospitals, even if they’re ready, willing and able to, and that hospital expansion will be prohibited?  When ObamaCare goes into full swing in 2014 all doctors will be paid the same regardless of specialty and all fees will be set by the government?  Did you know doctors will be penalized for requiring more medical tests, even if they believe they’re necessary?

What do you suppose just that very small sampling of what’s contained in that 2700 page law means to the medical care you can expect for you and your family?  Imagine what else is contained in ObamaCare’s language that has not yet seen the light of day?  You can draw your own conclusions.

How about the unelected bureaucrats of the EPA setting carbon limits that raises the costs of everything manufactured in “smoke-stack industries like autos, steel, energy and the like?  The Congress already refused to raise these limits but the president’s political appointee is doing it anyway in an end-around move to force manufacturing into a central planning Politburo situation.

How about the Dodd-Frank financial industries law that raises the cost of capital, does nothing to halt the potential for bailing out institutions deemed too-big-too-fail, never mentions to words Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac even one single time, and in fact leaves all the details of this law to the completely subjective discretion of nameless and unelected bureaucrats.  How about the government taking over GM and Chrysler and effectively giving those companies over to the United Auto Workers union and refusing to uphold previous and lawful contracts with primary lenders?

How about official 10% unemployment, climbing to almost 20% unofficial unemployment when part-time workers and those who’ve dropped out of the labor market are counted?  How about record foreclosures continuing without end?  How about more people living in poverty than ever before?  How about 50 million people using Food Stamps?  How about America borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent by the government, amounting to over $1 Trillion in additional debt each year for the next 10 years?  How can the economy be improving when more net jobs are lost each and every month than those that are gained?

This all happened over the past two years and is continuing.

How about Obama literally changing the mission of NASA from developing technology and creating miracles to teaching Muslim nations that they should be proud of inventing algebra (which, by the way, the Chinese did, not the Muslims)?  How about the Justice Department attacking Arizona?  How about the Justice Department dropping the voter intimidation prosecution of the New Black Panther party? 

How about Barack Obama’s FCC Chairman attempting to gain control over the internet with this new Net Neutrality regulation plan?  How about the government pulling the plug on all Gulf oil drilling, costing 20,000 gulf-area jobs, devastating local economies and driving the cost of gasoline to over $3.20 with no end in cost escalation in sight?

I can go on and on.  It’s unending what’s happened in just two years.  And none of that even includes anything beyond the shores of our country.  There’s Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, missile defense, new START, cancelling the F-22 fighter, Venezuela, China, Hezbollah and more.  And how about the new policy to allow romance and sexual tension onto the battlefield over the objections of battlefield commanders?

Barack Obama and his minions truly believe the people of this country are idiots, and unfortunately many people are.  But not all of us, not you and me.  We know what’s been going on.  This guy has a two year record, for crying out loud.

And then, out of nowhere, last week the Democrat governor of Hawaii inexplicably raises the issue of Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship.  He comes out in public and purposely states that he’s going to release Barack Obama’s long sought after “long-form” birth certificate so that this “Birther” issue can finally be put to rest.  Had he consulted with the White House before making this statement?  Who knows?

Here’s what we do know.  There ain’t no “long-form” birth certificate.  He inexplicably can’t find it.  What a goof this guy Neil Abercrombie is.  What he does have are some notes, whatever that means.

So here’s the truth, as I see it, and I’m not embarrassed by saying this.  Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to a very unstable and troubled woman.  This woman’s parents, while practicing Communists themselves, and realizing their daughter might be a nut, were not themselves idiots, and quickly realized that their newly born grandson would have a better chance at life and survival if he were an American citizen rather than a Kenyan.  So they trotted down to the local Hawaii BVS and made a statement that their grandson had been born in Hawaii.  They even gave their address as Barack’s address.  According to the regulations at the time, no proof of that statement needed to be offered.  That’s why the document the White House long ago produced was a “Certificate of Live Birth” (COLB), not a birth certificate.  The Hawaii authorities presently state that the COLB is not proof of birth in Hawaii.  They say that now!

So the grandparents get their COLB, and for good measure, they place a notice of birth in the local newspaper.  Remember, they’re not idiots; in fact they’re only trying to protect their grandson. That notice probably cost them maybe $5 in 1961 money.  Maybe it even cost them less than that.

And that’s why there’s no “long-form” birth certificate.  And that’s why Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States.  But it doesn’t matter because not enough people really care about this, or because they’re afraid of being called irrational, when in fact to think he’s not a citizen is extremely rational.

 And that’s all here is to it.

When was the last time all the countries in the world got together to condemn one single country.  Yes, there have been times when the United Nations, that well known cesspool of dictators, thugs, killers, and other assorted miscreants, was able to pass a resolution with the majority of the voting states condemning some nation for something or other.  Usually that denunciation meant bullcrap, and the world went on as usual, the condemned generally not stopping to even take a breath or giving a damn.

But I’m talking here about the entire freaking world voting as a block, even including those genius inventors of socialism, communism, Nazism and fascism, the Europeans, whom we can’t wait to emulate.  Even the United States of America agrees to condemn this one single country.

Maybe that one single country was North Korea.  They certainly deserve to be condemned.  Didn’t they just recently attack another country by deliberately and wantonly destroying a capital warship without any warning, killing 46 sailors and injuring many others, in what was actually an act of war?  And didn’t they secretly try to build a nuclear weapons production plant in Syria?  No, that’s not the one.

Or maybe it was Iran.  They also deserve to be condemned.  Aren’t they in the process of building a nuclear weapon that they will likely use to blackmail the rest of the world and aren’t they, along with North Korea, the most aggressive and transparent supporters of world-wide terrorism, including the proactive killing of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?  And haven’t they stated flat out that their goal is the destruction of a specific western democracy and member of the United Nations?  No, that’s not the one.

Could it be Sudan?  Talk about deserving to be condemned.  Isn’t their leadership responsible for the deliberate killing, starving and actually selling into slavery of about a million of its own citizens in Darfur over the past 20 years and have not yet stopped even to eat a sandwich?  No, not them either?

What about Cuba or Venezuela, subjugating their own people and exporting Communism and supporting terrorism in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and other Latin American nations and otherwise attempting to create instability everywhere?  They deserve to be condemned too.  But no, neither of them are “the one.”

Or what about Burma or Belarus or Zimbabwe or any number of other countries led by disgusting and degenerate leaders?  Nope, don’t be a fool, fool!

No, “the one” could only be tiny Israel, the land of the Jews.  So here’s a country of 7.5 million souls, not all of them Jews by the way, that occupies land about the size of perhaps New Jersey, surrounded by 1.5 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) Arabs and Muslims occupying land stretching from the banks of Western Africa to Indonesia, and all those latter people’s fondest wish is to see all the Jews dead.  And with all the malice that can be mustered, now it seems that the rest of the world feels the same way.

How else can the events of the past two weeks be explained?  How is it that Israel is not universally viewed as the victim here?  Any rational and thoughtful person should normally see it that way, no?  Why is it that Hamas, the Palestinians or the Turks are not being condemned? 

The killers in Hamas and Hezbollah, both proxy armies of Iran, have been engaged in war against the civilian Israeli population for the past several decades.  A summary of the atrocities perpetuated against Israel could literally fill a book, but one need not concentrate on that to get the full flavor of the injustice here.  Hamas and Hezbollah have been firing rockets indiscriminately into Israeli population centers for years with the intent of killing as many innocent civilian men, women and children as possible.  Over 10,000 rockets have been fired by Hamas alone, which makes perverse sense since the Hamas charter calls for the elimination of Israel no matter how long it takes.  It actually says that.  It’s like part of their depraved constitution.

To put that into some perspective, what do you suppose the response of the United States would be if a terrorist army in Tijuana began lobbing hundreds of mortar shells into downtown San Diego?   What is it you would expect the leaders of the United States would do?  Would you expect no action, maybe just talk and negotiation with the bad guys?  I personally would expect, assuming Barack Obama were not president, an American military response, directed by a conservative American Commander-in-Chief that would be immediate and adjudicated with ferocity and maximum prejudice.  That would seem about right to me, and hopefully to you too.

Then why does the world expect Israel to act differently, to not act in self-defense, to not protect their population and sovereignty?   Why is it that Israel must compromise while their enemies do not and, in fact, never have?  Why must Israel unilaterally return land, taken in war to provide a buffer for protection, to those that then immediately use that territory to assault their civilian populations?  Why does the world make excuses for the terrorists and condemns Israel for “atrocities?”   Why isn’t Russia ever held to account for their treatment of the people of Chechnya, or China for the people of Tibet?

The reason is simple.  It’s because the all the world hates the Jews.

Even here in the United States, our leaders and mainstream liberal media condemned Israel with the smartest woman in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying our government supports the UN resolution calling for condemnation and investigations into Israel’s untoward actions, as if we would allow the UN to investigate our actions in Afghanistan, for instance.  In her statement on the subject Clinton asked absolutely nothing of the Turks or their radical Islamist leader.  She only asked Israel to account.  And what I found to be particularly insidious was Clinton’s repeated uses of the phrases “peace activists” and “humanitarian aid” to describe what was supposedly being delivered to the Palestinians.  That was a total fraud.  Only stupid people, or willfully blind people, or those that hate Jews would continue to use those deceitful and duplicitous descriptions since the flotilla represented absolutely nothing of the kind.   

So why would our government buy into this hateful effort to hurt a trusted and long-standing ally?

My guess is the Obama regime has no use for allies or friends or western coalitions.  He’s just simply more comfortable with socialists and Marxists.  Obama’s apology tour of the world, ending with his Cairo speech in which he denounced America, reveals his contempt for the United Sates and its exceptionalism and allows him to seek friendships with enemies and antagonism toward friends.  It’s the Chicago way, or maybe it’s worse.

Maybe that’s why Obama double-crossed the Poles and Czechs by embracing instead Russia’s attitude toward missile defense, for which he received absolutely nothing in return.  Maybe that’s why Obama chose to directly align himself with the dictators Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers and against the lawful actions of the democratic Honduras Supreme Court when they ousted their communist leader.   Maybe that’s why Obama had no problem siding with the Argentines, and against the UK, in the recent trouble over the Falkland Islands, and also humiliating Nickolas Sarkozy of France by continually blowing him off instead of meeting with the French as Sarkozy requested.    

And how could anyone forget the humiliation foisted on Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who among other acts of arrogance and disdain for Israel, was left by Obama, alone in a White House anteroom, while Obama went to dinner with his family with instructions that Netanyahu think over his own stubbornness, as if he were a petulant child.  How Netanyahu, a no-nonsense former Israeli commando who has actually faced death straight-out, had the presence of mind not to reach over and smack some sense and manners into Obama is beyond me.

But what we’re seeing here is the serious weakening of the United States, with dangerous implications and consequences for the future.  Brazil and Turkey make a deal to help Iran constitute uranium and neither country doesn’t care a whit what the United States thinks. That would have been unthinkable under either of the Bushes or Reagan or possibly even Bill Clinton.  But our enemies are watching this spectacle unfold; they’re taking notes, they sense weakness of Obama and blood in the water, they know the United States is afraid to act, even in its own self-interest.  Our allies meanwhile sense a lack of trust and commitment and discipline of purpose, and are justifiably very worried.

And that American weakness is what leads to efforts by the forces of evil to send flotillas to arm Hamas right out in the open, or sink ally warships, or kill American soldiers, because the entire world knows the United States has become a paper tiger under Barack Obama.  The entire world knows we will do absolutely nothing.

Does the world believe the United States would retaliate or come to the aid of Israel if it’s attacked with nuclear weapons by Iran?  The answer would have to be no, no?  Does anyone actually believe Obama would lift a finger to save the Jewish State from total destruction (or for that matter, save Taiwan from a Chinese invasion)?

And that’s what the bad guys think too.  And that’s what makes Iran becoming a nuclear power so dangerous.  And don’t the Jews really deserve universal and world-wide condemnation anyway?

So what Hitler ultimately failed to do, the Iranians might actually get away with.  All the green lights point that way.  The runway is being cleared.  No one will try to stop them.   The world has reconciled their hatred of the Jews.  The Final Solution is only moments away.

And that’s all there is to it.

Where exactly is someone supposed to begin to tell the story of the history we are presently living through as we speak? 

Should I start with the 14-busses loaded with mob thugs from the SEIU, estimated by police to number about 700 individuals, which essentially attacked the private residence of Greg Baer, deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BOA), outside of Washington DC on Sunday, May 16^th?  With only Baer’s 14-year old son home at the time, the mob stomped the residence lawn and ran up the front stairs and through the front yard screaming and yelling with bull horns and waving signs allegedly protesting BOA’s role in the nation’s financial crisis.  The pictures of this event are quite extraordinary; Google it yourself. 

Who were these people and where did they come from, and who exactly called them into action, in the same fashion as when SEIU shows up at Tea Party rally’s and other events, often starting fights and committing violence?  Isn’t it interesting that Andy Stern, SEIU’s president and chief union organizer has been the single most frequent visitor to the White House since January 20, 2009, having visited on average about once every 3 weeks?

In retrospect, is this left wing SEIU attack any different than a mob of Klansmen storming Skokie, Illinois circa 1964?  If they were wearing hoods instead of red T-shirts, wouldn’t it be exactly the same as a Klan mob, except without the lynching of course?  Is it any different than the tactics used by Third World dictators when they call out their henchmen to create fear and intimidate people?  And all of this coincidentally occurs just before the finance bill is scheduled to go before Congress?  Is this how our society now operates?

Or maybe I should discuss how John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has decided that because he doesn’t personally agree with the Arizona illegal immigration law that his organization is not going to enforce it.  Oh, I get it, in the Obama regime, when an official with responsibility to uphold and enforce federal laws has a problem with that law, he can merely ignore it.  Is that right?  Is this how our society now operates?

Now here’s an interesting aside.  What if the hordes of illegal Hispanic immigrants crashing over the border were instead actually going to, as a block, vote Republican instead of Democrat; would Obama and his regime be calling the Arizona law illegal?  Would Obama be calling the people of Arizona racists?  Would he be standing alongside the leader of Mexico denouncing Americans as racists?  Would the Democrats in Congress rise from their seats and give the Mexican leader standing ovations?  Would John Morton threaten not to enforce the law he swore to uphold?  Isn’t this all about politics and potential Democrat votes and has not a whit to do with racism and rights?  Is this how our society now operates?

But wait.  What about the North Korean torpedo that sunk the South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors and injuring many others.  Here’s a country run by a minor maniac, which has no resources, no wealth, no industry, with nothing but nuclear weapons and technology to offer the world, a country with a median caloric intake so low that the height of every citizen averages about 2 inches shorter than their relatives in the South.  Yet no action from the United States to respond to what is, with certainty, an act of war will be taken.  None.  Zero. Nada.

We have become totally impotent and fearful and weak.  In the face of outright capital aggression by a country that can barely lift its head off the floor, we stand naked and worried and all we can muster is our Secretary of State uttering for the zillionth time something about sanctions and other silly and embarrassing remarks of absolutely no impact or importance.

And that’s just North Korea.  What will happen in the world when, not if, Iran gets nuclear weapons?  What kind of blackmail will we have to endure?  What kind of threats and terror will go unpunished by us and our allies?  What acts of Iranian aggression will we have to tolerate, and what twisted and intellectually duplicitous rationalizations will we have to invent so as to not provoke a reaction?  What will be the cost of attempting to cooperate with a country that cannot be negotiated with under any and all circumstances?  At what point will nuclear war be necessary, and how many millions of Americans will be killed?  Is this how our country now operates?

How about an ecological disaster that makes Katrina look like a stroll around a lake?  Obviously I’m not blaming Obama for the Gulf accident that has caused this disaster.  And I’m not blaming him for the fact that the well has remained uncapped for these many weeks. 

But what about Obama and his people attempting to blame George W. Bush for this disaster, as if Obama hasn’t been in charge of the federal government for the last year and a half and the Democrats haven’t controlled Congress for the last 4 years?  And what about Obama, upon learning that the well might be capped with this new “Top Kill” process BP is using, coming out and stating that in fact, for about the past year, he and his Interior guy Ken Salazar were planning on overhauling the entire oil industry licensing process and that it was almost going to be implemented and that would have prevented accidents like this, even though absolutely no evidence of that exists.  And Obama stating that the federal government has been calling all the shots and making all the decisions from Day One, while taking no blame, but blaming BP for not making better decisions or taking necessary actions?  Huh, what?

Did he actually make that up on the fly or what? 

And Obama essentially stopping or curtailing every new oil drilling project in America?

Everybody knows gasoline comes from oil, right?  And that less oil means higher gasoline prices, and higher gasoline prices means less driving, and less driving means fewer people buying stuff at the mall, and less business at the mall means more people laid off and on the public dole, and more debt and less productivity and more welfare and more entitlements all that.  Everyone knows that, right?  Just checking.

For Obama it’s all politics all the time and disasters are times to point to others to blame and to take whatever credit is available for himself.  Is this how our society now operates?

But the best was yesterday, Friday, the day before a 3-day Memorial Day weekend when the media would be asleep at the switch, for Obama to drop his “Sestak-job offer” explanation bomb.  Does the phrase “unmitigated incredulity” mean anything?

For the past 12 months Joe Sestak (PA, D) has been claiming he was offered a high profile Administration job by a high profile White House official in return for Sestak’s dropping out of the Senate primary against Arlen Specter.  Sestak never offered any details, but the picture he drew was pretty clear.  Many thought the job offer was that of Secretary of the Navy.  If not that job, then something of equally high value and profile, high enough and valuable enough to cause Sestak to want to drop out of a once in a life time run for the Senate.

Now here’s the amazing part.  After finally getting some media pressure, the Obama regime claims the job offer was to be an unpaid adviser on some presidential commission studying something or other.  And the messenger bringing that offer was the former president, Bill Clinton.  Huh, What?

Except for the most ideologically vacuous, naïve or willfully blind, this story is completely ridiculous and assumes the American public to be made up of dullards, idiots and stupid people.  Everyone should be insulted by this spectacle.  Who believes this crap?

Either Joe Sestak is a complete liar, on a par with the messenger Bill Clinton, or the President and/or his people have committed a real live felony and have now exacerbated that with a cover-up reminiscent of Watergate.  It’s either one or the other, or maybe both.  But it’s definitely not neither, that’s for sure.

And when you start to think about this Sestak thing you realize that there’s related history that needs to be analyzed a bit closer.  What about the case of State Rep. Andrew Romanoff (CO, D) whom the Obama regime may have tried to buy off with a White House job instead of having him run in the primary  against Senator Mike Bennett.  Or what about the allegations surrounding former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich vis a vis his “selling” Obama’s Senate seat.  Did in fact Obama have anything to do with that?  What about Rham Emmanuel or David Axelrod, both along with Obama from Chicago?

I think what we have here are the makings of a full blown Congressional investigation, where people under oath get to state what they knew and when they knew it.  That rings familiar, no?

And so the process of impeachment begins.

And that’s all there is to it.

Did you know that as late as 1938 France and Great Britain were far more powerful than Germany?  At the time of the Munich disaster of “peace in our time” fame, either France or Great Britain alone could have kicked Germany’s butt had hostilities been declared.  Both of those countries had larger armies, formidable air forces, more tanks and heavy weapons and more experienced commanders with battlefield experience.

Unfortunately, both France and Great Britain did nothing to stop Germany, and by September 1, 1939 the balance of power had shifted, and the rest is history.  Very bad history, made all the worse by the fact that it all could have been prevented had those with power stood up earlier to their eventual adversary, who while talking trash and acting ultra-tough, was actually rather weak in comparison.

I love history.  You can learn so much, and even better, if you missed it on the first go-round you can catch it again later because it actually does repeat itself.  Just take a look at what’s happening with Iran today.  What are you willing to bet we’ll act in our own best interests while our eventual adversary is weak?  Hmmmmmmm, is that a bet you want to take?

In just the past two weeks Iran has taken the following steps:

• Launched a rocket carrying a small satellite into space. (Clearly their rocket is not yet capable of launching a nuclear weapon, but continuing to develop this working technology is their plan, no?),
• Completed an agreement with Russia for the delivery and installation of an advanced air defense system. (Yes, backstabbing our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic really got Russia to cooperate with us big-time.),
• Declared they have succeeded in enriching uranium to 19.75% purity, making the creation a nuclear bomb a foregone conclusion.  (Only the willfully blind, logarithmically stupid or leader of the free world could continue to hope this enrichment is for peaceful purposes.)

What has Barack Obama been doing in the meantime to mitigate these provocative acts?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Oh yes, he did make a statement that tough sanctions will be necessary and blah, blah, blah……   Oh, and he did say he was happy to see Russia blah, blah, blah…….

This is nothing.  We’re France and Great Britain, looking on while knowing that a military confrontation is going to happen, but still taking no action.

But why should we care if Iran becomes a nuclear nation?  The Soviet Union was a nuclear nation and we lived with them, right?  So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that it’s possible that Iran will not be contained the way the Soviet’s were.  The Soviet’s wanted to protect their populations.  The Soviet leaders liked the good life themselves and planned to live long and comfortable lives. 

Conversely, the Iranians are obsessed with death.  Their leaders have even made statements to the effect that death is what life’s all about.  They glory in death.  They recruit suicide bombers.  They advocate strapping bombs to children and sending them into crowded pizza restaurants, for crying out loud.  Here’s a glimpse of what could happen:

Remember when Saddam marched into Kuwait, thereby taking control of their oil fields and threatening the energy supplies of the free world?  Would we have taken those fields back and destroyed Saddam’s military if he’d had nuclear weapons?  What will the world be like if Iran has that nuclear prowess?  What kind of blackmail will they demand?

Other countries in the Middle East, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan fear an Iranian hegemony.  If Iran goes nuclear, those countries will develop their own nuclear capabilities.  What kind of world will that be when every country in the Middle East is nuclear armed?  You think the Middle East is a dysfunctional tinderbox now?

Iran has at least two proxy “terrorist armies” in Hamas and Hezbollah.  What are the chances those barbarians will eventually become armed with nuclear weapons?  What about other terrorists like Al-Qaida and the Taliban?  Will they become nuclear armed?  What about outlaw countries like Venezuela and Syria and perhaps others?  Will they look to develop their own capabilities?

And what about Israel?  Iran has actually sworn to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.  Will the rest of the world stand by while a western democracy and ally of the United States is attacked with nuclear weapons?

In other words, the calculus of risk is hyper-inflated if these people are allowed to possess the most devastating and destructive weapons of all time.  While the scenario of a preemptive military strike is extraordinarily unattractive, the alternative is much less attractive, much worse and requires us to do what needs to be done.

We ignore this reality at our peril.

And that’s all there is to it.