June 11, 2007
Lieberman: Take On Iran Now
When it comes to certain social policies, I rarely see eye to eye with my senator, Joe Lieberman. (For example, he supported last week's failed amnesty bill.) However, when it comes to national security and our military, he and I are on the same page.
Lieberman, who recently returned from his seventh or eighth trip to Iraq, proposes a pre-emptive strike against Iran, whose meddling in Iraq and elsewhere is no secret.
"We've said so publicly that the Iranians have a base in Iran at which they are training Iraqis who are coming in and killing Americans. By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," Lieberman said. "Well, we can tell them we want them to stop that. But if there's any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them."
He added, "If they don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing."
Lieberman said much of the action could probably be done by air, although he would leave the strategy to the generals in charge. "I want to make clear I'm not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran," Lieberman said.
In stark contrast, Democrat presidential candidate Bill Richardson recommends first talking to Iran, and then threatening them with sanctions. It's a tactic similar to warning your child that you're going to send him to bed without supper if he doesn't stop misbehaving. While it might work on a four-year-old, it isn't likely to work on the likes of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is a man who wishes to wipe Israel off the map, and has said that, "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury." Yeah, he sounds really reasonable.
About as reasonable as the now-dead Saddam Hussein.
Show Comments »
I must respectfully disagree with you regarding
Richardson's important breakthrough in terms of Iraq policy, especially in the context of Lieberman now threatening to use nuclear weapons, without so much as a discussion with the UN General Assembly, an ill considered posturing I find totally absurd and even dangerous, having studied the effects at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as much as I have. Allow me to digress a bit to examine a slightly different but related topic:
Richardson’s ideas on a possible US boycott of the Olympics.
I strongly agree with Richardson’s innovative idea put forth during the New Hampshire debates, in view of the general silence among nations vis-à-vis China’s ghastly atrocities in the human rights realm, and not just about China and Darfur, but especially towards Tibetans, and especially with its dozens of prisons which for Tibetans are exactly like Auschwitz and Dachau. I posited the same idea in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, in correspondence to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and to many heads-of-state, that the moral indignation of the nations in the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 could be harnessed into at least the threat of a boycott, perhaps worded more diplomatically. During the debate, Sen. Edwards clearly agreed with this point by Richardson.
Make no mistake: this is probably the last chance in human history to do anything constructive about Tibet, to prevent henceforth the genocidal treatment of Tibetans remaining in Tibet, which has since 1959 seen 1.2 million Tibetans killed, roughly 20% of the entire population of Tibet. If American political powers and their pundits won’t use the remains of our powers of moral suasion in the world at large, and if we are to once again docilely capitulate to dimwitted politicians who say that the Olympics is only about sport, and not about politics, we are no better than the many nations who were oblivious to the growing obviousness of the genocide of Jews in Europe before and during World War II.
Actually, the USA was for many years totally oblivious in this regard, whether you blame Roosevelt or anti-Semitics in the State Department, all of which is thoroughly documented in Arthur Morse’s book, While Six Million Died. In that light, we think Richardson is on the right track, and even more so, when you consider the dead pets and the poisoned toothpaste from China. That is just not “about politics:” that was life and death for many, including at least 100 dead, mostly children, in Panama!
News: In what may be its most audacious Olympic act yet, China’s Ministry of Public Security has issued an incredible directive that lists 43 categories of unwanteds who are to be investigated and barred from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Pariah groups include: - eerily vague “key individuals in ideological fields” - “overseas hostile forces” - “counter-revolutionary” figures - the Dalai Lama and all affiliates - members of “religious entities not sanctioned by the state” (e.g. Roman Catholics) - “individuals whoinstigate discontentment toward the Chinese Communist Party through the Internet,” - and even certain types of “handicapped” persons. Members of the Falun Gong would be barred, as would “family members of deceased persons” killed in “riots” — a euphemism for events such as the Tiananmen Massacre — and Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, which the regime brands “national separatists.” Only at the very bottom of the directive does it identify “violent terrorists” and members of “illegal organizations” as targets for investigation and possible barring.
Respectfully,
Stephen Fox, stephen@santafefineart.com
