A predominantly one-topic blog: how is it that the most imminent and lethal implication for humankind - the fact that the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" will not work with Iran - is not being discussed in our media? Until it is recognized that MAD is dead, the Iranian threat will be treated as a threat only to Israel and not as the global threat which it in fact is.
A blog by Mladen Andrijasevic
In your speech to the UN
General Assembly you quoted
Bernard Lewis:
“There’s
a great scholar of the Middle East, Prof. Bernard Lewis, who put it best. He said that for the
Ayatollahs of Iran, mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, it’s an
inducement.”
Recently, only Michael Oren in his LA
Times Op- Ed (June 19) and Norman Podhoretz in his WSJ
Op-Ed (July 29) mentioned Lewis.
Since this quote by Bernard Lewis about the death of MAD vis-à-vis
Iran is so essential to the understanding of the magnitude of the Iranian
nuclear threat, why is it not used more extensively to sway world public
opinion?
There was no ‘better deal’ with Iran to be had. Now this
calamitous one offers Tehran two paths to the bomb.
ByNORMAN PODHORETZ
Almost everyone who opposes the deal PresidentObamahas struck with Iran hotly
contests his relentless insistence that the only alternative to it is war. No,
they claim, there is another alternative, and that is “a better deal.”
To which Mr. Obama responds that Iran would never agree
to the terms his critics imagine could be imposed. These terms would include
the toughening rather than the lifting of sanctions; “anytime, anywhere”
nuclear-plant inspections instead of the easily evaded ones to which he has
agreed; the elimination rather than the freezing of Iran’s nuclear
infrastructure; and the corresponding elimination of the “sunset” clause that
leaves Iran free after 10 years to build as many nuclear weapons as it wishes.
Since I too consider Mr. Obama’s deal a calamity, I would
be happy to add my voice to the critical chorus. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly
with the critics that, far from “cutting off any pathway Iran could take to
develop a nuclear weapon,” as he claims, the deal actually offers Tehran not
one but two paths to acquiring the bomb. Iran can either cheat or simply wait
for the sunset clause to kick in, while proceeding more or less legally to
prepare for that glorious day.
Unfortunately, however, I am unable to escape the
conclusion that Mr. Obama is right when he dismisses as a nonstarter the kind
of “better deal” his critics propose. Nor, given that the six other parties to
the negotiations are eager to do business with Iran, could these stringent
conditions be imposed if the U.S. were to walk away without a deal. The upshot
is that if the objective remains preventing Iran from getting the bomb, the
only way to do so is to bomb Iran.
And there’s the rub. Once upon a time the U.S. and just
about every other country on earth believed that achieving
this objective was absolutely necessary to the safety of the world, and that it
could be done through negotiations. Yet as the years wore on, it became
increasingly clear to everyone not blinded by wishful delusions that diplomacy
would never work.
Simultaneously it also became
clear that the U.S. and the six other parties to the negotiations, despite
their protestations that force remained “on the table,” would never resort to
it (and that Mr. Obama was hellbent on stopping Israel from taking military
action on its own). Hence they all set about persuading themselves that their
fears of a nuclear Iran had been excessive, and that we could live with a
nuclear Iran as we had lived with Russia and China during the Cold War.
Out the window went the
previously compelling case against that possibility made by authoritative
scholars likeBernard Lewis, and with it went the assumption that the purpose
of the negotiations was to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
For our negotiating partners,
the new goal was to open the way to lucrative business contracts, but for Mr.
Obama it was to remove the biggest obstacle to his long-standing dream of a
U.S. détente with Iran. To realize this dream, he was ready to concede just
about anything the Iranians wanted—without, of course, admitting that this was
tantamount to acquiescence in an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the
rockets to deliver them.
To repeat, then, what cannot
be stressed too often: If the purpose were still to prevent Iran from getting
the bomb, no deal that Iran would conceivably agree to sign could do the trick,
leaving war as the only alternative. To that extent, Mr. Obama is also right.
But there is an additional wrinkle. For in allowing Iran to get the bomb, he is
not averting war. What he is doing is setting the stage for a nuclear war between
Iran and Israel.
The reason stems from the
fact that, with hardly an exception, all of Israel believes that the Iranians
are deadly serious when they proclaim that they are bound and determined to
wipe the Jewish state off the map. It follows that once Iran acquires the means
to make good on this genocidal commitment, each side will be faced with only
two choices: either to rely on the fear of a retaliatory strike to deter the
other from striking first, or to launch a pre-emptive strike of its own.
Yet when even a famous Iranian
“moderate” like the former PresidentHashemi Rafsanjani has said—as he did in 2001, contemplating a
nuclear exchange—that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will
destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not
irrational to contemplate such an eventuality,” how can deterrence work?
The brutal truth is that the
actual alternatives before us are not Mr. Obama’s deal or war. They are
conventional war now or nuclear war later.John
Kerryrecently
declared that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” to take military action
against Iran. But Mr. Kerry, as usual, is spectacularly wrong. Israel would not
be making a mistake at all, let alone a huge one. On the contrary, it would
actually be sparing itself—and the rest of the world—a nuclear conflagration in
the not too distant future.
Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of
Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. His books include “Why Are Jews
Liberals?” (Doubleday, 2009)
Let us remind ourselves what did the authoritative scholar Bernard
Lewis actually say:
“In this context, the deterrent that worked so well during the
Cold War, namely M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) , would have no
meaning. At the End of Time, there will be general destruction
anyway. What will matter is the final destination of the dead-- hell for
the infidels, and the delights of heaven for the believers. For people with
this mindset, M.A.D. is not a constraint; it is an inducement...”
When was the last time you saw this quotation in print?
The Obama administration hotly denies any attempt on its
part to link Jonathan Pollard’s release set for November with its PR blitz to
preempt congressional rejection of the Iran deal reached by world powers on July
14.
In the strictest legalistic terms, this position is hardly in doubt. Pollard –
convicted in 1985 for espionage on Israel’s behalf - will have served 30 years
of a life term when he is released in November. He presumably met the two
outright preconditions for his release: good behavior and constituting no
danger.
Pro forma, no special administration favors – no clemency
or commuting of Pollard’s sentence – were needed to secure Pollard’s
forthcoming freedom, since Pollard will have served his full term as it was
deemed at the time of his unfortunate plea-bargain and ultra-harsh punishment.
Pollard had reached a plea bargain which would have meant a 20-year maximum
term, if not less. The presiding judge, however, ignored the deal and sent
Pollard up for life, a sentence considered extremely disproportionate with
regard to espionage by an ally, especially in comparison to far more grievous
espionage cases.
Some Washington higher-ups – like former CIA director James Woolsey – have come
around to the view that Pollard was overly punished because he is a Jew, that
he became the victim of thinly camouflaged anti-Semitism.
None of this discourages Washington innuendo geared to rake in political
profits from what cannot conceivably be construed as a benevolent gesture by
administration officials – unless, of course, they try to pass off curbing
their ill-will as an active act of goodwill.
Given the duplicitous treatment to which Pollard has been subjected, no degree
of cynicism can be ruled out.
Successive American administrations – Obama’s not least – had callously sought
to use Pollard as their pawn in assorted realpolitik maneuvers.
Last year, Israel’s purported reward for releasing from its custody some of the
most heinous Palestinian mass-murderers was to be Pollard’s liberation – after
the fourth and last batch of terrorists were to be set loose. The process,
however, was disrupted by Ramallah’s obstructionism.
The abiding impression imparted by that episode was that Pollard was being
perceived almost as a hostage.
Former US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross admitted in his 2004
book, The Missing Peace, that he advised then-president Bill Clinton against
releasing Pollard in the framework of the 1998 Wye Accords negotiated by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term (this despite Ross’s belief
Pollard’s life sentence was disproportionate and that he deserved to go free
unconditionally).
Ross argued that Pollard was simply far too valuable as a bargaining chip
vis-à-vis Israel to be released cheaply. Ross thus furnished us with the
definitive explanation for Pollard’s inexcusably drawn-out agony.
Pollard has long suspected as much and had urged that he not be used as a
“sweetener” to persuade Israel to agree to dangerous unilateral concessions.
Despite his prolonged plight, Pollard has repeatedly pleaded not to be traded
in return for the release of Arab murderers and terrorists, whose crimes bear
no relation to his case and are morally incomparable to it.
The very thought that Pollard would now be exploited to “sweeten” both Israeli
opinion and that of American Jews on the Iran issue is morally repugnant in the
extreme.
It is instructive to recall that Pollard’s sin was passing information to a
friendly country on such matters as Iraqi and Syrian WMDs, Soviet arms
shipments to Damascus and Libyan air defenses. Indeed, this was largely data
withheld by the Pentagon in violation of the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding
between the US and Israel.
The departure from all punitive precedents in Pollard’s case smells foul.
Iran’s nukes constitute an existential danger to the Jewish state. Hence, it is
unthinkable that anyone should consider Pollard’s release as rendering the Iran
deal more palatable to Israelis.
This is an insult to our intelligence that
condescendingly belittles the gravity of our predicament.
***
"This is an insult to our intelligence that condescendingly
belittles the gravity of our predicament. "
Indeed. But in the interview
Mike Huckabee gave to FOX news defending his statement that Obama was marching
Israel to the door of the oven, it became apparent that Americans just do
not understand this predicament. Apart from Tom Shilue, everyone else was
attacking Huckabee. Geraldo Rivera called the comments “inappropriate.”
But it is irrelevant what
Obama administration thinks they are achieving and even their motivation. What
matters is the net effect. And the net effect of Obama’s absurd policy of
appeasement of Iran is that he was marching Israel to the door of the oven.
Finally someone in the UStells
the truthand here we have an Israeli politician undermining the most
brilliant stand I have seen on American television for some time. Shooting
ourselves in the foot!
Of course, Israel will not
permit this from happening, but the world must know what wouldhappen if Israel does not act, so Huckabee
is absolutely right.
What Huckabee’s interview with FOX New revealed to me is that Americans, even Fox News, DO NOT have any idea what is going on. This is really scary
I think the Israeli government is trying to be diplomatic with
a president who obviously has gone beyond diplomacy. Ron Dremer does not doubt
the “sincerity of the president or his team when they believe this deal makes
not only America safer, makes Israel safer”
But it is irrelevant what Obama administration thinks
they achieving and even their motivation. What matters is the net effect. And the net effect of Obama’s absurd
policy of appeasement of Iran is that he
was marching Israel to the door of the
oven.
Israel
Katz says Republican presidential candidate's comments are "wrong and
unnecessary."
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Transportation Minister Israel Katz (Likud) on Tuesday
rejected comments made by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in
which the former Arkansas governor invoked
the Holocaust in his criticism of the Iran nuclear deal.
Huckabee has faced accusations of extremism and partisanship from US President
Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and the Anti-Defamation League after saying
over the weekend that, with the Iran deal, Obama would "take the Israelis
and march them to the door of the oven."
Katz, who is considered one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest
allies in the Likud, implied Tuesday that Israel was stronger than Huckabee's
comments suggest.
"Respected Mr.
Huckabee: nobody marches the Jews to ovens anymore," Katz stated. "To
this end we established the State of Israel and the IDF; and, if need be, we
will know how to defend ourselves, by ourselves."
Katz
agreed that the Iran deal must not allow the "Iranian terror kingdom"
to become a nuclear threshold state, but said that the comments by Huckabee
were "wrong and unnecessary."
Huckabee
is running for the Republican nomination for president, and his rivals weighed
in on his controversial remarks on Monday. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush
said the comments were "just wrong," despite his staunch disapproval
of the agreement; while former senator Rick Santorum said the remarks were
"absolutely right."
In
Jerusalem, Netanyahu continued his assault against the Iran deal during a
speech he gave in the Knesset.
Syrian
President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah are already
celebrating the billions of dollars Iran will receive as a result of this
agreement, which will be used to help them in their terrorist activities,
Netanyahu said.
Iran, he
added, continues to threaten the United States in spite of the agreement and
has already declared that its nuclear sites will not be inspected even though
it is one of its obligations under the deal, Netanyahu said.
“This
agreement gives international legitimacy to Iranian nuclear armament in the
future and its continued aggressive activity in the present,” said Netanyahu as
he explained that Iran was the largest terrorist state in the world.
Michael
Wilner and Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor
Mike Huckabee defended hisremarksabout
the Iran deal, stating “we’re on the verge of repeating it [the Holocaust]
again with a nation that is threatening to do that very thing,” so it makes no
sense to avoid bringing up the Holocaust on Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News
Channel’s “The Five.”
When asked
if he stood by his comments, Huckabee stated, “Absolutely I do. Absolutely I
do. The last time the world did not take seriously threats that someone was
going to kill massive amounts of Jews, we ended up seeing 6 million Jews
murdered. We didn’t take it seriously. The Iranian government — we’re not
talking about a blogger here, we’re talking about the Iranian government — has
repeatedly said that it’s going to be easier to take the Jews out because
they’re all concentrated in Israel, we won’t have to go all over the world and
hunt them. They used the word ‘holocaust.’ They used that word in talking about
what they wanted to do. They refused, in this negotiation, to recognize
Israel’s right to exist. They refused to tone down their rhetoric and continued
to say that the Holocaust did not exist, and that they’re going to wipe Israel
off the face of the map. When people who are in a government position continue
to say they’re going to kill you, I think somebody ought to wake up and take
that seriously.”
Co-host Dana Perino then argued, “he [Obama] has said repeatedly
anybody who is against the deal that he is making with Iran, that they are
warmongers, they just want war, which is unfair and unserious. But I do think
that, from a rhetoric standpoint, when you bring up the Holocaust, everybody
loses.” And “I that think that for Democrats who are on the fence, of
possibly refusing to go along with Obama on this deal, that then, all of a
sudden, they get pushed into a position of defending the president. And you even
saw Joe Manchin today of West Virginia say he’s probably going to support the
deal.”
Huckabee responded, “Well, if I get credit for them supporting
the deal, then I’m a much, much bigger deal than I think people thought I was.
Look, here’s what I would want to remind people: If we don’t take seriously the
threats of Iran, then God help us all, because the last time — it’s Neville
Chamberlain all over again. We’re going to just trust that everyone’s going to
do the right thing. Three times I’ve been to Auschwitz, when I talked about the
oven door, I have stood at that oven door. I know exactly what it looks like.
1.1 million people killed. For 6,000 years, Jews have been chased, and hunted,
and killed all over this earth, and when someone in a government says, ‘We’re
going to kill them,’ I think, by gosh, we better take that seriously. And for
the president to act like that the only two options are have a war or take his
deal, that got nothing, got nothing. We didn’t get the hostages out. We didn’t
didn’t get a concession that they would stop this rhetoric about wanting to
wipe Israel out, or they didn’t stop chanting ‘Death to America.’ We got
nothing. I read the whole thing, I read it, and I thought you’re kidding. This
is it? This is the best deal? Why can’t we criticize it?”
Co-host Geraldo Rivera then stated that as a Jew, he thinks
Huckabee’s comments were “inappropriate.” And “There are some place you cannot
go. You cannot compare the slaughter of 6 million Jews to anything, other than,
maybe the slaughter of the Armenians or something else in history. You cannot
compare it to a negotiation over a deal like this.”
Huckabee asked in response, “Why do we have the Holocaust Museum
in Washington? Why do we have Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, that I visited
dozens and dozens of times? Why do we have it?” Rivera answered that those
things are “sacred” and shouldn’t be politicized. He added, after Huckabee
asked again “to remember.”
Huckabee continued, “Why? So that we never repeat it again. If
we’re on the verge of repeating it again with a nation that is threatening to
do that very thing, how do we not bring up that language?”
Geraldo responded, “We don’t even use that when there’s a
slaying in a school, and multiple victims. We still don’t go there. Because
this was the systematic attempt by an industrialized nation to wipe out a
race of people. That is different. That is unique. You may not go there. And
I’m begging you to apologize and to retract that.”
Huckabee declared, “I will not apologize and I will not recant,
because the word ‘holocaust’ was invoked by the Iranian government. They used
that very word.” Geraldo answered by asking, “Are we going to go there then?”
And pointed to the Anti-Defamation League’s condemnation of Huckabee’s remarks
Huckabee responded by stating, “the Democrat Jewish
community’s been universal in condemning it. For them, it is a political issue.
For me, it is not. It’s a humanitarian issue. And when you have a government
saying they’re going to kill every Jew on the planet earth, and they use the
term ‘holocaust,’ I’m not sure why we have memorials about the Holocaust if
we’re not going to remember why we had it, what happened to 6 million Jews, how
they were systematically murdered. And the fact is Geraldo, that’s exactly what
the Iranians have said for, I mean, as long as the ayatollahs have been in
power, for 36 years. They have continually said, ‘We’re going to kill every
Jew.’ Now, at what point when a gun is pointed to your head do you not take
that seriously?”
Co-host Eric Bolling said he
doesn’t take issue with the comment itself, but rather, “My problem is
that it took the focus away from what President Obamasaid, that 99% of the world is in agreement with this deal,
which I fully, fully disagree with, number one, and number two, who cares about
the rest of the world? I care about what Americans think. And right now, I
think there’s 50% of Americans who hate this deal right now. And can we just
focus on that for a little bit? Can you answer President Obama’s comment that
99% of the world is in agreement with the deal?”
Huckabee addressed Obama’s comment by wondering why “none of the
people in that neighborhood” supported the deal if it is was such a great deal.
He also pointed to Israel’s opposition to the deal, which he argued was
possibly “because they, too, have seen this movie before, and they know that it
does not end well. I think it’s a naive deal, and it didn’t get anything. I
mean, you should have had some preconditions. The precondition should have been
three things, at least: Four hostages…should have been released. They should
have been on the next plane home. You should have had a concession that no more
anti-/death to America talk, and no more talk about wiping Jews off the face of
the earth and destroying Israel.”
Co-host Tom Shillue defended Huckabee’s remarks, which he argued
is “a sober statement to make, because when they announced the deal they were
saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’ So, it makes perfect sense to me.”
**
What Huckabee’s interview with FOX New revealed to me is
that Americans, even Fox News, DO NOT have any idea what is going on. This is really scary.
President Obama promised that
his nuclear deal with Iran would not be “based on trust” but rather
“unprecedented verification.” Now it turns out Obama’s verification regime is
based on trust after all — trust in two secret side agreements negotiated
exclusively between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that
apparently no one (including the Obama administration) has seen.
Worse, Obama didn’t
even reveal the existence of these secret side deals to Congress when he
transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. The agreements were uncovered,
completely by chance, by two members of Congress — Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)
and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) — who were in Vienna meeting with the
U.N.-releated agency.
In an interview,
Pompeo told me that he and Cotton were meeting with the deputy director of the
IAEA and the agency’s two top Iran negotiators just days after the nuclear
accord was announced, when they asked how the agency will carry out
verification at the Iranian military complex at Parchin. IAEA officials told
them, quite casually, that the details were all covered in agreements
negotiated between the IAEA and the Iranian government. It was the first they
had heard of the side deals.
Pompeo says they asked
whether they could see those agreements. He says IAEA officials replied, “ ‘Oh
no, of course not, no, you’re not going to get to see those.’ And so everybody
on our side of the table asked, ‘Has Secretary Kerry seen these?’ ‘No,
Secretary Kerry hasn’t seen them. No American is ever going to get to see
them.’ ”
It turns out that only
the two parties — the IAEA and Iran — get to see the actual agreements (though
you can see a picture of Iranian and IAEA officials holding up what appear to
be the secret accords
here).
In other words, Obama
is gambling our national security and handing over $150 billion in sanctions
relief to Iran, based on secret agreements negotiated between the IAEA and Iran
that no U.S. official has seen.
“We need to see these
documents in order to evaluate whether or not verification is ample to make
such a big concession to the Iranians,” Pompeo says. “No member of Congress
should be asked to vote on an agreement of this historic importance absent
knowing what the terms of the verification process are.”
In fact, the Obama administration’s failure to transmit
these side deals to Congress is a violation of the law. The Iran Nuclear
Agreement Review Act, which Obama signed into law, explicitly states that the
president must transmit the nuclear agreement along with “all related materials
and annexes.” That clearly covers any side agreements covering the verification
of Iran’s compliance.
Susan Rice told
reportersthe
administration “provided Congress with all of the documents that we drafted or
were part of drafting and all documents shared with us by the IAEA.” Sorry,
that’s not what the law requires.
But the administration cannot
hand over what it apparently does not have. For Pompeo, that raises even more
troubling questions. “Why on earth is the president letting the negotiations
[on verification] be negotiated by someone other than us?” he asks. How can it
be that the administration would “do a deal with the world’s largest state
sponsor of terror, that’s spent its entire existence cheating, and we would
sign off on a deal with them whose core provisions are completely unknown to
our side? It’s remarkable.”
What is in the secret side
deals? According to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), one of the side deals governing
inspections of the Parchin military complex allows Iran to collect its own soil
samples, instead of IAEA inspectors. That is like letting Lance Armstrong
collect his own blood samples for a doping investigation. “I suspect if we’re
able to actually go over [these agreements], you find half a dozen that you
would stare at and realize we really didn’t get verification,” Pompeo says.
Congress should insist on
seeing the side deals before it votes on the Iran accord. The only way to stop
the agreement is for Congress to override the president’s veto through a
resolution of disapproval with a two-thirds vote in both houses. That would
require 13 Senate Democrats and 45 House Democrats to vote no — which would have
been highly unlikely until the revelation of these secret deals.
It remains to be seen whether the revelation of the
secret side deals will make it impossible for Democrats to vote in favor of the
Iran agreement. How, Pompeo asks, can they explain to their constituents that
they voted for a nuclear deal with Iran without knowing how it will be
verified?
“My mission in the next 45 days is to convince 45 House
Democrats to override the veto,” Pompeo says. “It’s a long climb, but this is
important.”
Presidential aspirant and former governor of
Arkansas Mike Huckabee joined Breitbart’s editor-in-chief Alexander Marlow in
an interview on Saturday.
Appearing onBreitbart News Saturday,the governor demonstrated his
keen ability to articulate conservative principles and values—a likely reason
why he enjoys the highest favorability ratings of all GOP candidates running
for president in 2016.
Governor Huckabee didn’t pull any punches when talking about
Obama’s Iran nuclear deal: “This president’s foreign policy is the most
feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the
Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the
door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be
rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American
people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be
stopped.”
Modestly, Huckabee acknowledges that his high favorability rating
is good news. “People don’t vote for someone they don’t like. So I just
got a make sure I don’t start doing stuff that make people stop liking me,” he
chuckled.
Marlow, who hosts the program airing on Sirius XM Patriot radio
channel 125 on Saturday mornings, asked Huckabee, “What are conservatives
fighting for in this race?”
Huckabee answered that he believes the biggest mistake
conservatives make is they speak like they are talking “to an assemblage of
people in the corporate board room on Wall Street.” Instead, he explained that
conservatives need to convey a simple message of “conservatism, limited
government, more local government, lower taxes, and less regulation to people
who sweat through their clothes everyday and have to lift heavy things to make
a living.”
Huckabee added that when “We fail to communicate to working men
and women of this country, they don’t connect with us. Ineveitably we lose.”
Marlow asked the governor what is his concept of American values.
Huckabee replied that American values can be summed up in the language of the
Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, all of
us are created equal, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable
rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
To the governor, our values boil down to everybody
plays by the same rules in America. “We are a nation of law—not emotions, not
men, not money, not power—but a nation of law,” he clarified. “Our worth and
our value comes from a higher source, God. Not the government, but from God.”
Huckabee informed that from this fundamental value all other values
emanate.
Marlow changed the topic to the ongoing Planned Parenthood
scandal. He asked the governor what he thinks about the American government
funding the largest abortion provider in the nation, recently exposed for
allegedly selling baby body parts and fetal tissue.
The 59-year-old author and former Fox News host said that he has
formally called for the immediate end to government funding of Planned
Parenthood. Unfortunately that may be difficult. Huckabee pointed out that
“Democrats get a lot of money from the pro-abortionists.”
The amenable statesman recounted that he has called for
the defunding of Planned Parenthood for years. “The fact that they are getting
between $500-540 million of taxpayer money is really a disgrace,” he asserted.“It is disgusting to fund an organization like Planned Parenthood
that chops up babies and sells the parts like parts to a Buick.”
America needs to “come to grips with a 42-year nightmare of taking
babies from their mother’s womb. This needs to come to an end,” insists
Huckabee.
The country needs to be “civilized,” Huckabee contends. He toldBreitbart News Saturdaylisteners that if he were president, it would be his job to
make sure the government was protecting innocent human life, not destroying it
and selling it for a profit.
When asked by Breitbart’s EIC how he would handle massive illegal
immigration, the governor responded that the first thing he would do is seal
the border. He compared the crisis to a broken pipe in your kitchen. “When
water is everywhere, the first thing you have to do is stop the leak.”
The governor said that a major part of the
illegal immigration problem is “Big Business makes sure that nothing ever gets
done.” He argued that the best way to take away advantages of being an illegal
immigrant is to institute a consumption tax. The illegals and the cartel
drug dealers don’t pay the kind of taxes that most working Americans have to
pay.
“They don’t report their income and the employer’s are not paying
the employer tax,” Huckabee complained. “If you take away this financial
advantage, you are going to see Americans going back to work.”
Why such an uproar to his remarks?
Obama's policiesare leading Israel to 'the door
of the oven'. To
be incinerated in an Iranian nuclear attack. Of course,
Israel will never let that happen.
"The failure of
American Jewry during the Holocaust pales besides that of American Jewry today.
By virtue of its unshakable adulation of Obama, American Jewry has watched
calmly as he placed 6 million Jews in Israel under threat of extinction from an
Iranian nuclear bomb"
"Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is themselves a fraud, quack, charlatan, or the like."
I look at what is transpiring and I still cannot believe it.
How did it come to this that the greatest county on Earth has such a difficult
time waking up from under the spell of these snake oil salesmen? With all the creativity that has come out of
the US in the last hundred years, from the Wright brothers to the Silicon Valley,
it has shown incredible inability to see through these charlatans.
On his visit to Israel in March 2013, President Barack Obama backed Israel’s right to use force to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb
At a joint news
conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obamasaid:
“…each country has to make its own decisions when it comes to the awesome
decision to engage in any kind of military action, and Israel is
differently situated than the United States. And I would not expect that the
Prime Minister would make a decision about his country’s security and defer
that to any other country…”.
Now, in the wake of
the Iran deal, the Obama administration is sending dramatically different
signals.On the Todayshow Friday,
Secretary of State Kerry said of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran: “That’d
be an enormous mistake, a huge mistake with grave consequences for Israel and
for the region, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”
Kerry later tried to
deflect concerns that the Iran deal requires world powers to secure Iran’s
nuclear facilities, downplaying the chance those clauses could be
interpreted as requiring the U.S. to defend Iran against Israel.
Yet faced with a
choice between defending Israel and defending the Iran deal, it is become clear
that under some circumstances, the Obama administration would choose the
latter. That is a radically different position from the one Obama took in
public just a short time before formal negotiations began.
True, if Israel wereto attack Iran preemptively, it would not be
the first time it had done so without U.S. backing. President Ronald Reagan
condemned Israel’s attack against Iraq in 1981; George W. Bush said “no” to
Israel’s 2007 strike against Syria.
But Obama’s new
stance suggests something stronger than mere disapproval.
The Iran deal is
President Obama’s most important “legacy” achievement. He sees it as the key to
his vision of a “new equilibrium” in the region. In the past, he has
“preempted” Israel’s preemptive capacity by leaking Israeli attack plans. He
may do worse in future–unless Congress defeats the Iran deal and denies him
that mandate.
If the deal holds,
Israel may soon face the impossible choice of whether to risk America’s new
interests for the sake of its own survival.
President Obama has made an art form of
attacking his opponents rather than substantively defending his own policies,
most recently regarding the Vienna agreement on Iran's nuclear program.
Essentially, Obama argues that we must either accept his wretched deal or go to
war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
As is typical, Obama posits the wrong
choice, apparently to distract from the unpleasant reality that the agreement
won't work. It will not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. So the real
choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military action or
the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Neither is palatable, but the latter is far
worse. If the real objective is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons,
preemptive military action is now inescapable.
This rock-and-hard-place outcome has long been
foreseeable. Iran's dogged determination to become a nuclear-weapons state was
fiercer and stronger than the West's frail response. Assuming Iran scrupulously
complies with every provision agreed to in Vienna — an absurdly unlikely
scenario given the ayatollahs' objectives and history — its ambitions for
nuclear weapons will simply have been delayed eight to 10 years.
In all likelihood, the ayatollahs are
already at work violating the accords. After all, Iran has systematically
breached its voluntarily-assumed obligations under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than 30 years. Now the president's deal will
allow Iran to keep the fruits of its violations. Yes, the deal includes
restrictions on uranium enrichment, but Tehran can retain its enrichment
program, with guaranteed international assistance in improving it. These
concessions are fatal mistakes.
Moreover, Iran's ballistic missile efforts
— its development of the means to deliver nuclear weapons all over the world —
will barely be touched. Nor does the deal in any way address Iran's clandestine
weaponization efforts, which it has denied and hidden from the International
Atomic Energy Agency with great skill.
Last week, the news that the administration
has not even seen the texts of two agreements between the energy agency and
Iran, both crucial to implementation of the Vienna accords, only raises further
doubts. President Obama must provide the texts of these “side deals” to
Congress before any serious consideration of the overall agreement is possible.
The
real choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military
action [against Iran] or the consequences of a nuclear Iran.
-
Some critics of Obama's plan advocate
scuttling the deal and increasing economic sanctions against Iran instead. They
are dreaming. Iran and the United States' negotiating partners have already
signed the accords and are straining at their leashes to implement them. There
will be no other “better deal.” Arguments about what Obama squandered or
surrendered along the way are therefore fruitless. As for sanctions, they were
already too weak to prevent Iran's progress toward the bomb, and they will not
be reset now. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, “These sanctions are going boys,
and they ain't coming back.”
Patrick Clawson, the director for research
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, provided the most recent
thumbs-down assessment of sanctions: “Iran has muddled through the shock of the
sanctions imposed in 2012, and its structural [economic] problems are not
particularly severe compared to those of other countries.” He estimates Iran's
nuclear and terrorism-support programs to cost only about $10 billion annually.
No wonder administration officials have testified that sanctions (including
those imposed piecemeal before 2012) did not slow Iran's nuclear efforts.
Nor will the deal's “snapback” mechanism
(intended to coerce Iran back into compliance if it breaches its obligations)
change that reality. Tehran's belligerent response is expressly stated in the
agreement's text: “If sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will
treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments … in whole or in
part.” Tehran does risk losing some future economic benefits should sanctions
snap back, but by then it will have already cashed in the assets the deal
unfreezes and signed new lucrative trade and investment contracts.
Once those benefits begin flowing all
around, the pressure on world governments will only increase to ignore Iranian
violations, or to treat them as minor or inadvertent, certainly not warranting
the reimposition of major sanctions. The ayatollahs have dusted off Lenin's
barb that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,”
and applied it to the age of nuclear proliferation.
If diplomacy and sanctions have failed to
stop Iran, diplomacy alone will fail worse. Like it or not, we now face this
unpleasant reality: Iran probably will violate the deal; it may not be detected
doing so and if detected, it will not be deterred by “snapback” sanctions. So
we return to the hard question: Are we prepared to do what will be necessary to
stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons?
Obama most certainly is not, which means
the spotlight today is on Israel.
If Israel strikes, there will be no general
Middle East war, despite fears to the contrary. We know this because no general
war broke out when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981, or
when it attacked the North Korean-built Syrian reactor in 2007. Neither Saudi
Arabia nor other oil-producing monarchies wanted those regimes to have nuclear
weapons, and they certainly do not want Iran to have them today.
However, Iran may well retaliate. At that
point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses
incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still
be able to effectively counter Tehran's proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which
will be its vehicles for retaliation. The United States must also provide
muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its
inherent right of self-defense. Whatever Obama's view, public and congressional
support for Israel will be overwhelming.
American weakness has brought us to this
difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore
its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a
tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear
Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern
states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.
John Bolton, a former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, is a fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute
