Saturday, September 26, 2009

The Four Horsemen Approach.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer.

Folks,

The Obama administration has not evinced the slightest interest in taking a firm stand anywhere in the world but here. Domestically, they're still committed to tell us what to do, or else. But not the traditional enemies of this country. Certainly not. And those enemies are willing to push their advantage.

Now, I present the analysis by Ralph Peters below as an example of clear strategic thinking by a first class military observer. Read it and we'll meet on the other side.

Appease-y does it for weak Prez on road to a Mideast apocalypse

Last Updated: 8:58 AM, September 26, 2009

DID it surprise a single Post reader that Iran's been hiding a big nu clear weapons development fa cility? It stunned our president when he learned about it months ago. Then he kept it secret from you.

Obama didn't want you to know how much progress Iran had made. It's an embarrassment.

And it raises the pressure on the White House to act -- something this president's squirming to avoid. But the Iranians have now realized we know, so they tipped it themselves.

Obama had no choice but to come clean.

Yesterday, he interrupted the G-20 summit to go public -- before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did. Flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's dead man walking, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, our president offered more uselessly vague rhetoric in response to proof of a major "covert Iranian enrichment facility" and its implications.

Obama's statement amounted to, Ooooh, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down . . . maybe . . . eventually . . . but not really . . . let's talk . . .

Only Sarkozy made a serious attempt to get the Iranian leadership's attention, stressing the consistent failure of negotiations and the need for action. He understands that a decade of talking with Tehran brought zero results.

Obama cringed.

Shouldn't we be ashamed that a French president's leading the fight to protect Israel and the free world?

To be fair, Obama's overwhelmed.

Fatally confident of his powers of persuasion, he's bewildered that he hasn't been able to convince the Iranians (or the Palestinians, Russians, Venezuelans, Chinese, etc.) to do what he wants them to do.

So Washington delays. While Iran races toward a nuclear arsenal.

Not only has Iran's known program moved ahead despite our cajoling, now comes the news that far more dangerous facilities have been missed for years by our intelligence services (to their credit, though, they ultimately found the Qom installation). Who knows how many more we haven't found?

Additionally, an Iranian exile group opposed to the theocrat thugs in Tehran claimed this week that Ahmadinejad's government operates two secret plants that fabricate detonators for nuclear weapons.

One of those sites is in an east Tehran suburb, another in that enormous city's exurbs. The major enrichment site that embarrassed our president sits near Qom, Iran's holiest city.

Ahmadinejad's boys know what they're doing. They've dispersed their nuclear program across urban areas and deep underground. The network is not only hard to hit -- it's impossible to strike effectively without inflicting thousands of civilian casualties.

These new sites raise the stakes higher still: Attack the plant near Qom and we'll be seen by Shia Muslims as violating a holy city. Strike those Tehran detonator factories and you get severe collateral damage -- plus the probable spread of radioactive material, an instant "dirty bomb."

Yet, after all this, there's still resistance in Washington to the conclusions that Iran's determined to develop nuclear weapons and then use them. What amount of evidence will it take?

Iran's faith-crazed president appears before the UN, denying the Holocaust and damning Israel. He has openly and repeatedly professed an apocalyptic religious vision that requires chaos on earth to bring about the return of the "hidden imam," the Shia version of a messiah. He never misses an opportunity to call for Israel's total destruction.

And Washington insists he's joking. (Yeah, they're belly-laughing in Tel Aviv right now.)

Appeasers also blather that "other states have had nukes for years," but haven't used them. And mutually assured destruction (MAD) actually did keep the peace between the superpowers for six decades (another lesson our president doesn't get).

The arguments don't hold up. Even the North Koreans, the other entry in the rogue-state nuclear-arms race, don't want to die. They want earthly power, not a sacred apocalypse.

The new and immeasurably dangerous factor in play is religious fanaticism. The doomsday-lust avowed by Ahmadinejad and his supporters shatters every deterrence equation.

So now what? Obama will try more talks. We may see half-hearted sanctions -- which will be violated right and left. Russia, which profits hugely from dirty trade with Iran, can slip goods across the Caspian Sea or through Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan
.
And maritime sanctions are meaningless, unless our president is willing to order our Navy to fire on Chinese-flagged or Venezuelan-flagged merchant vessels.

Think that's going to happen?

How will it end? With desperate Israeli attacks that do only part of the job, followed by Iranian counterstrikes on Persian Gulf oil facilities, the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and oil above $400 a barrel.

Only the United States can stop Iran's nuclear program before it's too late. And this president won't.


Ralph Peters' new best-selling thriller, "The War After Armageddon," begins with Iran's nuclear destruction of Israel.


Arguments and name-calling about "foreign entanglements" and rehashing what should have been, or might have been are counterproductive, even to those who make them. As much as all of us may wish differently, we are here. The fact that we are here because of decades of stupidity, venality, hubris, ambition and fuzzy thinking on the part of our so-called "leaders" is beside the point.

We ARE here.

What we -- you and I, the little guys of the armed citizenry -- must do now is to anticipate what is coming and try to protect everything that we hold dear from all threats, foreign and domestic. I don't think the ATF is going to get around to collecting any of the scalps that they have talked about in their internal e-mails. They're going to be very much more busy with the chaos of disaster than to worry about making federal criminals out of innocent men and women any more.

Peters predicts this result of American weakness and appeasement:

How will it end? With desperate Israeli attacks that do only part of the job, followed by Iranian counterstrikes on Persian Gulf oil facilities, the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and oil above $400 a barrel.


Think about $400 oil on top of printing money to monetize the debt, provoking trade wars and stiffing the creditors who do not lack for military force themselves.

There are two wars coming, gentlemen and ladies. The first will be among and between ouselves for scarce supplies and the maintenance of civil order -- between the producers and the looters. The second will be defending ourselves against the creditors who will come with guns to collect.

If you were holding out, thinking that you might just get to collect what's left in that 401K after all, think again. It's soon to be toilet paper. Not even that, because it is only electrons in a computer somewhere.

My youngest daughter just got the results of her ACT in the mail today. A 27, she secured her scholarship. I am both elated and simultaneously deeply depressed. She will be going to school on a full ride, if it still stands next fall. Somehow, I don't think it will.

We are at one of those awful moments in history. Like the hush just before the tornado hits. We look around and everything is normal, and except for the weird light and the malignant cloud bank rushing toward us, and we think, maybe it will pass by. Maybe it's just rain we're in for, not violent destruction.

Wishful thinking.

Look to your storm cellars.

Beans, bullets, bandages, boots and brothers.

If you ain't rounded 'em up yet, you'd better get off your ass.

The Four Horsemen approach.

Mike
III

7 comments:

Pickdog said...

My guess is by early November we will know our fate. God Bless us All.

Pickdog
III

Anonymous said...

Eight long years since 9/11, during which nobody in the Middle East was sufficiently motivated to blow up a public place in the US. This was low-hanging fruit compared to reinventing nukes. You believe Iran is not willing to do bombings, but is willing to make nuclear war? Can you point to any historical example of a country that engaged in total war without first having a huge spy and cold war and dirty tricks effort?

Mike III said...

The time draws near. We read the signs.

Prepare, train and be safe.

Mike III

Anonymous said...

Good stuff, Mike. Thanks for being there. Many people I know are heeding your advice.
Last of the Boy Scouts

Uncle Lar said...

It occurs to me that BHO's greatest failing is his belief (common to most liberals) that anything can be negotiated with enough talk. And he's made that same assumption for both foreign politics and against the "loyal" opposition here at home. I'm fairly sure that it is beyond his comprehension that anyone would choose to continue to hold a position against his once he's had a chance to speak. Trouble is that with a mind set like that all he will do is get more and more frustrated until something snaps. And the potential scenarios that devolve from a breakdown at the POTUS level are not pretty at all.

Anonymous said...

"Can you point to any historical example of a country that engaged in total war without first having a huge spy and cold war and dirty tricks effort?"

How about Imperial Japan attacking Pearl Harbor?

Anonymous said...

"How about Imperial Japan attacking Pearl Harbor?"

Thanks! I withdraw the strong 'always a cold war before total war' claim. I'll have to think about how that changes my beliefs.