Defeating a Hitler with nukes: Nothing else matters

from American Thinker
May 27, 2009
By James Lewis

May 25, 2009: Kim Jong-Il explodes his first full-sized nuclear bomb . This day shall live in infamy.

North Korea helped build a secret nuclear power plant in Syria, which was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007 while the CIA was still asleep. North Korea sells nuclear and missile technology to Iran and Pakistan. Kim can easily sell his nuclear Bomb in the Middle East; today his bomb also threatens Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China.

Like it or not, we are being dragged into the Second Age of Nuclear Terror.

Nothing else matters now.

Forget Obama's grabbing the banks and the car companies. Forget his eleven trillion dollars of new debt for the next generation. Forget his egomania. Eight years after the jihad assault of 9/11, 2001, on New York City and Washington, D.C., we are back to national life or death. Americans were suckered into believing that the world was suddenly a safe place, and elected a grossly unqualified Chicago pol to lead the nation, because he looked good on TV. That is a mistake we may come to bitterly regret.

Four days ago, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

"I'm one who believes that Iran getting a nuclear weapon is calamitous for the region and for the world ... neighbors ... (who) feel exposed, deficient (will) then develop or buy the capability themselves ... (it) is absolutely disastrous."

Obama is the worst person to have in the White House at this time. At least John McCain, for all his faults, understands that this is an extremely dangerous world. So do Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. But we have no hint whatsoever that Barack Hussein Obama is intellectually or morally equipped to cope with the nuclear proliferation we are seeing today. Just the opposite. We are seeing the most foolish, ignorant, and self-obsessed administration since Jimmy Carter.

All of Obama's foreign policy advisers believe in cringing to tyrants. They think we just haven't been nice enough to malignant regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang. That isn't even for grown-ups; it should have been left behind long ago in summer camp. But Bill Clinton's SecState Madeleine Albright was photographed toasting Kim Jong Il, the pudgy tyrant of North Korea, who starved a million of his own people to death to divert resources to a gigantic army and nuclear program. For his part, Obama has already bowed down abjectly, in public, to the medieval King of Saudi Arabia. The symbolism is unmistakable.

Those two iconic photos capture the Left's understanding of international danger. Nobody who is so completely ignorant can ever be charged with protecting our national welfare. But here they are again.

Kim's Hiroshima-type Bomb is big enough to wipe out Tokyo, and in a few years, San Francisco. For decades the West has begged and pleaded with Kim, bribing him with vast gifts of oil and food. Kim always suckered the West and just kept starving his own people for better nukes and missiles. Today, he's got his Bomb and the means to deliver it to Japan, South Korea, and China.

Iran is next.

This is the Second Age of Nuclear Terror. The first one started when Stalin used stolen secrets from the Manhattan Project to build a Soviet Bomb. Even Stalin's closest associates were terrified that he would start a suicidal nuclear war. According to one history Lavrenty Beria and Nikita Khruschev assassinated Stalin to stop that from happening.

After Stalin's death the Soviet Union and the West were able to establish a balance of terror. Both sides thought the other was rational, and no rational actor would ever use nuclear weapons.
Today's Second Age of Nuclear Terror is different, because Kim and Ahmadinejad don't act like rational leaders. Ahmadinejad is a Twelver, a fanatical member of an Armageddon cult that believes the Twelfth Imam will return to earth after the destruction of the enemies of Islam -- which means everybody on earth who isn't one of them. That's why the Arabs next door are running scared of A'jad's nukes and missiles. They are Muslims, but the wrong kind, according to Ayatollah Khomeini, who founded the modern mullah state in Tehran.

Khomeini tried to overthrow the Saudi regime by stirring riots during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Today the Iranians are still stirring up Shiite Muslims in the oil provinces of Saudi Arabia. They control a "Shiite Crescent" from Iran to Syria and Lebanon and Gaza. Everywhere they go they preach jihad and martyrdom. Their target is Israel, yes, but also Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and especially the secular. According to Islamists atheists are much worse than Jews and Christians: Off with your heads, infidel swine!

So an ego-tripping rookie from Chicago is now supposed to protect us from mortal danger. Good luck to all of us.

There are only two rational strategies for sane nations in the Second Age of Nuclear Terror. Obama has spoken out against both of them.

The first is preemptive strikes. If somebody is pointing a gun at you, threatening to kill you, you have to kill him first. George W. Bush made it work with Saddam Hussein. For his great wisdom and courage George W. Bush was hysterically abused for eight solid years by the Democrats and their saboteur brigade in the media. In 1981 Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin also acted preemptively by destroying Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear power plant.

Those two preemptive military actions helped to postpone the Second Age of Nuclear Terror that Kim's nuclear bomb has just ushered in. They kept us safe for more than two decades.

SecDef Robert Gates has pretty much ruled out preemption: The Iraq War was too costly, he believes.

What else can we do? The second rational strategy is anti-missile defense.

But the SecDef just announced 1.4 billion dollars in cutbacks to our missile defense program. Thanks to very active development culminating in the Bush Administration, the United States now has the makings of an effective defense against nuclear-armed missiles. That was never possible before. The First Age of Nuclear Terror had no defenses. That's why it was terrifying. But we are well within reach of an effective defense.

Every other sane nation in the world is trying to rush anti-missile defenses, including the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, South Korea, Israel, and all the Arab nations. If we cut back they will just go into high gear and do it without us. Nobody is going to wait for Obama to change his mind, least of all Japan, the Arabs, India, and Israel. Their homes and children are on the line, just as much as ours.

A US retreat on missile defense would be clinically insane. Not only has North Korea exploded a nuclear bomb, it also helped Syria to build a nuclear plant on the Euphrates River that the Israeli Air Force knocked in 2007. Iran's Armageddon regime is closely allied with North Korea, and with Pakistan's nuclear proliferation network headed by AQ Khan -- who was educated as a nuclear engineer in the West. There are thousands more like him around the world.

In his last days in the Führer's bunker, Hitler still had control over the world's most advanced weapons of 1945, including V3 missiles, jet planes, poison gas bombs, and incipient nukes. At the end, Hitler was staging his own Götterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods, and it suited his sense of drama to commit suicide with a bullet in the back of his brain. For a man as revenge-driven as Hitler, dying in nuclear bomb explosion along with his enemies would have been preferable.

Japan's Emperor worship cult might well have done the same if the nuclear bomb had been invented just a few years before it was. We lucked out -- again.

So we have the recent historical example of two deadly enemies who likely would have risked their own survival at the end of World War Two in order to destroy the United States and the West.

What makes us think that today's fanatics are not different? How often does Ahmadinejad have to threaten genocide for us to take it seriously? How many Sudanese Africans have to be killed by their jihad regime for us to take that seriously? How many North Koreans have to be starved to death by their own government for us to see?

Most people live in denial of clear and present dangers. We know this administration is full of such people. Obama's Chicago gang just told Israel not to defend itself. But the Israelis are a lot more morally serious about such things. It is simply not imaginable that they will allow the mad mullahs to have their own Armageddon weapon.

When Israel strikes out against its genocidal enemy the Obama gang may try to punish them. But Menachem Begin showed the morally serious decision to make in such a case: You defend your people first of all.

Being approved by this Chicago Mob isn't even a close second.
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