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We have lots of stuff on Iran from many of our favorites. First David Warren from Ottawa Citizen.
Then Gerard Baker from Times, UK.
This weekend, Britain will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War, when Argentine forces invaded the small group of British islands in the South Atlantic, 1,500 miles off the coast of Argentina.
It was inevitable, given the coincidence of timing and the circumstances, that comparisons would be drawn between that conflict, which ended in a triumphant recovery of the islands by UK forces two months later, and the humiliation heaped on Britain in the last week by the seizure of 15 British sailors in the waters near the Persian Gulf. …
Mark Steyn, although in Chicago for the Conrad Black trial, provided some entertaining Corner posts.
… Back at the start of Jimmy Carter’s hostage fiasco, I think it was Andrei Gromyko who remarked that, if the students had pulled the same stunt at the Soviet embassy, Tehran would have been a crater by lunchtime. The Iranians believed him so he never had to do it (though, as Chechnya indicates, the Russians are generally prepared to walk the walk crater-wise). …
… Further to my Gromyko reminiscence above, I’ve been getting a lot of sneery e-mails like this:
So, the wise course would have been to bomb Teheran in 1979? What is the wise course today? Turning Teheran into a crater?
You’re missing the point. Because Gromyko credibly threatened to turn Teheran into a crater, he didn’t have to. That’s how deterrence works. …
Austin Bay provides a military man’s look.
Power Line and Dean Barnett at Hewitt comment on congress.
Jim Taranto finds a Joe Biden/Chuck Hagel op-ed for WaPo back in 2002. They wrote then we would have to be prepared to be in Iraq for a decade after Saddam fell. You gotta love the internet! It makes it easy to spot the grandstanding cowards. Then Jim writes on the Saudi back stabbing.
We have an item from Der Spiegel that takes Germans to task for their anti-Americanism.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, the American historian who in his 1996 book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” deprived the Germans of the belief that they didn’t know what was going on back in the day, is currently studying the history of genocides in the 20th century. One of the things he has noticed is that the politicians or military leaders who planned genocides and had them carried out rarely concealed their intentions in advance. Whether the victims were Hereros, Armenians, kulaks, Jews or later Bosnians, the perpetrators generally believed that they were justified and had no reason to hide their murderous intentions.
Today, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about a world without Israel while dreaming of an atom bomb, it seems obvious that we — as Germans of all people — should be putting two and two together. Why shouldn’t Ahmadinejad mean what he says? But we Germans only know what we believe.
The Americans are more dangerous than the ayatollahs? Perhaps the Americans should take the Germans at their word for a change. It’s high time for a new round of re-education. The last one obviously didn’t do the job
Debra Saunders writes on the congressional dems.
Not to be overlooked is Mugabe’s latest stunt. The Captain with the details.
We recently featured a Sun-Times piece by Jesse Jackson worrying about the prospects of young African-American males. Yesterday we wanted him to march on Albany. Today it’s Columbus, Ohio. We’d have thought that with Ohio’s many other problems, a new Governor would have better things to do than deny opportunity for poor kids to escape the worst schools in the state.
Lileks is here.
Having signaled the desire to court defeat in Iraq, the Democrats have passed a goody-laden bill that shows their desire to lose the battle against wasteful spending.
Pork: It’s the other white flag!