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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Spengler: Bush's October surprise - it's coming |
| 2006-04-10 |
| EFL One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War. Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October. One factoid encapsulates Bush's opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80% of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59% said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as "not yet", for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is the sort of villain that Central Casting once sourced for studio film productions in Hollywood. No more than Napoleon Bonaparte could stay away from Russia can Ahmadinejad abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions. He represents a generation that has bled for its country and its sect for a quarter-century and now has come into its maturity and must demonstrate its mettle. The Revolutionary Guards of 1979 now are middle-aged men who now at last have a chance to lead. Ahmadinejad has salted the regime's middle ranks with thousands of men like himself. America's discomfiture in Iraq provides Iran with an opportunity to restore its regional greatness, the last one for centuries, if not millennia. If Iran stands down as a prospective nuclear power, it faces a rapidly graying population, declining capacity to export oil and discontent among rural folk and the urban poor. The promise of the Islamic Revolution will have melted into mediocrity and cynicism, and the generation of Ahmadinejad will have turned out a damp squib. To be very precise, I am not accusing the White House of manipulating the Iranian issue for political purposes. On the contrary, if the US president thought only in terms of political consequences he never would have risked so much on the Quixotic quest for Iraqi democracy. Still, Bush has the opportunity to shift the subject away from the unpopular campaign to improve the politics of the Middle East, and back to the extremely popular subject of killing terrorists. He believes (and I am long since on record agreeing) that Washington will have to put paid to Ahmadinejad before very long, and there is no reason not to look for a political benefit as well. Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America's engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration's aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups. God takes care of drunks, small children and the United States of America. Improbably, destiny has a surprise in store for George W Bush. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #9 MadMoud's anti-Israel rants has already provided enuff casus belli within the context of the UN Charter, both for the imposition of UN-specific sanctions as well as demands for Iran NOT to dev any nuke weapons - the UNO only needs the consensus of the UNSC, espec the "Big Five" and Russia-China. Where 2008 is concerned, the agenda-less RINO/Repubs-for-Socialism-Communism-OWG Dems have nothin to run on against Dubya's super-successful record -as long as MadMoud copntinues to threaten Israel and America and rant about universal Islamism/Islamist OWG, any Dem or MSM criticisms of Dubya, includ but not limited to claas for investigation or impeachment, won't and hasn't worked. Prez wannabe Hillary may be about power, Communism-Socialism,and Socilaist OWG, but like Bill she is also about doing eight years of PC, Bill-style "nothing-accounts-for-something" national governance, geopolitics, and personal ease/convenience. Real world, real-time problems are STILL for the GOP, NOT wavy-gravy laissez faire = Regulation/Govt, Utopia = Totalitarianism Dialectic Policratic Democrats-Lefties whom as a class care about everyone = no one, and whom gets the blame for anything. THE RINO AGENDA-LESS DEMS NEED MADMOUD = KIMMIE = CHINA-TAIWAN, ETC CRISES; THEY NEED AMERICA TO ATTACK = AMERICA BEING ATTACKED - THE DEMS-LEFIES AND ANTI-AMER AMERICANS NEED TO JUSTIFY OWG AND SWO AT ANY PRICE, EVEN IY MEANS DIR OR INDIR COLLUDING FOR THE DEATHS OF 3000 CITIZENS ON 9-11, EVEN IFF IT MEANS INDUCING OR ENSURING THE PC DEFEAT OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY AND ARMED FORCES OVERSEAS. Iff one accepts that the Dems_Lefties intend that America in future give up or lose its sovereignty, freedoms, Govt. and endowments to OWG, be it voluntarily = by force, then one must accept that any anti-OWG, pro-anti-sovereinty,pro-USA GOP-Democrat MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO WIN IN POTUS ELEX YEAR 2008, by any means necessary, as 2015-2018 > both Russia-China agree that war against the USA and only the USA is not only possible but desired. This means that any "Manchurian Candidate" POTUS has from 2008-2016, or 2012-2020, to PC lead democratic, FASCIST =HALFCOMMIE America down the path to full-fledged anti-Amer Amer Socialism, anti-US OWG, and anti-US NWO/Soc-Commie World Order, where the extermination of 90% of the world's population + 5.8 Bilyuhn of world's 6.0+Bilyuhn + 200Milyuhn of Amer's 300Milyuhn + loss of minima 1/2 of CONUS-NORAM, etc. is good for everyone, includ the genocided/holocausted Americans, whom will hug each other and sing songs as they happily report to their local death camps!?ALa LIFE OF BRIAN, Clintonian Americans will be more than happy to be crucified as long as they are not placed next to Jews or the [non-kosher]"other Son-of-God". |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-04-10 23:15 |
| #8 Wrong, November, right after the mid-term election. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-04-10 21:42 |
| #7 Well said, Mike! Hang 'im high! The rest of the world needs to get over itself. We really don't give a shit about them, as long as they leave us alone. And that just kills them. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-04-10 18:43 |
| #6 Bravo, Mike! |
| Posted by: Darrell 2006-04-10 17:59 |
| #5 rjschwarz: mediocre is an understatement. However, I was remembering from Gulf War I, when one of our teams laid hands on a mobile SCUD launcher after dispatching its crew, and how similar the Iranian's use of mobile SHAHAB-3 launchers has become. I highly doubt they would have much security either on their launcher or their missiles, and we might have as long as half a day to work our works on it, after having borrowed it from its previous owners. The point is that there are any number of ways to demonstrate Iranian aggression, but that missiles are easy to independently verify, and thus tend to dispel doubts. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-04-10 16:35 |
| #4 There's a fraction of a paragraph in there that just begs for a fisking: Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, Mr. Spengler: get out your world atlas. Got it? Good. Now turn to the page with the U.S. national map. See that big thing the U.S. is sitting on. It's called North America. It's a continent. Continents are big, really big, vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big things. Starting in most places in the U.S., you can go as much as a couple thousand miles before you bump into another country. When you do, it'll be Canada or Mexico. Americans can enter either one for short stays without a passport. Why do so few Americans have passports? It's not ignorance or isolationism; it's because we don't need them for daily living. and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. Remember that big continent thingy I was telling you about? Well, nearly everyone on it speaks English. Within the U.S. itself, there are linguistic subcultures (Mexican immigrants, Chinatown, Little Italy, and so on), but you need not be bilingual to interact with them, as most people within them are at least conversationally functional in English. French-speaking Canada -- same story. Mexico -- plenty of English speakers in at least the tourist-y parts. As for the rest of the world, English is the de facto language of international commerce, so most business dealings overseas are conducted in English. While a lot of us nevertheless learn a second language in school, we tend not to need it in actual daily life; and if you don't use it, it atrophies. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. . . . We come by our indifference honestly. Recall that the U.S. was settled largely by people who moved here to get away from the rest of the world. We also have a default live-and-let-live social philosophy which carries over into foreign policy. Oh, and we also believe in self-defense. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-04-10 16:20 |
| #3 Anon, you're shalob-3 scenerio reminds me of Spies Like Us. Not that it is good or bad mind you, but would the Iranians be up on mediocre American comedies and have defenses prepared for such a thing? |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-04-10 15:24 |
| #2 The Sears Roebuck chainlink and concertina wire fence contract? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-04-10 14:55 |
| #1 The $64 question is will we wait for an Iranian attack? The political reality is that it is a mid-term election season, one day beyond which election Bush is seen as a lame duck. This means that republican loyalties will wane, and the democrats will work overtime to undermine Bush, the economy, and the government as a whole--first running against Bush, until other republicans come forward to declare for President. In turn, even with damning evidence, it will be hard to persuade Congress to once again go to war. Too many of them would want the war to be "the next President's war". For this domestic reason, and for many international reasons, it would then be to all our advantage if Iran attacked first. An ineffectual, ill-prepared, and ultimately unsuccesful attack, done when we are fully prepared to attack ourselves. An ideal, from our perspective, would be something like "The Ems Dispatch", which caused France, and its buffoonish leader, Napoleon III, to attack Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. Having been insulted, he ordered a small French unit to advance into Germany, with no other French Army preparations. On crossing the border, they met the fully prepared, loaded, and ready, entire German Army. The war lasted two weeks. In our case, if we could not stimulate the Iranians to attack at a time and place of our choosing, it might well be worth our while to make it appear that they had attacked. For example, if a Shahab-3 missile on a mobile launcher in the middle of nowhere, Iran were to launch a missile on a trajectory to a US airbase in Iraq, even though the missile detonated prematurely, it would be more than adequate causus belli. Many nations satellites would detect the missile launch and trajectory, and Iranian denials about a "rogue" missile crew would be ignored. Most likely something more complex could be done, but that is the basic concept. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-04-10 14:39 |