Rosh HaShannah: The Turning of the Year

New Mexico Sunflowers in Rock Garden

     "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, they  shall never hold their peace, day or night."  Isaiah 62:3

This morning we awoke to a sunny and cool, early fall day, mists rising from the ground, and the sky in the south and east milky white in contrast to the deep blue New Mexico sky to the northwest. After a week of wind, clouds and rain, we were happy to see the sun. As the Catron Kid went riding on Chapo, the Engineering Geek and I started out of the front gate with three of the dogs, anticipating a Shabbat walk along the western fences of Freedom Ridge Ranch. The cool morning turned into a warm and sunny day as we climbed up the mesa to the northwest, greeting the other two horses, grazing up there in the high pasture.

We noted how the year is turning, talking about some of the things we want to do this coming year on the ranch: putting a windmill and solar combined tower up along the ridge behind the house, divide the high pasture, and divide the front pasture, get the solar completely installed, and take more walks like this one, enjoying the beauty of the place.

Early fall on the Continental Divide is different in appearance from what I grew up with and even from what we experienced in the East Mountains. Here, instead of bold oranges and browns, with the grass of soft wheat color, we see water in the stock tanks, and pooling in the draws and washes, a gift of the late days of a good Monsoon. The grass is green from the water, and the sky soft blue, like spring in more conventional parts of America. The boldest colors come from the yellow Black-Eyed Susans and New Mexico Sunflowers, the orange and pink of Globe-Mallow, and the blues and purples of various clovers, gilias and penstemons, and the rare orange-red of Indian Paintbrush on the high mesa tops and along the washes in the canyons. Fall steals into this high country on the heels of the late summer wildflowers, color dotting the gray-green of the range subtly, as the days grow shorter and sunshine replaces the late-afternoon Monsoon rainfall. The days grow shorter, the shadows deepen and the nights grow even cooler.

And with the turning of the year, we mark the New Year for Years, Rosh Hashannah, which falls on the first day of the seventh month in the Jewish Calendar. As the heat of summer fades, we welcome a new beginning just before the harvest: 5773. As we took our walk, we savored the peace around the Sabbath noontide, and we did not speak of our fears and concerns, heightened this week by the world's slide into chaos, and threatened Israel's complete isolation as it deals with the threat of annihilation.  It is easy, way out here, to move with the turn of the earth, the comings and goings of the herds and flocks, and the blowing of the wind. It is quiet, and the nature of the place and its solitude knows not of human strife, chaos and wars. New Mexicans outside the three cities we have in the state are accused of being provincial, and we are, being far removed from the goings on beyond our mesas and mountains. "The mountains are high," we say, "And the king is far away."

But even without television (we have one, but we don't get broadcast TV --or radio--in our canyon), we do hear of what is happening "out there," although it seems far away. So inevitably, when we returned from our two hour hike up the mesa and around and down, and turned to the Haftarah, the perils our country and our people face stared up at us from the printed page, the words of a prophet writing  more than two-and-a-half millennia ago. There is nothing new under the sun in the affairs of men, I thought, though that idea comes from a Megillah we will read later in the fall, at Sukkot.

Perils for Israel, deserted by the President of the United States, her Prime Minister snubbed and denied a meeting even as the her people prepare for war, and the Jewish People across the world face new threats from a very old prejudice. We fear for the safety of that tiny country where our prophets and kings once walked. And we fear for the integrity and safety of our own country and its people, and for our people everywhere.

But this Haftarah that complements Parashat Nitzavim in Torah, is the last of the seven haftarot of consolation. And in it, Isaiah--writing to a people in exile--speaks of victory and restoration. And so it speaks to us now, and to our great concern in the midst of a world sliding once again into chaos. It says to us, war and destruction are not outside out experience, and yet we are still here. We have stood on the edge of danger and peril before, and yet we are still here, able to reason in the face of our fears, to annul the plans of our enemies as necessary:

Who is it coming from Edom, with crimsoned clothing from Bazrah?  Glorious in apparel, stately in greatness of his strength? I who speaks in victory, mighty to save. . . .

. . . I have trodden the winepress alone, and there was no man with me;      Yes, I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my fury, and their lifeblood is dashed against my clothing, and I have stained all my raiment. For the day of vengeance that was in my heart, and my year of redemption have come.        And I looked and there was none to help, and I beheld in astonishment and there was none to uphold. Therefore, my own arm brought salvation to me, and my fury, it upheld me.  (Isaiah 63: 1; 3 - 5)

This year, as Rosh HaShannah approaches, and greetings come to us from Israel, we hear a message very different from earlier years. Then we heard greetings that were upbeat, anticipating the happiness and contentment to come. "It's gonna be a good year!" Now we hear echoes of Isaiah from Latma, from the IDF: "We are not afraid. We are ready, we are standing guard. The Eternal is riding with us. Others tried to destroy us, and where are they?" 

As we come again to the turning of the year, we find ourselves deeper into the Fourth Turning and closer to the crisis. The outcome of the crisis and the shape of what follows very much depends upon the decisions that we make about how we will face what is coming and what we choose to do. It is a fearful Rosh Hashannah this year, knowing that Israel stands alone, threatened with nuclear holocaust; remembering the High Holy Days of 1973 (5733) when Israel was also fighting for her life, alone, while Jews the world over spent Yom Kippur listening to clandestine radios in services, hands clenched, hoping and praying for her survival. This year, once again, we will find ourselves praying for the peace of Jerusalem, hoping against hope that Israel will be able to remove the growing threat without starting World War III.

Halvai! 

And in the coming year, may all of us find those points of light, those moments of happiness and those days of contentment in our lives, and those transcendent moments of joy and beauty in the world, that remind us of why we hope and why we work to make each moment, day and year of our lives fruitful and full of goodness and plenty.

Kayn y'hi ratzon!



And may 5773 be a good year for us.

Moral Self-Confidence and the Western Way of War: Part II

"If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it."
--Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government, The Virtue of Selfishness

NOTE: This entry is Part II of a two-part series on what has gone so terribly wrong in America's wars in Iraq and in Afganistan. Part I dealt with the concepts involved in the "Western way of war" and the problem we have now that we do not use it. Briefly, the Western way of war can be defined as war that is an agressive, all-out frontal assault intended to bring about a decisive conclusion as quickly as possible. It is total war fought for the purpose of winning. The problem discussed in Part I was defined as the the inability of the United States to actually fight such a war in either of wars in which we are currently involved, and the endlessly dragged out war, replete with military and civilian casualties that result. Part I can be found here . In this part, I will discuss what I believe to be the reasons why the United States has been brought to this point.

In my last post on this topic, I ended with a quote from Carolyn Glick's article "The Western Way of War". In order to begin to address the topic of this post--the reasons why the United States refuses to fight a decisive, total war aimed at the unconditional surrender of the enemy--I think it good to begin with the same quotation:

"For years, citizens of free nations have willfully ignored or dismissed the significance their enemies' gruesome goals and ideology. They have claimed that what these people stand for is insignificant. At the end of the day, they say, the only reason there are wars is because the nations of the West provoke them by being strong. And so, when they have fought wars, they have fought them with strategies that can bring them nothing but defeat."

Why would a nation or the nations that make up Western Civilization do this? Why would the United States or any nation ignore and dismiss the significance of "their enemies gruesome goals and ideology"? Why would it blame the cause of such wars not on the enemy's agression, but upon the virtue of it's own strength? Although there are many reasons why a nation might choose to fight a war in one way rather than another, that a nation would actually go to war with any other goal than to win the war bespeaks a philosophical problem at the highest level. Such an action indicates a profound lack of moral self-confidence. This lack of a sense of moral rightness can only come from the evasion of reality that emerges from a confused and irrational philosophy; one that rewards what is evil and punishes what is good.

Although the lack support for America's wars in Afganistan and Iraq may indeed emerge from the fact that these wars have not been properly declared, and that the people of the United States have been urged directly and otherwise to pay no attention to the ideas that support a weak foreign policy that has brought us to this turn, the only reason for such a profound lack of moral confidence must reside in the ideas that have replaced the "Western way of war."

In his essay entitled "The Balm for a Guilty Conscience: Moral Paralysis, Appeasement and the Causes of WWII" (The Objective Standard, Summer 2007), the historian John David Lewis writes:

"During the 1930s, men stood at a cusp in time, a point of momentous decision, watching the growing power of Germany under its screaming, malevolent leader. Their failure to confront Germany—and the devastating consequences of that failure—demonstrate the power of ideas, both to motivate aggressors and to undercut defenders from taking the actions needed to protect freedom." (Emphasis mine).

Ultimately, Lewis says in his essay, it is the power of ideas that create confrontations that lead to war, and that create the will towards victory; or that cause a nation to get mired down in endless skirmish after skirmish, carefully planned to create not victory, but equity. This leads finally to a quagmire that is never decisively won, but merely declared over, while the problematic behavior of the enemy remains and is exacerbated by the weakness of his opposition. The idea that leads to such self-defeating behavior in war is the lack of moral self-confidence; the lack of a sense that individuals have a right to self-defense, and may thus band together to defend their people against an agressor.

According to Lewis, with respect to the origins of WWII, the fault lay with the leadership of the United States and England, especially President Woodrow Wilson, who refused to allow the allied forces to invade Germany and demand unconditional surrender at the end of WWI. This lack of a decisive defeat, together with a "peace" treaty designed to maintain the European status quo, allowed Germany to imagine victory and then claim victim status under the provisions of the peace treaty. That together with a peace treaty that imposed goals of equity, national self-determination, and the concept of "collective security"--the idea that all nations must be equally disarmed regardless of which nations had been the agressors--guaranteed a bigger and bloodier war to follow. And it did. Fifty million people died in WWII.

And why did England stand by while Germany rearmed itself under Hitler, and began to threaten war? Why did Chamberlain appease, and appease again, right up to claiming "peace in our time" as the Nazis marched into Sudetenland? It was not economics, nor the horrors of war alone that caused the majority in the West to stand idly by while war was being prepared; at the root of it all was lack of a sense of moral self-confidence. In England, as in the United States, progressives carefully inculcated the idea that all nations are equal with respect to ideas, civilizing principles, and action; that no nation or civilization is morally superior to any other. These ideas were in direct contradiction to the political reality that the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles was designed to address. As Lewis puts it:

"Wilsonian idealists, egalitarian British socialists, and so-called “realist” conservatives—who disagreed about almost everything else—generally agreed that they could not abide the language of the Treaty. Many British politicians and intellectuals were divided, torn between Wilson’s ideals and the reality of Germany’s complicity in the war—split between theory and practice. . . . Morally, many British thought that Germany had a right to determine her own national destiny. Politically, they knew this would be a disaster. In the clash between the political reality in Europe and their unreal moral ideals, their ideals won."

Although the United States cast off these Wilsonian Ideals and went on to win WWII by fighting a total war that ended only in the absolute defeat and unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan, the progressive idea of multiculturalism was not defeated in the United States. Rather, they remained dormant until the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960's, when with the United States mired in an undeclared war on foreign soil, engaged in despite the best interests of the country, and with no clear plan for victory, these ideals were brought back by the careful work of progressives of all political stripe in order to advance their cause and draw the United States away from its own ideals of individualism and liberty.

And since WWII, the United States has not engaged in any war that was declared in order to protect the rights of Americans, nor has she fought any war with the goal of total victory and the unconditional surrender of the enemy power.

Although there were various terrorist attacks by Islamo-fascists on American assets in foreign lands, most Americans did not wake up to the new enemy that had risen against them until they witnessed the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. And the politicians' reaction to go to war was done with a similar curious mix of the unreality of the Wilsonian Ideals and the political situation created by the very real ideology of the Islamic Jihadists: the destruction of the Western way of life in Europe and America. Therefore, within three years the United States went to war in two different countries, only one of which was justified by self-defense, and both of which were undeclared. No specific goals for victory were made for either war, and there was no thought that the enemy must be totally defeated and brought to unconditional surrender.

Thus, as Bush--and now Obama--fiddled while our liberties were destroyed--our blood and treasure have been spent in order to set up a corrupt secular government that is rapidly being defeated by Islamo-fascists in Afganistan, and a nation divided against itself in Iraq. Meanwhile, the real menance to peace in the Middle East, and to the world, is growing Persian-style, as the madman Achmadinnerjacket (see Deut. 25:19) closes in on the goal of obtaining nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map and to defeat America.

And we evade this reality by mouthing the multicultural pieties of Wilsonian Idealism: that the United States should not engage in any action for the sake of our own self-interest; that all nations have the right to self-determination (apparently except Israel), regardless of proof of past agression and threats of future destruction; that in the face of the threats of madmen, the right and moral thing to do is disarm all nations (apparently except Iran); and that principled self-defense in the face of those who wish to defeat us physically and spiritually in order to destroy our culture and values and assimilate us into the "world caliphate" is immoral.

At the heart of this idea is a great contradiction: that somehow all nations have the right to self-determination--except the United States; that all cultures and civilizations are equal in values and outcomes--except Western culture and civilization. In other words, to paraphrase Orwell: All nations and cultures are equal; but some are less equal than others.

A blog friend of mine and an Objectivist has reminded me that when faced with a contradiction, one should "check your premises" because one or more of them is wrong.

The wrong premise here is that all values and all cultures are equal; that is they all equally promote human life and human happiness.

For nearly a century the progressives among us have worked to blur the difference between institutionalized rape and the abuse of women in Muslim countries and the difference in compensation between men and women in the West; they have worked to blur the difference between a fundamentally just court system based on the Rule of Law in the West, and a fundamentally unjust system based on Sharia law in Muslim countries. Further the progressives have deliberately planned to set different groups of people against one another in the West, on the basis of the faulty concept of "group rights", in order to sow dissension among us and bring chaos to our lives. They do all of this in the name of those same Wilsonian Ideals, which are really the ideals of collectivism. In the name of those ideals, they have murdered and starved--or encouraged others to murder and starve millions upon millions over the course of the bloody 20th century.

All values, all cultures, and all ideas do not equally promote human life, liberty and happiness. Some values promote the opposite--death, enslavement and misery. Ideas are important--they are acted out in the real world and they have real consequences. Collectivist ideals fly in the face of the nature of human individuals even to the level of our basic biology. They promote a morality that is incompatible with human life, and which is thus inescapably evil.

This is why the pretense we have engaged in in the West, that as Caroline Glick puts it, causes us to willfully ignore or dismiss the significance of our enemies' "gruesome goals and ideology", is downright deadly to ourselves and to our way of life. In order to break out of this trap of quagmire and endless war, it is important that we value our way of life highly, and demand that we fight our wars in the Western way, to total victory and unconditional surrender of the enemy, and only then engage in the American way of compassion to build up our former enemies.

We can win this battle, says Professor Lewis, but we cannot put the cart before the horse:

"Only after we understand that we should defeat these enemies, can we ask how. This point is vital, for the question of moral rightness is logically and psychologically prior to any question of strategy or tactics. If we do not understand that we should defeat them—if we think that we are as bad as they are, or that they have legitimate grievances that justify their attacks, or that we have created a situation that morally demands that we compensate them—then our lack of moral self-confidence will undercut our motivation to fight. But the facts do not warrant such a conclusion. We are morally right and the Islamic Totalitarians are evil—not merely in their methods, but, more fundamentally, in their values and goals. We have a moral responsibility to defeat them—if we want to live. We can and must approach this war with the moral self-confidence of those fighting for civilization itself—for the basic conditions on which human life depends—because that is precisely what is at stake."

A Holocaust survivor that I knew, a very thoughtful woman once asked me in bewilderment why we refuse to believe a dictator who tells us exactly what he will do, and then proceeds to do it. I told her that I thought that many people have difficulty accepting that such a person exists--one who is fundamentally messed up that he does not value even his own life.

And I still think that is true. But now I also know that it is not only that visceral reaction against the existence of evil; it is also about the inculcation over nearly a century of multiculturalism and the idea that it is moral to act outside of rational self-interest, to reward the bad and punish the good. This can only lead to an evil outcome: death and destruction, slavery and misery.

But we have a choice. As Caroline Glick said at the end of her article:
" . . . it also reminds us that there is another choice that can be made. The Western way of war needn't remain the path of defeat. That still is for the people of the West to decide."

True. And may that choice to defend our lives and freedom come soon and in our own day.

Moral Self-Confidence and the Western Way of War: Part I

NOTE: This entry will be presented in two parts. Part I will discuss the problem--that the West is no longer engaging in the Western Way of War, and perhaps no longer believes in the purpose of it, as well as the way that the United States has gained victory through its exceptional use of the Western Way of War as dictated by the Constitution. Part II will discuss the philosophical reasons why the West and the United States choose not engage in war to win, namely a loss of moral confidence in the goodness of our way of life.

Today, as Hamas and Hezbollah--Iran's proxies--sit poised to begin a war with Israel, Caroline Glick posted her latest Jerusalem Post column on her blog. The column, called The Western Way of War, was actually more of a discussion of how the West has left behind the way of war that, as Victor Davis Hanson described in his book by the same name as Glick's column, is "a ferocious, brief, head-on clash" that serves the same purpose as the Western invention of consensual government: namely to achieve a quick and decisive end to a dispute.

Glick's column, on the topic of General Stanley McChrystal's resignation, focused on what Americans and Israelis might learn, not from McChrytal's military faux pas of being publically critical of the President of the United States, but by confronting "the unpleasant truth about the problematic nature of the the Western way of war in the 21st century."

In her discussion concerning the morale problem for Americans in Afganistan, Glick says:

Due to the administration's aversion to civilian casualties, preventing civilian casualties has become a chief fighting aim for the US military. Yet since the Taliban war effort relies on civilian infrastructures and human shields, the strategic significance of preventing civilian casualties is that US forces' ability to fight the Taliban is dramatically circumscribed.

Far from being the time-honored "Western way" in war which is total war fought for victory and the unconditional surrender of the enemy, and which leads to peace, trade with the former enemy, and eventually even alliances with the same, the warefare of the 21st century leads to stalemate, endless war and/or withdrawal without change in the conditions that led to the war. As Glick says:

The important story this week was not about a US general with abysmal judgment about the media. Rather the story is that in Afghanistan, the US is repeating a sorry pattern of Western nations of not understanding - or perhaps not caring -- that if you are not willing to fight a war to victory, you will lose it.

This is exactly the problem in Afganistan. To win the war and free the region from the Taliban, the United States must utterly defeat the Taliban. But for the Taliban to win, they must only wait out the increasingly leadership challenged United States and her allies. One reason for this problem is that the United States went to war without clear objectives, and the war has therefore suffered from "mission creep" which in Afganistan consisted of the goal changing from killing Osama bin Laden and destroying terrorist bases, to the goal of "nation building". This, in a part of the world ruled by ancient tribal alliances and hatreds, and where the concept of a nation-state is as foreign as the concept of individual destiny, is bound to be disastrous.

But the problem of choosing wisely with respect to how to go to war and why, is not the core of the issue. The core is why on earth the United States or any other Western country or alliance thereof, would deviate from the successful Western way of war as it has evolved to modernity. Before considering this question, though, a discursion on how the United States has developed the Western way of war is instructive.

In the United States that way can be defined by the following steps, all of which rest on the idea that the only moral reason for a war is defensive. (This does not mean that offensive strategy and tactics cannot be used in order to defeat the enemy; it only means that the causus belli must be due to attack or invasion). A Constitutional war must rest on the values enshrined therein. A war for empire can never be justified by these values. The steps are:

1. Use of Constitutional means to declare war thus acquiring the consent and support of the people as required for success on the part of a Constitutional Republic.

This means that the people at home are interested in how the war is being fought, and its outcome; and they generally constrain politicians from interfering in the strategy and tactics of the battles. In a proper Constitutional war, it is the duty of the civilian leadership to determine the goals that measure victory, and it is up to military leadership to determine the objectives, strategy and tactics to meet those goals.

2. Fight a total war to a decisive victory; that is, fight to win.

This can only happen when the people have consented to the losses required, and when they have a stake in the outcome. This is why a Constitutional declaration of war is necessary in the first place--it requires that a war be fought only when it is in the interest of the United States to do so as determined by the people themselves.

3. Define victory as the absolute defeat and unconditional surrender of the enemy.

The absolute defeat of the enemy is the only way to convince him that the ideas that brought him to make offensive war are bankrupt and false, and that there is nothing to gain by making such a war ever again.

4) Once a peace treaty is established, offer mercy and compassion to the people of the defeated country or region.

This is part of American exceptionalism--unlike wars for empire which result in enslaving the defeated enemy--usually by killing the men, making the women whores and the children, slaves--once a free people has defeated the enemy, thus obviating the ideas that led to war, they then lift up the enemy and make the people into trading partners, allies and friends.

In our new and unique way of dealing with war, forged from the Western tradition of consensual government and the Western Way of War, the United States has been successful in totally defeating traditional Honor/Shame societies, and in then rebuilding them to become successful modern societies that respect the rights of their own people as well as those of others. As the psychologist David Gutman, (University of Chicago) put it:

. . .the United States has successfully fought and tamed Shame/Honor societies in the past. The Confederacy, the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians, all paradigm Shame/Honor societies, were all overcome in total wars, and all became either part of our nation, or our trusted Democratic allies. And it now begins to appear that Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan will join their company.
There appears to be a uniquely American approach to war – one combining ruthlessness and mercy - that can lead to such unexpectedly good outcomes. ("Symposium: Islamic Terror and Sexual Mutilation", FrontPage Magazine, Friday, February 13, 2009).

The agenda of Islamo-fascism comes from such an honor/shame system, which is not compatible with individual rights and the Rule of Law. In such a culture, the fight can never end until honor has been restored and the enemy that has shamed one is destroyed.

As Caroline Glick continued in her article:

For years, citizens of free nations have willfully ignored or dismissed the significance their enemies' gruesome goals and ideology. They have claimed that what these people stand for is insignificant. At the end of the day, they say, the only reason there are wars is because the nations of the West provoke them by being strong. And so, when they have fought wars, they have fought them with strategies that can bring them nothing but defeat.

The question now becomes what has caused the West and the United States to decide not to engage the Western Way of War in order not only to utterly defeat the enemy, but also to remake him into a partner and a friend? The answer to this question is philosophical and involves the issue of moral confidence. Part II will engage this question.

The Clouds of War: Why the Flotilla Crisis is a Distraction

There has been a good deal of discussion at most patriot and conservative sites about political solutions to our present crisis. Discussions involve the upcoming elections and possible moves to impeach the president. Meanwhile, generally, much discussion along the political spectrum has been about the Israeli commando raid on one of six ships in a flotilla that was aiming to run and break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. There is much outrage on the left, where nobody mentions the Egyptians have a blockade of Gaza as well, and for the same reasons: Gaza was forcibly taken over two years ago by the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas, which has dedicated itself to the cause of destroying Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel. Hamas--they're not the kind of people you want living next door to you. The Egyptians know that as well as the Israeli's do.

I believe the flotilla that was boarded and towed, as well as the ones now on the way to run the blockade, are mere distractions perpetrated mostly by useful idiots while Iran and Syria prepare for war. Here is my contribution to a discussion that mostly consisted of political responses to an article about the video 33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age. (You can view trailers here).

My response:

This discussion has gone for the most part toward poltical solutions such as marches and impeachment.
These are important discussions in their own right and for all the reasons (and more) that have been brought up.

We also need to be thinking about preparations, and a few people have mentioned food insurance.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are headed for war. This summer.
Iran has promised to wipe Israel off the map, and the United States is depicted by Achmadinajad as an even greater evil to be destroyed.

The present "Flotilla Crisis" is most likely a distraction to keep the world busy while the real war is planned.
Consider this interview with a retired American general put out by PJTV on May 6:
Former US General Warns of Chemical Attack Against Israel

In the interview at PJTV, this general says that he fully expects Achmadinajad to attack Israel and from a container ship, attack the United States with nukes.

Then consider the news from the UN--the new Mid-East Non-Proliferation Treaty. CNN is hailing it as "multi-lateral" missing the fact that Israel is named, but Iran is not considered a nuclear power. Israel rejected the NPT, but named Israel and not Iran singles Israel out for condemnation:

From Jewish Telegraphic Agency (English Language):

"Israel rejected the final document of a United Nations review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying that by singling out Israel it "ignores the realities of the Middle East."
The monthlong conference ended last Friday. The conference's final resolution called for a conference on establishing a nuclear-free Middle East to take place in 2012. It also called on Israel, which has never confirmed or denied that it has a nuclear weapons arsenal, to sign on to the treaty and allow the United Nations nuclear watchdog group to inspect its facilities. Iran was not mentioned in the resolution."

Finally, on Monday it was confirmed that Iran has the ability now has enough enriched uranium to make two warheads. Here is the Fox News report, but the news is everywhere:

"VIENNA (AP) — Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is only pursuing civilian nuclear energy.
The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium."

And consider this, from Fox News yesterday:

"Things in Middle East are quickly spiraling out of control. The Palestinians want to import weapons from Iran, to stockpile for the next war with Israel, but are prevented from doing so by the Israeli naval blockade. They realize they can’t stop the Israelis militarily, so they’ve turned to the world court of public opinion. . .
. . .The next few ships to challenge the blockade will likely be filled with more children’s toys and baby formula. But once the blockade is broken, those ships will be filled with missiles, weapons and ammunition bound for Hezbollah and Hamas. . .
. . . Meanwhile, the clouds of war are gathering."



Like Chamberlain, Barack Hussein Obama refuses to believe what Achmadinajad has been saying over and over. But unlike Chamberlain, I believe that Obama knows full well what he is doing. And by the time we got to congressional hearings on impeachment, they might well be taking place by candlelight.



Save those tin-foil hats, fellow patriots. The thing is spinning out of control. Remember what General Vallely said. We may need that foil to make Faraday Cages for our sensitive electronics.


Remember Glenn Beck's interview with Binyamin Netanyahu in 2006?

Many people ridiculed both Beck and Netanyahu for saying that Achmadinajad sees himself as the harbinger of the 12th Iman, who wishes to destroy Israel and the United States.

Given the news in the past month, I think the time for ridicule is over.