Newt Gingrich issues a timely warning with which I heartily concur:
Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.
“They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we’ve ever seen,” the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There’s almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world,” he said, speaking to the Post ahead of his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference.
He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement on Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”
Among the things I fault President Bush over is his failure to act decisively against Iran in the 2005-06 time frame. It was, in the end, Iranian support which kept the Iraqi insurgency going and it is Iran, with its insane nuclear program, which threatens not just peace, but the very survival of the Israelis as a people. There is still time to act against Iran’s nuclear program in such a manner as to prevent any desire on the part of Israel to strike – indeed, such action may still be taken with a minimal risk of loss of life. But the time to take it is now.
My preferred course of action remains as it has been for years – blockade on the export of Iranian oil (which blockade will actually be applauded by all other oil-producing States, as well as providing no ability for the Iranian mullahs to portray Iranians as suffering…food and other aid could still be delivered…heck, we’d help deliver it, if necessary; it just cuts the mullahs off from the money supply they need to purchase nuclear technology as well as buy the goon squads which keep the Iranian people down), destruction of Iran’s oil-refining capacity; lift the blockade and assist in rebuilding Iran’s refining capacity after the Iranian nuclear program is dismantled under American supervision (or, failing that, the supervision of some nation like Switzerland…I don’t trust the UN to do a proper job). In fact, just the threat of a export blockade could force Iran to back down. If the threat and the actuality doesn’t, then we would have to so bomb the Iranian nuclear sites that Iran is knocked back at least 5-10 years in its nuclear program…five to ten years for Iran to change and for other, new combinations to form which might obviate the need for aggressive American action.
Obama can play with his fantasy that Iran’s government will become reasonable based on the theory that Iran’s government was only un-reasonable because Bush was President – he can play this, but it risks the lives of millions. More than likely, Obama’s willingness to meet the mullahs is viewed in Tehran as a sign of weakness…just as Clinton and Carter’s efforts to conciliate America’s enemies was viewed as weakness. We’re not dealing, in our enemies, with people who have Ivy League degrees and who have attended conflict resolution classes. We’re dealing with hard, cruel and wicked men who want their own way and who have no compunction at all about killing to get it – people thus sunk into moral degeneracy are not usually amenable to the velvet touch…rough men usually need someone equally rough to take care of them.
We’re balanced on a knife edge – on one hand stands the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iran and all our work in Afghanistan and Iraq undone in a fit of Moslem anti-Israel fervor; on the other stands the vast relief of most of the Moslem world that we took Iran’s nuclear program down. Its Obama’s choice of what to do; I hope he chooses wisely.
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