American presidents often defer to great predecessors and the founding fathers as a source of inspiration and guidance. So did Abraham Lincoln as well as Ronald Reagan.
In making his choices regarding a nuclear crises President Obama had at his disposal his predecessors’ experience manifested in two schools of thought: the one represented by the Republican Ronald Reagan and the Democrat John F. Kennedy. Reagan’s tough stance towards the U.S.S.R had reached its pinnacle in the Reykjavik summit of 1986.
It was this tough and principled position that led only a year later, for the first time ever, to the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons and eventually to expediting the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed a few years later, during President H.W Bush’s term.
Kennedy’s tough stance during the Cuban missile crises of October 1962, rolled back the expansion of the U.S.S.R nuclear ambitions from the Americas.
The Nobel winning President Obama chose to follow another school of thought, the one represented by Presidents Clinton and the Nobel winner President Jimmy Carter (“for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts”), in what might seem a smaller-scale crises. Clinton’s and Carter’s policy (as a former president) of “A Deal” with North Korea in which the North committed to freeze and eventually disarm its atomic capabilities in return for economic and political benefits totally collapsed as North Korea broke all agreements. Not only, ”The Deal” did not contain North Korea, it was North Korea that was instrumental in building, what the international media referred to, as the Syrian military atomic capability reactor.
According to the international media the reactor was destroyed by Israel in September 2007.
Apparently, “The Deal” that was advocated by President Obama was so bad that the president of France, Holland, had to veto it, which prompted the WSJ in a spurt of self-Irony to hail France as a savior of the West.
On the “final Deal” Prime minister of Britain David Cameron said In Chanukah reception in the Jewish community “I share your skepticism over the Iran deal” – a strange announcement from one of its chief architects and allies of the US.
On this deal, one can recall the famous words of the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier returning from the notorious peace conference in Munich 1938 to the adoring crowd cheering for him in Paris for “The Deal”: Ah, les cons!” (“Ah, the fools!”). Daladier has warned that the Western Powers capitulation will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid, and yet he signed “The Deal”.
It is also important to note the reasoning behind the decision of President Obama. Only last year, it was Obama who said that he was committed that Iran will not be a nuclear state and threatened a use of force if need be.
However, that was before he got re-elected. The president current reasoning is that he is committed to find a peaceful solution and end the cycle of violence. As if reality and world safety is a story from Alice in wonderland in which the reality is what the president wants it to be.
Along the same lines secretary of state, John Kerry, warned in Congress that increased sanctions on Iran will lead to war. President Obama and John Kerry are repeating mistakes not only of the appeasement of Hitler but also of British leaders before World War 1.
In her Pulitzer book Guns of August 1914, two time Pulitzer winner Barbara Tuchman shows how indecisiveness of British politicians resulting from public objection to an involvement in Europe was a major contributing factor in the German plans of operations and calculations on submitting France.
This public sentiment led the British government to fear commitments and alliances in fear of a threat of war. The same public, unwilling to commit to detering Germany, found it-self burying its young generation in the notorious battles fields of Europe fighting Germany to exhaustion in battles such as the Battle of the Somme in which it is estimated that 1 million people died or were injured. A war America eventually intervened in.
The stakes in the current Genève accord are not diminished compared to the previous Geneva accord with North Korea. This agreement is not marginal and not limited to the Middle East. North Korea also was not limited to the Korean peninsula. It is important to note that the deranged regime of North Korea has been using the Nuclear weapon to extract economic and other benefits for its dying populations but China has leverage over this regime and is a stabilizing factor. Despite this stabilization only this year North Korea threatened the USA with a preemptive nuclear strike.
The situation with Iran is even graver. In Iran rules an extreme Islam ideology which believes in its historic role as leaders of the global Islamic revolution and bent, inter alia, upon the destruction of Israel. It is not just the former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that on numerous times declared publicly that his country commitment to wipe Israel of the map, but it is also the current President Hasan Rouhani, who said: “Israel is ‘a wound on the body of the Islamic world.”
Never Again? In 2006, another Pulitzer Prize laureate, Charles Krauthammer published a chilling article in which he asks: can the world really guaranty that a massacre of 6 million Jews will never happen again? In his, article explains Krauthammer that Israel is a tempting target to those who wish to finish Hitler’s work: “a tiny territory by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler’s work.” Krauthammer explains the logic behind the Iranian approach: “Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the presumed moderate of this gang, has declared that “the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.” The logic is impeccable, the intention clear: A nuclear attack would effectively destroy tiny Israel, while any retaliation launched by a dying Israel would have no major effect on an Islamic civilization of a billion people stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia”.
Approximately 2500 years ago another law educated man named Themistocles (etymology means glorious supporter/defender of the law) from Athens foresaw the upcoming Persian invasion. He was also from a humble origin but with the foresight resolve and leadership. He persuaded the Athenians to upgrade the navy and enlist the entire Athenians people (and in the process free the Athenians slaves) and eventually he united Greece against the annihilating Persian army. It is this foresight and understanding that made him one of the West great protectors forever.
In a speech to parliament in 1914, Sir Edward Grey, then foreign secretary of Britain, united Britain on the war against the invading German army.
Lord Grey is probably best remembered for this speech, which is known as: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”. In this speech Grey quoted a British Prime Minister who was differing to a similar problem of an aggressive Germany trying to devour tiny Belgium in the 19th century.
Regarding British involvement, Gladstone said and Grey quoted: ““it is found in an answer to the question, whether under the circumstances of the case this country, endowed as it is with influence and power would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime that ever stained the pages of history and thus become participators in the sin”.
Today we have Barack Hussein Obama and we will not hear him make such speeches. He defers mostly to himself.
He is no protector of the West, nor a true a friend of Israel. Contrary to his many promises he is bent on isolating and breaking Israel (as if for its own good, of course) – this is the international underlining meaning of Global Obamacare.
On this I am sadly reminded with the words of the Swedish leader Axel Oxenstierna, who was the chancellor for Sweden for more than 40 years, in a letter to his son in 1648: “Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?” (in the original Latin An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?). It is obvious that President Obama has a failed plan and he is bent on executing it, repeating history disasters. The letter of chancellor Oxenstiema of 1648 is probably relevant today as ever.
Times if Israel
No comments:
Post a Comment