Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The big Farce from the Horse's Keyboard

Those who remember the theatrics that were staged by Israel, by its Jewish mouthpieces and its non-Jewish echo repeaters in the Anglophile world, will see an attempt to re-stage these theatrics – albeit with some modifications – in the article that Norman Podhoretz has published in the Wall Street Journal on July 29, 2015.

The clowning at the time rested on the theme that Israel may or may not have an arsenal of nuclear weapons; that it may or may not have submarines capable of launching these weapons; that it may or may not have a tacit agreement with Saudi Arabia to use its territory to bomb Iran; that it had the ability to send planes westward as far as they would need to fly eastward to hit Iran; that plans were prepared to start a war with Iran so as to get Israel into a perilous situation and force the United States to come to the rescue.

Norman Podhoretz, who is one of the horses' mouths representing American Jewry, has written a sequel to that spoof; one that is different from the original show by only a little. He put it under a title that reads: “Israel's Choice: Conventional War Now, or Nuclear War Later” and a subtitle that reads: “There was no 'better deal' with Iran to be had. Now this calamitous one offers Tehran two paths to the bomb.”

He first proclaims that he considers “Mr. Obama's deal a calamity.” That's because the deal offers Iran the choice of cheating or simply waiting for the sunset clause to kick in while preparing for the “glorious day” when it will have acquired the bomb. Having tried as hard as he can to prove Obama wrong, he finds himself “unable to escape the conclusion that Mr. Obama is right” in dismissing the better deal that his critics propose. And since the other parties to the negotiations are eager to do business with Iran, “the upshot is that to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, the only way to do so is to bomb Iran.”

Speaking as if deputized by humanity to speak on its behalf, he expresses the sorrow that “once upon a time … every other country on earth believed” it was necessary and possible to prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb through negotiations. But as it happened, those “not blinded by wishful delusions [discovered that] diplomacy would never work” with Iran.

Alas, these people were prevented from speaking up, he says, while others declared that “force remained on the table” when in fact, they had decided never to resort to force. Not only that, but “Mr. Obama was hellbent on stopping Israel from taking military action on its own.” The result was that “they all set about persuading themselves … we could live with a nuclear Iran as we had lived with Russia and China during the Cold War.” That's how the self-induced delusion infested the world except those, like Bernard Lewis, who knew better.

The situation at this time being that the negotiating partners wish to do business with Iran, and that Obama has fulfilled his dream of establishing detente with Iran, the only thing left to do to prevent Iran from getting the bomb is to consider “war as the only alternative.” Thus, what Obama has wrought will not avert war, as he claims, but “sets the stage for a nuclear war between Iran and Israel,” he asserts with confidence.

Having spoken for all of humanity, Podhoretz now speaks for all Israelis. He says: “with hardly an exception, all of Israel believes that the Iranians are deadly serious when they proclaim they [will] wipe the Jewish state off the map.” This leads him to see the parallel with the Cold War theory named Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) according to which either side is deterred from attacking the other lest the other be forced to respond.

However, there is a wrinkle here that is unsettling Podhoretz. It is that the Iranians believe “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything [but] will only harm the Islamic world.” Given this reality, he asks: “How can deterrence work?” And he answers: “The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives … are conventional war now or nuclear war later.”

Well, well, well. This forces us to look again into the Iranian saying about a single bomb inside Israel. Podhoretz tells us it was the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani who said it. When was that? In 2001. This was a time when the Israeli stud wanted the world to believe he was endowed with an arsenal of nuclear tools potent enough to heap destruction on the Muslim world. That's when Rafsanjani responded: You do that, baby, and one throw from us and you're blown away.

Norman Podhoretz wants to stage a sequel to this farce perhaps because he wants to see Israel blown away.