Waiting For Godot, Sadat, Mandela And Others

To some people, Samuel Beckett's stage play “Waiting for Godot” has come to represent the Jewish longing for the coming of the Messiah. Even though the author has denied that such representation was his intention when writing the play, some people refuse to change their view – and there could be a good reason for that.

It is that the Jewish opinion makers keep reinforcing the view with everything they write these days. More than that, every prominent Jew who speaks on any subject tends to also reinforce the view by addressing the subject directly or addressing it obliquely. We shall see in a moment how Eric Cantor, who is the Majority Leader of the US House of Representatives, has done just that in a speech he gave on February 5, 2013 at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Jewish opinion makers do not speak of a God or a Messiah in what they write but speak of a leader they wish to see pop up in some country other than Israel. It would be a leader who – they fantasize – will do Israel's bidding in those countries. Thus, what these people express is the wish to see a Sadat-like figure pop up say, in Syria or Lebanon; one who will travel to Israel and address its parliament in occupied Jerusalem as did Sadat.

And they wish to see a Mandela-like figure pop up say, in Palestine; one who will call on the people living in Palestine and in the Diaspora to think of the Israeli occupation as a positive happening they should get used to, even like instead of resent. This may not be exactly what Mandela did in South Africa, but there is nothing that says these people cannot stretch their fantasy to an absurd extreme.

And because that trait is rife in Jewish culture, the view of a “larger than life” figure appearing in a region of hot spots and fixing its problems goes beyond the affairs of the Middle East. It spills over to every region of the world about which those opinion makers express the wish to see someone pop up and repeat a miracle done previously by someone who may now be dead or may be alive and retired.

But what's this about in reality? It's about a people whose culture is so restricted, they are not allowed to wander off beyond the limits of a box inside of which they must find what they need to make a case for any cause they decide to take up and articulate. And the reason why they are restricted is that they see their Jewish history as being the main plot in the human drama that is unfolding. Everything else in their view is but a subplot that exists only to support the development of the main plot which is the Jewish plot.

This view inevitably leads them to believe that a leader will at one time or another pop up in every corner of the globe, and will set the stage there for the Messiah to appear in Israel. It will be a Messiah who will give the Jews the key to the world, and give them the means as well as the wisdom to govern it. When this will be done, the promise that God has made to the Jews long ago will have been fulfilled.

Eric Cantor's participation in the unfolding of the Jewish plot has come in the form of playing his part in the American subplot. He spoke often of the fictitious obligations that America has towards Israel, and he did all he could to make America support the Jewish state financially, militarily and diplomatically.

But his latest foray in this field has been a more traditional one as he seems to be developing a new and more traditional desire. Speaking of himself, this is what he said in the speech at the American Enterprise Institute: “In America, the grandson of poor immigrants who fled religious persecution in Russia can become the Majority Leader of the US House of Representatives.”

And this is what he said toward the end of the speech: “...living in Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century, my grandparents fled the vicious anti-Semitic programs of ... Russia to come to America … my grandma worked seven days a week to ... realize the promise of this great country. And today, my children and I stand as proof of the possibility...“ What Eric Cantor is doing here is sing the traditional Jewish song of pity.

He is whining: Pity me, pity me because my grandparents were hated in Russia. I ask you to elect me to the post of Speaker of the House because the waiting is coming to an end, and my Godot will soon come to me. I shall be third in line to be President of the United States, and that's one step away from being King of the World where – if I get there – I shall do all of Israel's bidding.

Trying To Teach Daddy How To Make Babies

Once upon a time a young Albert Einstein was thought to be ill equipped intellectually to grasp math or science by his teacher, but Einstein grew up to be one of the greats in those fields. How could this have happened? Well, it looks like the teacher did not allow for the possibility that the student may be a deep thinker, and that he did not respond well enough or fast enough to superficial challenges.

The teacher looked at the performance of the student at the superficial level, and failed to see enough there to impress him. He thus concluded that there was nothing more below that surface, and he advised the student to think of going into something else before it is too late. But the student stuck to the inner voice that was telling him to remain where he is, and time has shown how wrong the teacher was.

This example is not unusual because it often happens that a teacher would fail to identify a late bloomer from among his students. It can also happen that a teacher would think highly of a student that displays great promise early on but then disappoints when he hits a ceiling above which he cannot rise. It is that a developing human mind which is not yet mature can be unpredictable as to which direction it will take. But when the mind has matured, predictions can be made about it with greater confidence.

While this sort of discussion can be had with regard to a school setting, it cannot be had in another setting without raising an eyebrow or two; without provoking a snicker or two. And this will happen to the people who will read the latest column by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal. It has the title: “Hagel's Hruska Defense” and the subtitle: “Will America's next defense secretary vindicate the cause of the mediocre man?” It was published on February 5, 2013.

When you read that column you are reminded of the saying: “Don't try to teach daddy how to make babies.” It is that Bret Stephens is not a teacher trying to assess the intellectual level of a student; it is that he is a kid trying to tell someone who is above him – well above him – how to do the things he cannot himself begin to grasp. Bret Stephens, you see, grew up in the Yiddish tradition where the big mouth is valued much more than the big brain. This is why he and the neocons who are like him dish out article after article urging everyone to put more horsepower in the jaws even if the brain has not yet mustered the power of a bird brain.

In his column, Stephens points at the confirmation hearing during which Chuck Hagel was subjected to superficial challenges he was wise enough to calm down or ignore. But this is not how Stephens saw the session unfold. Instead, he says this about Hagel’s performance: “He simply folded in the face of questions about his previous positions on Israel, Iran, nuclear Global Zero, Pentagon overspending and so on.” You see this, and you ask yourself three questions: What was the importance of that line of questioning? What would have been the correct answers? And what would such answers have accomplished in practical terms?

You go through the rest of the article looking for answers, and you encounter a few hints. You find that while discussing the upcoming Obama cabinet, the author writes this: “...a cabinet without a single hawk or even a semi-hawk, whereas only a year ago there were three...” So you ask: What did this do for America? And he seems to answer your question with a question of his own: “Ask yourself how Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei and Bashar Assad are likely to feel about all that. Shouldn't America have at least one officer of cabinet rank who scares the daylights out of these people?”

And you let out a loud scream: Wow! If one officer could have scared the daylights out of these people, three officers must have caused Putin, Khamenei and Assad to wet their pants. And the poor things must still be trembling in their boots. But you ask: are they really trembling? Apparently not because it is not what Stephens and his neocon comrades-in-arms have been saying during the past four years.

In fact, they have been whining that President Obama and his cabinet were acting like pussycats in the face of the tigers from Russia, Iran and Syria. So then, what do these neocons want now? Do they want more of the same? Can they not envisage the Administration taking another approach?

Apparently when someone grows up in the Yiddish tradition, all that they want to hear is bark, bark, bark whether or not they anticipate that this will yield something good at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, the neocons did not hear Chuck Hagel bark during the confirmation hearing, and so they deemed him to be below par.

And they will continue to whine as their spiritual forebears have done for millennia.

Then The Syntax Became The Message

Almost half a century ago Marshall McLuhan observed that “The Medium Is the Message.” Although I believe that the observation remains valid today, it seems to have evolved beyond this point. In fact, it looks to me like the syntax is now making a difference in this post-McLuhan age. I began to see that something like this may be happening when I encountered the bad translations which resulted when going from one language to another. I could not discuss the subject, however, because it would have been understood only by the people who spoke both languages – and most of my readers did not speak the other language.

Lucky for us, something happened which opens the door for a discussion on the subject without having to resort to a second language because it can all be done in English. And you won't believe who we have to thank for this opportunity. Let me tell you who that is; it is Dorothy Rabinowitz who wrote a column under the title: “Chuck Hagel's Defenseless Performance” and published it in the Wall Street Journal on February 4, 2013.

There is much political stuff that can be articulated about this matter but I have written a great deal about it already, and I shall not take up any of the points that Rabinowitz makes except for one. I do so not to discuss the political implications that flow from it but to discuss the different philosophical dimensions that may result when we choose to structure a phrase or a sentence this way or that way – what we call the choice of syntax.

The salient point here is encapsulated in the word “containment.” Originally, the word was used to refer to the policy which America and its NATO allies maintained during the Cold War with regard to what they (rightly or wrongly) perceived to be the attempt of the Soviet Union to rely on its military power – including the deterrence effect of its nuclear arsenal – to keep expanding. Containment meant to make it clear to the Soviets that they could not make an aggressive move that will not trigger an appropriate response from NATO.

In more recent times, the word containment was used in reference to the nuclear ambitions of Iran. Some people suggested that the Iranians could have nuclear weapons if they so wished because America and its allies could still contain them the way that the Soviets were contained. No, said other people, you cannot do with the religious Iranians what was done with the secular Soviets because they are two different breeds.

What seems to have happened as a result of that debate is that America stated something to the effect that the Iranians will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, period. This meant that the policy of containment no longer applied, thus became a moot subject. In consequence of this, when Chuck Hagel was asked a question about the subject, he said that he supported the President's position on containment.

This was a clear statement and everyone understood it except for an aide who took it upon himself to hand a note to Hagel advising him that he misspoke because, in reality, America did not have a policy on containment. Believing that he did make a mistake, Hagel retracted what he thought he had said a moment ago, and stated instead that America did not have a policy on containment.

This being even more confusing than before, Senator Levin who chaired the meeting, was forced to intervene and state clearly that America had a position on containment which is that it did not favor it.

We can see what the problem has been in this case. It is that there is a negative which some people attributed to one thing while other people attributed to another thing. Was it that America had NO position on containment? Or was it that America had a position of NO containment?

In this age of multi-tasking; of short attention span and brief-speak, the way that you phrase a response can mean one thing to one person, and another thing to another person even if both speak your language. Now imagine what can happen when you translate from one language to another.

There are those who will tell you it can sometimes be difficult to even reset the relationship with an old adversary who has become a friend when the author thinks in terms of one context, and the translator thinks in terms of another context.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart had a brush with a situation like this not long ago. Now imagine what can happen when you translate something into English from Arabic or Farsi.

The Sorry Spectacle Of A Moribund Congress

Well ahead of the time when Senator Chuck Hagel was scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the subject of his confirmation to be Secretary of Defense, people knew he was going to have a difficult time, and some even knew why it would be so. And knowing as much, these people could see why the American Congress – half of which is made of the Senate – had become the dysfunctional institution that it is.

Simply put, the American Congress of infamy is serving not America or the American people but serving Israel and the so-called Jewish people. In fact, that shameless Congress does what it does by adopting any treasonous act and everyone of them if such adoption would advance the Jewish agenda. Indeed, the American Congress of horror will act in said manner even when it becomes clear that the move will rob the American people of their heritage, diminish the esteem that the world has for the Republic, and hurt the industrial and commercial interests that the nation has overseas.

Clues as to what was in store for Hagel when he will get to the hearing came from several sources ever since the man was nominated to the post by the President. The most telling of the clues was the article written by John Cornyn, and published on January 30, 2013, a day before Hagel's appearance before the Committee. It is titled: “The Case against Hagel” and subtitled: “Why the former Nebraska senator is the wrong choice for the Pentagon.”

If there is such a thing as an encyclopedia of nothingness, the Cornyn article is it. When you read it, you will find it to be a compilation of useless happenings that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. In fact, it is everything that the Jewish-cum-Israeli lobbyists assemble in one place to help them throw sand in the eyes of the onlookers, or have a crony like Cornyn do the throwing for them.

The lobbyists and their cronies resort to that method of operation when they have no dirt to use on someone they seek to intimidate, bribe, blackmail or destroy. Lacking such dirt, they bring to the table a bagful of what you encounter when you read the Cornyn article on the internet. What happens then is that you bump into links which send you to letters, votes, sayings, peoples and incidents that you recognize as being the talking points which the Jewish/Israeli lobby sprinkle around, the way that manure is sprinkled on a sterile field to make it grow something – make it grow anything at all.

And you realize that these people needed to do such a thing because they had no dirt on Hagel. It is that the man is so clean; they could not intimidate or destroy him; could not bribe or blackmail him. Thus, it becomes obvious that this reality was the factor which had been killing them for some time now. It also explains the need they have developed to call on the Cornyns of this world to come and falsely testify that the nothingness they bring to the table has a higher value than the truth about them which Hagel has been talking about.

By the time you finish reading the Cornyn article, you get the sense that the Senate Committee which Hagel will face will be full of Cornyn-like characters who will seek to blind the onlookers as to what is there, and make them believe they see what is not there. You expect the show to be a theater of the absurd staged in the style of what politics in America has become under the tutelage of the self appointed Jewish masters of nothingness.

But why would Cornyn flush his honor down the tube of dejection, and why would he sell his country so cheaply at a time when America could use a fraction of the effort he made on behalf of the Jews to improve its own lot? Well, he did it because he is more than a senator who was elected by a population that has the power to elect him again and again; he is the Senate Republican whip which is a position he can maintain only as long as he keeps sucking up to the Jewish lobby that has the power to boot him out of that position. In short, he can take the voters of his state for granted; he cannot take the Jewish/Israeli lobby for granted.

As to the members of the committee that will interrogate Hagel, some will have come with the history and the baggage that have transformed them into veritable attack dogs. One of those is Senator Jim Inhofe who was president of an insurance company that went bankrupt at a time when the world was not aware of the sort of rot that lurked inside the bowels of such companies. But no rot could have escaped the ever sniffing researchers of the Jewish lobby who went around and gathered dirt on the fallen with the view of blackmailing them if and when they got back on their feet.

This forced such people to dance to the tune of the lobby which is what Inhofe has been doing when he is not flying a plane and threatening the life of people trying to land on the head of construction workers laboring in a field. This is what he once did and was so described in a report by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) which also reported that Inhofe has repeatedly shown “reckless disregard for human life.” This would be non-Jewish American life. Now, my friend, imagine if he had a falling out with the Jewish/Israeli lobby, and they splashed these stories all over the state of Oklahoma.

Another Senator would be Ted Cruz of Texas. This is the kind that the Jewish lobby would blackmail not because of something they did or failed to do but because of something that a parent may have done which, if made public and repeated endlessly, could damage someone very badly. This is so because the unfortunate reality is that guilt by association is something you can fight off to the satisfaction of the public but cannot wipe clean from its collective memory. A residual will always remain that will hurt in the long run.

This is what Ted Cruz is in fear of. It is that his father was a Cuban guerrilla who fought alongside Fidel Castro and brought about the Communist regime in that Island. To keep the Jewish lobby from spilling this truth to the public, Ted Cruz is forced to continually pretend he has a visceral hatred of the Palestinians who used to be called guerrillas like his father, but are now called terrorists because playing with words is what the Israeli/Jewish lobby does to inject moral syphilis into every discussion where it is allowed to participate.

And then there is John McCain on whose psychology the lobby has done a devilish job. It has managed to awaken the childhood jealousies which human beings normally suppress when they leave their teenage years and grow to become adults. Whereas he and Chuck Hagel used to see themselves as brothers and veterans of the same war, the rabbis of the lobby who used to bray “you can't compaaare, you can't compaaare” must have whispered in the ear of McCain that he can't compaaare himself to Hagel, a soldier who actually fought the war and did not sit in a prison as did McCain, perhaps to think of all the ways by which he can please the jailers that kept him alive.

And this is where McCain went into a psychological mode akin to what was detected in a number of Asian soldiers. These people lived in caves for decades and refused to believe that the war was over even though everything around them pointed to that reality. In a similar fashion and despite the fact that he was living in an urban jungle not a cave, McCain was made to develop the fantasy that the war was still ongoing, that he was not a prisoner and like Chuck Hagel, was fully participating in the fight. He was not fighting against the Vietcong guerillas this time but against the Muslim guerillas of Palestine and elsewhere.

But when Hagel made it clear that the war was over, McCain started to believe that Hagel was trying to prevent him from acquiring the same honor and satisfaction he has had for participating in the combat rather than sit still in a jail trying to please the jail guard. And this was enough to send McCain into the uncontrollable rage that has become the hallmark of his behavior.

Come to think of it, this is truly a tragedy because John McCain should be thought of as a hero, not the petty little thing he appears to be at this time. And you know what, my friend? This is one of those tragedies that Chuck Hagel wants to keep way from future American boys and girls who may be called upon to defend their country. McCain should not be angry at Hagel, he should thank him for what he is trying to do.

Another Senator is Lindsey Graham who is a puzzle. Perhaps we can get an insight as to what motivates him if we looked at an example that is not closely related to the subject. It is the one about the senator who, for a mysterious reason, used to profess his undying love for Israel. This was such a bizarre development, no one could figure out how or why it happened. And then, it became clear that the senator had developed a fetish.

This is what happens when something is associated with sexual pleasure. You see the thing, you get excited and you believe it is love. In the case of the aging Senator, underage girls were made available for his sexual gratification by a member of the Jewish lobby. And this is how Israel became a fetish representing sexual pleasures to a dirty old man. It is that every time he thought of Israel, he went into an orgasmic high and believed it was love.

Something like this must have happened to Lindsey Graham but we won't know how or why it developed till he does what he promised he will do someday which is to jump off a bridge. The world is waiting.

To Detect The Superficial Smart Aleck Types

It happens at the start of every school year that a teacher would receive a student who puzzles him. At times the student would show a high degree of intelligence; at other times he would show the opposite. The way to assess the intelligence of such a student is to probe his depth of understanding in the subject where he seems to display a high degree of intelligence.

It is important to do this because it often happens that a student would come from an environment where he was immersed in a subject he learned something about, but learned it at the superficial level only. Thus, a probing of the depth to which the student understands the subject will help the teacher determine the student's level of intelligence.

That same technique can be used to assess the level of intelligence shown by the editorial writers of a publication – people that may puzzle you at times by their erratic performances. It is not that their intelligence or lack of it should be of interest to you; it is that you need to know how much credibility you should assign to the points they make in the areas where your knowledge is not complete.

We have an example against which we can apply that technique and see what comes of it. The piece is a Wall Street Journal editorial, published on January 31, 2013 under the title: “Hagel and the Shrinking Gulliver”. The editors who wrote it begin with this confident assertion: “The Senate needs to pin down the Defense nominee on big issues.” And they give their reasons as to why it should be so. They say that a few things happened which tend to negate President Obama's declaration to the effect that “a decade of war is now ending.”

And they itemize those things: Israel bombed a neighbor yet again. An American Commander in Afghanistan has once again made a prediction that was not too rosy. The French conducted a successful military operation in Mali. Egypt's military chief has hinted for the umpteenth time that if the street demonstrations do not end, he may order the troops to intervene. The Chinese navy conducted another legitimate exercise along its coastline. And the Pentagon announced plans concerning cyber defenses and air bases in North Africa.

Based on that litany, the editors of the Journal draw the conclusion that “war is not ending” which, in their view, negates the President's declaration. And so, they go a step further and question the qualifications of Mr. Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. To do that, they bring up the subject of the Pentagon budget. Since your knowledge in this field is limited, you want to know if you should believe what they say. How do you do that?

You do it by returning to the litany they say proves the war is not ending. Knowing what wars the President was talking about, you ask: What war are the editors of the Journal talking about? Do they consider the litany they gave as proof that some kind of a war is still on? You go through the whole article in search of an answer to that question. And this is what you encounter at the very end: “The US [is] the world's superpower. This has … kept Europe peaceful, Asia mostly stable, the seas secure … and the US safe for nearly 70 years.

And so you ask: But what about the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban revolution, the Bay of pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile crisis, the Cambodian Genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Balkan genocide, the Spanish Revolution, the fall of Communism, the Eastern European revolutions, the various South American revolutions, the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe transformation, the South African transformation, the various African tribal wars, The Sri Lanka civil war, The East Timor uprising and the hundred other wars that erupted in the past 70 years? Don't they count for something?

If the world was manageable while those wars were happening, why the panic now with a litany that only looks like this: Israel bombed a neighbor yet again. An American Commander in Afghanistan has once again made a prediction that was not too rosy. The French conducted a successful military operation in Mali. Egypt's military chief has hinted for the umpteenth time that if the street demonstrations do not end, he may order the troops to intervene. The Chinese navy conducted another legitimate exercise along its coastline. And the Pentagon announced plans concerning cyber defenses and air bases in North Africa.

You see a puzzle here that leads you to conclude the editors of the Wall Street Journal do not know in depth what they talk about. It is that they were immersed in the subject for a while, and they have learned to rattle off a few smart sounding utterances but these are superficial utterances of the Smart Aleck kind.

The Human Drama And The Tragedy To Come

Boy have I got an idea for a movie script! It is the story of a town that gets invaded by a bunch of outlaws. The cavalry comes to the rescue but stops at the gates of the town instead of going in and confront the evildoers. No one knows why the chief of the cavalry has so decided at a time when the outlaws are looting the place, raping everyone and murdering those who stand in their way.

No one inside the town or outside of it is buying the argument put forth by the cavalry to the effect that it is better to negotiate with the outlaws than to confront them. On the contrary, many believe in the rumor which says that the chief is in cahoots with the outlaws, but they cannot explain why this is so or how the relationship works. All they know is that the chief has allowed food and water to be brought to the town – supposedly to keep the population in good condition. But the move also serves to keep the outlaws in good condition, and some people are uneasy about that.

Well, my friend, you must be thinking this is a metaphor I created to analogize a real situation, and you would be correct. The town of my story represents Palestine, the outlaws represent those who call themselves Israelis or Jews or Zionists, and the cavalry represents the bipartisan politico-journalistic establishment of America.

Here is a revelation: The muse that got me to think up that story came to me in two steps.

The first step was the time that I was reading about Israel boycotting the Human Rights Council of the United Nations whose job is to conduct a “Universal Periodic Review” of the human rights condition in all countries. The Council wanted to review the Israeli policy of looting Palestinian lands on which it built Jewish settlements. The policy resulted in the violation of Palestinian human rights, and the Council wanted to ask a few questions but the Israelis did not show up for the meeting this time even though they did on all previous occasions.

The second step of the muse's work happened when I was reading Reuel Marc Gerecht's article in the January 30, 2013 edition of the Wall Street Journal. It came under the title: “Israel's New Islamist Neighborhood” and the subtitle: “If Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives.” It is a rant that is so rambling and so meandering, it shows that the author is not trying to impress the people of the neighborhood he is talking about but trying to impress the bipartisan politico-journalistic establishment of America that nurtures the ongoing horrendous situation in Palestine and maintains it at a great cost to the country's credibility.

Gerecht begins the article this way: “Israel last week held … elections, and many … are interpreting the results as a triumph for moderates that means new hope for the … peace process.” And he ends it this way: “It is conceivable that Israelis, Arabs and Iranians will finally find a modus vivendi based on something more profound than land-for-peace.” In other words, he is saying forget about the peace process, forget about the outlaws returning the loot they hauled, and forget about them ending the pillage and the rape. The outlaws need not change, says Gerecht, what needs to happen is for the town to adapt to them and learn to accommodate their whims now and in the future.

If we take the performance of these types in America as a guide, we conclude that they will not stop escalating their demands even after they turn the place into a giant whorehouse full of male and female bimbos, all biting each other in the back, and vying to become the preferred male or female hooker of the Jewish master. This is the reality of the bipartisan politico-journalistic establishment of America today, and the Jews are viewing it as a model to duplicate everywhere else in the world.

But no, the history of the Middle East is not unfolding along a similar line. It is unfolding as it must, and will continue to do so whether Israel is there or it is not. The history of the Middle East is the telling of the human condition with all its sorrows and all its triumphs. Invaders have come and gone throughout history in that part of the world more than they did anywhere else. But guess what, my friend; the Middle East has remained true to itself throughout; always triumphant and always human.

What is wrong with the current invaders is that they are the most destructive recidivist outlaws in history. They never cease to see themselves as being at the center of history, and they perennially come to think that the world revolves around them. They keep thinking that way till they discover otherwise; till they discover that the moment the world notices them is the moment it wants to do away with them, and usually does.

In fact, this scenario has repeated itself so many times, the world no longer considers it to be a noteworthy part of the human condition. It views it as something that happens because it must happen – nothing more serious than that; nothing to get excited about.

The outlaws can change all that by adapting to the world but they will not do so because they want the world to adapt to them. They have achieved this much in America, and they believe they can duplicate the feat everywhere else in the world – using American power if they must.

What they fail to see is that this is a recipe that will not change the world but will ruin America and take them down with it.

It happened this way many times before, and will happen this way again unless America wakes up and says enough is enough.

They Better Get The Right Expert Witnesses

It seems that John Bolton is mediocre in physics as much as he is in the law. He just shot himself in the foot on both counts. Let me admit at the outset that I am neither a lawyer nor a physicist – especially not in nuclear matters – where I am about to challenge him. I also know that he is a lawyer, one that may well be good in theory but is lousy when it comes to arguing a case for his client. This is because he has consistently made the mistake of saying anything to make a case for his client which is a strategy that has always backfired. This is why he joins the likes of Alan Dershowitz at consistently failing to argue a convincing case for Israel.

Bolton displays his deficiency in both those fields in an article he wrote under the title: “What to Ask Chuck Hagel About Iran's Nuclear Threat” and the subtitle: “Senators should probe if he endorses the dangerous step of letting Iran enrich uranium to reactor-grade levels.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on January 29, 2013.

So let me begin with the lawyering part of my argument. Here is what he says in the article: “Materially breaching a treaty voids the entire agreement, including “rights” found elsewhere in the deal. Iran has readily exploited the West's bad lawyering.” If this is true and if everyone is equal under the law, then the resolution to recognize Israel as a state has been voided by Israel's breach of its obligations under international law. And the consequence is not only that Israel no longer has the “right” to defend itself; it has no right to exist at all. This, my friend, is the consequence of the sort of lawyering that Bolton and Dershowitz have been doing on behalf of Israel.

Now to the physics part of my argument. I never studied or worked in the business of enriching uranium. But what is involved here are science and technology; two things I spent a lifetime doing – along with a few other things. What is usually done in research, often successfully, is that a researcher would see the analogy between a newly observed phenomenon and one that is understood. For example, the theory of light as being an electromagnetic wave was understood and formulated by analogy with the dropping of a stone in a pool of calm water.

Likewise, my argument about what it would take to enrich uranium to different levels rests on my understanding of two phenomena I know well because I studied them, worked in them and taught them. The first phenomenon is electromagnetism; more specifically self-inductance. What applies here is something called Lenz's Law. It says this: “The direction of the induced current is such that its own magnetic field opposes the action that produced the induced current.” If you want to know more about this, you will find a book authored by yours truly under the title: “Fundamentals Of Circuit Analysis” which, I was surprised to know, is still being circulated on the internet.

When the students asked me what that Law meant, I explained it this way: When you pump air in your tire, a lot of it goes into the tire in a short period of time at the start. But the more air you have in the tire, the more it pushes back against new air going in. That is, it becomes more difficult to put a little bit of air in the tire towards the end than it takes to put a lot of it at the start. The same applies when a current tries to produce a magnetic field because the field will push back against the current that produced it in the first place.

The second phenomenon that comes to mind is something I worked on one Summer while attending college. It was a company that produced components for other companies. One of those components had to be vacuumed to better than 98% before sealing it. To do this, the company had a vacuum machine with a gauge on it that indicated how much air was left in the chamber where the component was held. Upon starting the machine, you could see that a large amount of air was sucked out in the first few minutes. It then took several hours to bring the vacuum level to 98%, and another 24 hours to do a little better than that. I don't remember ever getting to the 99% level.

Thus, whether you pump air in a tire or you pump air out of a component, you have an easy time at the start of the process, and a more difficult one towards the end of it even if what you reap in terms of result is mathematically inferior. Now, given that the “work” so liberally used by Bolton in the article but never defined by him, actually has a definition in physics which says it is equal to the force applied for the duration it is applied, he better explain if he means to say it will take the Iranians less force to attain the higher levels of purification, or if it will take them less time to get there.

Where I take issue with John Bolton is this passage: “recent efforts have added debilitating mistakes in basic physics.” He later says this: “Mr. Obama's negotiators are playing with numbers they don't really understand. Their crude physics is seriously flawed.” But then admits the following in the paragraph that comes after that: “Here's the basic fact that puzzles us laymen, but not nuclear physicists.” Note that he has physicists in the plural. Well, I only know of one that attempted to make such argument but was shut down in flames by a few others. Most other nuclear physicists did not bother getting involved in this kind of silly talk.

Yet, John Bolton rests his argument on this sort of flimsy approach to lawyering for the cause of Israel, and tells the senators who will be questioning Mr. Hagel to ask him what he thinks of Iran's nuclear program. Before the senators do that, however, they better get expert witnesses for both sides of the argument to give them a true picture of what is going on here.

The truth is that Bolton and Dershowitz are as useless when it comes to litigating this cause as a monkey would be when it comes to giving a lecture on the legal implications of Einstein's Theory of Relativity being used in the making of the GPS gizmos.