thedrifter
04-30-06, 09:17 AM
Phony moral equivalence on Israel and the Bomb
April 29th, 2006
James Lewis
In a WaPo opinion piece this Sunday, Avner Cohen and William Burr present a critique of US policy on Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity. As usual in the liberal media, they take their facts completely out of context: This is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
They fail to mention, for example, such little facts as the repeated genocidal attacks on Israel by Egypt, Syria and even Jordan over a forty year period. They fail to mention that Israel came close to being overrun by a massive tank assault in 1973, which would have meant the second genocide of the Jewish people in three decades. And they do not mention that Israel is in greater danger today than it has been since the Holocaust, as its Defense Minister has just said.
This is the standard leftist line. By suppressing history, it conjures up a moral equivalence between attackers and defenders, between free societies and what Sharansky has aptly dubbed Fear Societies. Fear Societies do not represent their people, but brutalize them. They lack popular legitimacy and therefore moral authority. Today’s Iran is a Fear Society that has killed tens of thousands of its own people to give the Mullahs dictatorial control. Israel is both a free society and one that has its back against the wall, time after time.
The timing of the WaPo opinion piece is crucial, because of the looming Iranian threat. Ahmadinejad has been telling us every single day why Israel should be destroyed. Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert just called Ahmadinejad a “psychopath who speaks like Hitler.”
A psychopath is someone who can kill with no qualm of conscience, and will do it again and again. This guy is a killer. The US State Department has just named Iran as “the most active state sponsor of terrorism.” For twenty years Ahmadinejad has been directly involved in directing terrorist killings abroad. A few weeks ago he met in Damascus with Imad Mughniyeh, often considered the most dangerous terrorist in the world.
Israel does not threaten Iran’s right to exist. Quite the contrary. Israel and Iran had peaceful relations until the Khomeini coup in 1979, which was quietly abetted by Jimmy Carter. So the WaPo piece gives us a warped history to create an impression of moral equivalence: Why shouldn’t Ahmadinejad have his own nukes? After all, Golda Meir got hers thirty years ago!
Well, picture this: We live in a dangerous world in which two people each have a gun they could aim at us. Both guns are lethal. But one gun is held by a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been threatening to kill us with it, along with millions of civilians in Israel. His strategic aim is to control the Persian Gulf and the oil that keeps the industrialized world alive. When he gets nukes, he will become the hegemon of Middle Eastern oil.
The second person is Golda Meir. She has a gun, too, but she has different values and aims. She has no interest in killing Ahmadinejad. She harbors no design on neighboring countries. Her gun is for self-defense only. Nobody doubts that Israel would use its nuclear weapons only as a last resort, and only in self-defense.
Come to think of it, that’s also US policy. We are not threatening anyone with nuclear destruction. Never have. Never will. American nukes are for deterrence only. So are British and French nukes, which is why we do not fear them.
As more nations get their hands on the Bomb, it is high time for the United States to draw a red line between rogue nations run by crazies, and responsible countries that would only use nuclear weapons as a last resort, for self-defense.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Ellie
April 29th, 2006
James Lewis
In a WaPo opinion piece this Sunday, Avner Cohen and William Burr present a critique of US policy on Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity. As usual in the liberal media, they take their facts completely out of context: This is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
They fail to mention, for example, such little facts as the repeated genocidal attacks on Israel by Egypt, Syria and even Jordan over a forty year period. They fail to mention that Israel came close to being overrun by a massive tank assault in 1973, which would have meant the second genocide of the Jewish people in three decades. And they do not mention that Israel is in greater danger today than it has been since the Holocaust, as its Defense Minister has just said.
This is the standard leftist line. By suppressing history, it conjures up a moral equivalence between attackers and defenders, between free societies and what Sharansky has aptly dubbed Fear Societies. Fear Societies do not represent their people, but brutalize them. They lack popular legitimacy and therefore moral authority. Today’s Iran is a Fear Society that has killed tens of thousands of its own people to give the Mullahs dictatorial control. Israel is both a free society and one that has its back against the wall, time after time.
The timing of the WaPo opinion piece is crucial, because of the looming Iranian threat. Ahmadinejad has been telling us every single day why Israel should be destroyed. Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert just called Ahmadinejad a “psychopath who speaks like Hitler.”
A psychopath is someone who can kill with no qualm of conscience, and will do it again and again. This guy is a killer. The US State Department has just named Iran as “the most active state sponsor of terrorism.” For twenty years Ahmadinejad has been directly involved in directing terrorist killings abroad. A few weeks ago he met in Damascus with Imad Mughniyeh, often considered the most dangerous terrorist in the world.
Israel does not threaten Iran’s right to exist. Quite the contrary. Israel and Iran had peaceful relations until the Khomeini coup in 1979, which was quietly abetted by Jimmy Carter. So the WaPo piece gives us a warped history to create an impression of moral equivalence: Why shouldn’t Ahmadinejad have his own nukes? After all, Golda Meir got hers thirty years ago!
Well, picture this: We live in a dangerous world in which two people each have a gun they could aim at us. Both guns are lethal. But one gun is held by a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been threatening to kill us with it, along with millions of civilians in Israel. His strategic aim is to control the Persian Gulf and the oil that keeps the industrialized world alive. When he gets nukes, he will become the hegemon of Middle Eastern oil.
The second person is Golda Meir. She has a gun, too, but she has different values and aims. She has no interest in killing Ahmadinejad. She harbors no design on neighboring countries. Her gun is for self-defense only. Nobody doubts that Israel would use its nuclear weapons only as a last resort, and only in self-defense.
Come to think of it, that’s also US policy. We are not threatening anyone with nuclear destruction. Never have. Never will. American nukes are for deterrence only. So are British and French nukes, which is why we do not fear them.
As more nations get their hands on the Bomb, it is high time for the United States to draw a red line between rogue nations run by crazies, and responsible countries that would only use nuclear weapons as a last resort, for self-defense.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Ellie