The Case For Bombing Iran

Here are excerpts from Norman Podhoretz's article in the June, 2007 Commentary.

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what September 11, 2001 did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the cold war was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II.

As the currently main center of Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11 . . . Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all. The Iranians . . . wish to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf . . . extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe . . . (through Islamo)Findlandization.

In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force-- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938. Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes.

Iran (could) retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel . . . There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world . . .

Nevertheless, there is a good response (to the scenarios) . . . The only thing worse than bombing Iran, McCain has declared, is allowing Iran to get the bomb.

Yet for all (the Europeans) retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a fingfer to rpevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around. Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willigness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraw in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both towards us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

My response to Podhoretz's "case" is in the following essays, written on September 23 and September 30, 2006:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index070.html

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index077.html