Mark Steyn…
…on the “dangerously delusional” and “self-indulgent irrelevance” of Obama’s nuclear summit.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…on the “dangerously delusional” and “self-indulgent irrelevance” of Obama’s nuclear summit.
Ah yes, but if we just provide the proper example- like a parent to unruly little children- these states will follow in lockstep. And, in any event, it is somehow our fault they are so angry- we just need to find out why. (Not so for the rogue citizens known as Tea Partiers).
But alas, these are tough issues- let’s displace the anxiety by focusing on a completely made-up existential threat like global warming instead, which conveniently provides for warm fuzzy feelings of self-importance plus the requisite moral preening. (See, e.g. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dr-helen-narcissism-power-fear-of-death-and-liberalism/)
/liberal reaction
anyone who has ever had siblings knows that the idea of “we will disarm to inspire people to disarm” is complete ridiculousness. What does Obama not have? yup, siblings….
Steyn is awesome. I want to be him.
I love his concluding paragraph:
Funny, N-N, I’d just seen Mark’s wonderful article at Saturday’s Realclearpolitics.com and sent it to a dozen friends…And, here you have it, Mz.Rascal. Steyn is The Best conservative editorialist now practicing that art. And, Rush has invited him to sit-in many times over the past year. He’s also great at radio.
“We’re on the brink of a world in which the wealthiest nations, from Canada to Norway to Japan, can barely project meaningful force to their own borders while the nickel ‘n’ dime basket-cases go nuclear.
How long do you think that arrangement will last?
Iran has already offered to share its nuclear technology with Sudan. ..But a nuclear Sudan would be a model of self-restraint?
For 30 years, Iran has acted with extraterritorial impunity and without even the minimal courtesies of international relations — seizing embassies, taking out mob contracts on British novelists, seeding terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, blowing up community centers in Latin America.
Washington’s pathetic fallback of “containment” is intended to prevent Tehran using a nuke, in the Middle East, Europe or anywhere else within range.
[But] There is no strategy for “containing” Iran’s leverage of its nuclear status to advance its interests more discreetly, and no strategy for “containing” the mullahs’ generosity to states and groups more inclined to use the technology.”
Nor was there any talk at the ‘summit’ of the greatly increased nuclear proliferation that Iran’s getting nukes is sure to provoke. Within 5-10 years, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Libya will have nukes.
There is a real possibility that within 5 yrs. an Iranian led ‘alliance’ stretching from Libya up to Turkey and across to Pakistan (70+% of the former Caliphate) will exist. If half of the countries in that alliance have nukes, they will effectively control the world’s oil prices. For just one potential scenario to consider, what happens if that ‘alliance’ then signs mutual defense treaties with the Chinese and Russians?
Steyn’s article was hair-raising. Criminy.
Perhaps tangentially related: Michael Yon has said that Afghanistan is above McChrystal’s head and he no longer trusts him. Bad news all around, it appears.
Splashman: It’s like strict gun control laws. In the end, only the bad guys will have guns.
McChrystal and Petraeus are both loyal soldiers. They will therefore do their best to successfully implement Presidential policy. Even bad Presidential policy.
I wonder how much of Yon’s distrust is misplaced assignment of responsibility for actions over which McChrystal has no control?
For instance, ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of Afghan’s died… the very day Obama announced a deadline for our pulling out. Yet McChrystal is prevented from pursuing Al Qaeda and the Taliban into their refuges in Pakistan. Flying drones into Pakistani villages and caves is never going to substitute for seizing and holding ground. The drones have utility but are essentially a facade for Obama to pretend he’s aggressively pursuing the WoT.
Any General charged with winning a war with essentially both hands tied behind his back is going to fail and judged to “be over his head”.
Neo: “It’s like strict gun control laws. In the end, only the bad guys will have guns.” I’ve always thought there’s a flip side to that. The flip side is that guys with guns will become, by definition, bad guys. That’s the part of it that really scares me.
I’m a huge Mark Steyn fan. He’s the best stand-in Rush has, but radio is not his métier. He’s far better at writing.
I don’t see how he does it. He produces consistently top-quality, insightful, and (dare one say) incisive prose at an incredible rate. He writes a weekly syndicated column (linked through his own website, usually to the OC Register), he writes maybe every other week or more at McLean’s in Canada, he writes the closing essay as the Happy Warrior for the bi-weekly National Review, he posts regular serious insights at the NRO Corner, Hugh Hewitt interviews him every Thursday on Hugh’s radio show, and he’s always new and refreshing.
It can’t be easy. He’s dedicated in a way few others are. I’m constantly thankful for him and his work.
Steyn’s book “America Alone” was quite good.
However, my feeling is that there is a distinct possibility that eventually a Euro-Muslim-Russian alliance will sneak nukes into this country thru our open borders at some point and cut us down.
I don’t think, short of Divine intervention, we will be allowed to “stand alone” for very long.
Goeffrey, you say, “Any General charged with winning a war with essentially both hands tied behind his back is going to fail and judged to “be over his head”.
I thought exactly that today when I saw Michael Yon’s FB post.
I don’t know just what to make of what Michael Yon said. I mean, McCrystal does, after all, work for Obama. There must come a point where the Boss you thought you were is no longer the real Boss.
But how do we know when we’ve reached such a point? And what do we do then?
I do not know the answers to these questions.
jon baker, I fear you are correct.
My daughter lives in DC, a student at Georgetown Law. So what you say is not the least of the reasons for my fear.
I have the occasional nightmare of knowing she is in that terrible place, and I am trying to reach her, I may even be walking up I-81 and so forth, trying to get to her, and she is trying to walk to me . . . .
They will run out of virgins in paradise if one of Obama’s co religionists ( sorry just couldn’t help the dig) nukes this country as long as Obama himself isn’t at the helm.
It might unleash a global firestorm hard to imagine. I could see a plausible argument made that it might curb a desire to join the global nuclear community when a stark example of the downside of responsibility exists to contrast against the upside of big boy power. The aftermath of retaliation and preemptive measures against unknown but suspected enemies would be a sobering sight.
Obama might very well surrender without firing a shot if he had a story in place. But other individuals might take another approach and let God sort them out. The loss of life would be horrific, the suffering perhaps unparalled. A hot radioactive wind blows nought but ill cross sheets of glass fused from desert sands.
Amused.
See Wretchard’s “Three conjectures”.
Thank you Richard,
Google was my friend. A grim scenario. Ironic the idea that islam’s salvation rests upon their destruction sparing them from utter obliteration. My those people are troublesome. How did Johnny Cash put it? A burning ring of fire.
So another grand week’s work for a president pressing full steam ahead into the post-American global order. The good news is that at least you don’t have to worry about a nuclear blitzkrieg from Winnipeg. Sleep easy.
I disagree with Styne’s mocking dismissiveness of Obie’s summit in that conclusion. Winnipeg has a legitimate grievance against the US, what with losing the Jets to Phoenix. So taking Winnipeg out of the nuclear equation is a bold strategic move by our 3D chess-playing Precedent.
OOPS! Steyn.
Preview would be my friend. Maybe. Most likely not, though.
From time to time, one thinks someone positing a course of action “can’t be that dumb”. Little kids, maybe. The grossly ignorant, maybe.
But after giving the person credit for normal intelligence, normal education, the opportunity to learn from the real world, one wonders if he really is that dumb.
The alternative is that he knows better but actually desires the inevitable catastrophe.
which conveniently provides for warm fuzzy feelings of self-importance plus the requisite moral preening
Not to mention the long-sought excuse for the government to seize control of the economy, and for Algore & Co. to turn a pretty penny into the bargain.
“The alternative is that he knows better but actually desires the inevitable catastrophe.”
It’s the ‘fool versus knave’ quandary of Obama’s motivation. As you point out, he has to know how destructive these policies are and in prior comments, perhaps in unguarded moments, he’s indicated a full understanding of the consequences of these policies.
That argues against stupidity or ignorance as his motivation.
Which leaves the alternative. Some think he means to use a catastrophe such as economic collapse or a nuclear terrorist attack to seize power. But the military would never support such an action.
I think it more likely that he would use such a catastrophe to implement truly radical policies such as full nationalization of all major businesses, the seizure of all private assets above a certain amount, etc. etc.
If, in implementing such policies he makes use of the martial law that would necessarily exist in such a crises, to shut down verbal dissent, suspends habeas corpus and even starts jailing political protesters, then either civil war will erupt or a military coup will happen.
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sherlock Holmes
I would watch for increasing federal control of farms under the guise of “Food safety”.
Amused.
You will have noted Wretchard makes the case that it’s inevitable.
“Amused.
You will have noted Wretchard makes the case that it’s inevitable.”
I am not ‘amused’ 😉 but I have long been familiar with Wretchard’s The Three Conjectures
Despite Wretchard’s conclusion, I’m not convinced that it is inevitable but as long as there are those who embrace evil and, there are “good men who do nothing” it is a very real possibility and perhaps, highly probable.
Here is a quote from Wretchard’s conjectures:
The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the ‘rational’ American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset.
As Amused has pointed out, I don’t think Obama can be counted on to retaliate. The crazies have probably figured that out by now.
In the late 1920s, the major world powers signed the Kellogg-Briand disarmament pact, whereby countries scuttled their battleships and limited their air forces by common consent. Peace in our time! Of course, Russia, Germany and Japan cheated and, ten years later, Hitler marched into Austria and Czechoslovakia.
As someone on this blog once noted, those who learn from the lessons of history get to watch others make the same mistakes all over again.
This time around, our oceans will not keep us safe.
“The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed.”
There is a way to stop Islamic terrorists “once the nuclear threshold is crossed”…
Hold Islam responsible by making it accountable for the actions of Islamic radical terrorists.
The dirty secret that Islamic moderates conceal is why they don’t speak out against Islamic radicalism. Moderates don’t speak out because to do so requires the theological rejection of Islam’s primary tenet. Were moderate Muslims to do that, they’d destroy Islam’s primary claim to validity.
The primary tenet to which I refer is Mohammad’s claim that he didn’t write the Koran. God did… Mohammad claims that he merely took dictation… as the Archangel Gabriel perfectly recited God’s message to him. The entire ‘religion’s’ claim to validity rests upon that assertion.
The Koran and Hadith’s (Mohammad’s direct words) contain numerous calls to violence. That is a fact easily verified which no moderate can deny.
Moderates, in defense, cite Mohammad’s earlier, more peaceful ‘Median period’ statements as evidence of the loving, peaceful side of Islam. The problem with this, which moderates know full well is that by long settled precedent, Islamic scholars have reconciled any such contradiction by proclaiming that the later statement always takes precedence over the earlier statement.
Thus, to speak out is to theologically oppose the very basis of their religion because if Mohammad mis-transcribed those violent statements or imagined them or lied about that, then what else did he get wrong?
And if he got it right, then God proclaims violence and directly contradicts himself in his prior message to mankind through Jesus, a ‘prophet’ that Islam accepts.
Thus, the radicals are on far firmer theological ground than the moderates, who of course, realize this and thus remain silent.
‘Moderate’ Islam is condoning the violence because they have no theological basis for doing otherwise.
But, when we condone violence, we become culpable in the commission of that violence.
When, perhaps after a nuclear terrorist attack upon a US city but not before, it becomes politically acceptable to talk about this reality, we can then face up to the truth of the matter and identify the real enemy. Radical Islam and, the rest of Islam, the ‘moderates’ who cooperate and facilitate Radical Islam’s aggression.
After a nuclear attack, our existential survival will no linger be up for debate and then we can hold Islam responsible. At that time, a new policy can be implemented; the next terrorist attack will result in the complete destruction of the major cities of every Muslim nuclear nation on earth and the destruction of every major Islamic holy site.
If the Islamic terrorists wish for Islam to survive, they must permanently put down the nuclear sword.
And, if they won’t do that, their ‘moderate’ brothers had damn well better rip the ‘sword’ from their hands because otherwise they’re going down too.
Jacob ‘Big Jake’ McCandles: “And now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it won’t matter – I’m gonna blow your head off. No matter what else happens, no matter who gets killed, I’m gonna blow your head off.” John Wayne to Richard Boone in 1971’s “Big Jake”
Obama is no John Wayne. That is the problem. Anything that happens to us is our fault in his world.
The way to wake up moderate and even radical Islam is to stop being so damn predictably afraid of what THEY might do. We went 200 years with these people in check because our foreign policy wasn’t a feminine based eternal diplomacy built on feelings of fear.
Islam smells this fear like blood in the water. And no logical person can blame them. They are behaving true to human nature. We’re the ones off on some post modern tangent that seemingly wants to deny the aggression against us is really aggression requiring attention.
SteveH: Exactly. When Western Civilization was self-confident and unashamed to assert our superiority and exercise our power, the Muslim nations were no threat to us at all.
It is Leftism that has caused our present state of doubt, guilt, and self-loathing. That is why I keep saying that the Left, not Islam, is presently the greatest enemy of Western Civilization. The Left must be decisively defeated before we can hope to seriously address the threat of Islam.
Wretchard asserts that, even if somebody like zero is in charge here, failure to respond will result in a transfer of power to someone who will respond.
In addition, he mentions other nuclear powers–equally on Islam’s Satan list–with fewer scruples.
Russia, China, France. They may not respond to an attack on us, but they will to an attack on themselves. Which is also inevitable.
> The Obama Happy Fairyland Security Summit was posited on the principle that there’s no difference between a Swiss nuke and a Syrian nuke.
Indeed. As I’ve noted before — this is Wronger Than Wrong — Asimov’s Axiom. Asimov discussed the issue in his book of essays, The Relativity of Wrong.
A statement that equates two errors is wronger than wrong when one of the errors is clearly wronger than the other.
As Asimov put it:
“When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
As Stein points out, these idiots are making the ridiculous equation that Swiss Nuke==Sudanese Nuke, which is so blatantly specious a notion that it is hard to grasp how any vaguely rational person could make it. The mental incompetence to make such a equality should not only identify the maker as an idiot not worth listening to, it should put them on the short list to be seriously considered as a target to be fool-killed.
Doh! “Steyn”
Igot
I beg to differ slightly.
These idiots do not actually believe that Swissnuke=Sudanesenuke.
It suits them–requiring less courage–to act as if the two are equivalent.
And, to extend your example, they presume the Sudanese are as nice, civilized, and non-threatening as the Swiss.
By this comparison, the Sudanese got nicer, the Swiss didn’t get scarier.
“”The Left must be decisively defeated before we can hope to seriously address the threat of Islam.””
Rickl
Amen.
What we have in the Left are people who have invested a lifetime in attempting to deny human nature, as if that in itself will change human nature. They may as well be attempting to make the lion lie down with the hyena through intense negotiations and an airing of feelings.
Obama skips Polish funeral, heads to golf course
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/18/obama-skips-polish-funeral-heads-to-golf-course/
I am starting to believe that they believe that the heck that they are calling down is a ‘manageable human produced situation’, that the agreements they have with people dirtier than they are, will hold.
Ever get the idea that in not too long a time, the beast they are creating is going to get away from them?
Right on SteveH and Rickl. I just heard on Fox how the Obama administration is so afraid of the unintended consequences of using violence against Iran to take out there nuclear program that they consider a nuclear the lesser of the two evils. No consideration of the fact that they are certainly going to use these weapons, and at the least it will destroy a fellow democracy and create an Iran hegemony in the Middle East. Their answer, pressure Israel for some reason that is supposed to control the situation.
We need some sort of abbreviation for “we are so totally screwed” like “wasts”, my mind is not capable of any other insightful statement concerning the above information.
“we are so totally screwed”
That certainly can sum it all up. But I think there will be game changing moments we can’t foresee. The unsustainable lie and destructiveness of progressivism will smack Americans upside the head at some point. I just hope it happens before we are faced with a world war with both hands tied behind our backs.
> I don’t see how he does it. He produces consistently top-quality, insightful, and (dare one say) incisive prose at an incredible rate.
Bill Whittle has him beat on everything but volume. He’s done a lot of stuff for PJ Media but almost no essays since that time, but even the ones he’s done are even better than Steyn’s, though generally much longer — Steyn does “editorials” — Whittle does “essays”.
Here are some pointers to a few of them:
SEEING THE UNSEEN Part 1
THE WEB OF TRUST
SANCTUARY (part 1)
TRIBES
TRINITY (part 1)
DETERRENCE (part 1)
If they interest you, click the “main” link at the top and off to the side you will find a section of like-minded titles.
Those links above are all to archived versions of his old website. He hasn’t translated enough of them to links on the current site. His stuff can also be gotten through his book, available AFAIK, still, on Amazon.