dinsdag 23 februari 2010

Iran 324


Informatie die de Nederlandse media verzwijgen:

Prepare for war with Iran -- in case Israel strikes

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, February 23, 2010; A19


Let's be serious for a moment: Barack Obama will not bomb Iran. This is not because he is a liberal, or because he is a peacenik, or because he doesn't have the guts to try and "save his presidency" in this time-honored manner, as Daniel Pipes has urged and Sarah Palin said she would like him to do.

The president will not bomb Iran's nuclear installations for precisely the same reasons that George W. Bush did not bomb Iran's nuclear installations: Because we don't know exactly where they all are, because we don't know whether such a raid could stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few months, and because Iran's threatened response -- against Israelis and U.S. troops, via Iranian allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon -- isn't one we want to cope with at this moment. Nor do we want the higher oil prices that would instantly follow. No American president doing a sober calculation would start a war of choice now, while U.S. troops are actively engaged on two other fronts, and no American president could expect public support for more than a nanosecond.

But even if Obama does not bomb Iran, that doesn't mean that no one else will. At the moment, when Washington is consumed by health care and the implications of Massachusetts, it may seem as if Obama's most important legacy, positive or negative, will be domestic. In the future, we might not consider any of this important at all. The defining moment of his presidency may well come at 2 a.m. some day when he picks up the phone and is told that the Israeli prime minister is on the line: Israel has just carried out a raid on Iranian nuclear sites. What then?

This is hardly an inevitable scenario: If the Israelis were as enthusiastic about bombing raids as some believe, they would have carried them out already. They had no qualms about sending eight jets to take out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, or about bombing a purported Syrian facility in 2007. Both are now considered model operations. They were brief and successful, they provoked no serious retaliation, and they even won de facto acceptance from the outside world as legitimate defensive measures.

The Iranian context is different, as Zeev Raz, the squadron leader of the 1981 raid, readily concedes. "There is no single target that you could bomb with eight aircraft," he told the Economist (in a strangely tragic article that says Raz "exudes gloom" while his children apply for foreign passports). The Israelis have the same doubts as everyone else about the efficacy of raids, which is why they have focused on covert sabotage and even off-the-record diplomacy, despite having no diplomatic relations with Iran, in the hopes of slowing down the nuclear development process. They have also quietly studied the ways in which Iran could be deterred, knowing that they will have the advantage in nuclear technology for the next couple of decades. Although they keep all options on the table, they have so far concluded that bombing raids aren't worth the consequences.

At some point, that calculation could change. Because Americans often assume that everyone else perceives the world the way we do, it is worth repeating the obvious here: Many Israelis regard the Iranian nuclear program as a matter of life and death. The prospect of a nuclear Iran isn't an irritant or a distant threat. It is understood directly in the context of the Iranian president's provocative attacks on Israel's right to exist and his public support for historians who deny the Holocaust. If you want to make Israelis paranoid, hint that they might be the target of an attempted mass murder. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does exactly that.

If that ever happened, then the 2 a.m. phone call would be followed by retaliation, some of which would be directed at us, our troops in Iraq, our ships at sea. I don't want this to happen -- but I do want us to be prepared if it does. Contrary to Palin, I do not think Obama would restore the fortunes of his presidency by bombing Iran, like a character out of that movie "Wag the Dog." But I do hope that this administration is ready, militarily and psychologically, not for a war of choice but for an unwanted war of necessity. This is real life, after all, not Hollywood.

applebaumletters@washpost.com

2 opmerkingen:

Sonja zei

Interessant, Frits Abrahams in de NRC:

Zullen de andere partijen met de PVV willen samenwerken? Clairy Polak wilde daar gisteren in het Buitenhof-interview met premier Balkenende niet naar vragen, "omdat u er toch wel niet op zult antwoorden", maar ik mag aannemen dat deze vraag vanaf vandaag in alle interviews met vertegenwoordigers van die partijen centraal staat. Natuurlijk zullen sommigen er niet rechtstreeks op willen antwoorden, maar daarom blijft het nog wel een zeer relevante vraag.

Cynisme en zelfcensuur.

Sonja zei

Voorzetje coalitie met de PVV?

CDA: Wilhelmus zingen bij inburgeren

DEN HAAG -  Wie het Wilhelmus niet kent, slaagt niet voor het inburgeringsexamen.

Deze aanscherping van de cursus inburgering moet nieuwkomers helpen zich nog beter een te voelen met de Nederlandse samenleving. Dat wil het CDA. Alle coupletten foutloos uit je hoofd leren, is overigens niet nodig, de christendemocraten pleiten voor vers 1, en eventueel vers 6.

"We moeten niet bang zijn voor symbolen", zegt CDA-Kamerlid Van Haersma Buma. "Dat helpt juist bij de vorming tot burgerschap." Volgens het CDA hoort het Wilhelmus ook bij de naturalisatieceremonies. Bovendien pleiten de christendemocraten voor een Nederlandse vlag, eventueel met een Europese, op elk overheidsgebouw.


Dat ik dit nog moet gaan meemaken! We moeten niet bang zijn voor symbolen? Wie weet, volgend jaar zingen voor de vlag (én de Europese!) op scholen. We moeten niet bang zijn voor fascisme.

CDA-kamerlid Sybrand van Haersma Buma is ook voor de invoering van de "starfdienstplicht". Hiermee moeten overlastgevende jongeren die zich niet aan de regels houden, harder kunnen worden aangepakt. Op dit moment worden strafbare feiten, zoals bijvoorbeeld het uitschelden van ouderen, vaak afgedaan met een werkstraf, zoals het opruimen van afval.

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...