Where's the toughness?

Toughness... as in standing up for yourself against overwhelming odds... as in standing your ground and fighting rather than running and hiding. I'd like to think toughness is a quintessential quality of Americans. Throughout history he have had a pretty damn good track record on this front. From taming the American frontier and wild west to kicking ass in two world wars we seem to be pretty good at standing up for ourselves and not rolling over. Problem is, we're losing our edge. Between the feminization of American men to an over-all touchy feely political correctness we are slowly becoming a nation of pussies. Thank god John Kerry is not president. There still is hope.



I bring this all up because, once again, we as Americans have to dig down and be tough in the face of the burgeoning mega-threat known as Iran. Iran is a country whose stated policy is the destruction of Israel. Therfore if Iran is allowed to create or posess nuclear weapons we can assume that a nuclear war will start. Let's imagine, for a moment how such a war would go. Here's the hypothetical scenerio: Iran has just nuked part of Israel. (They don't yet have the delivery systems to hit America in this hypothetical) So let's say 30 percent of Israel has just been annihilated and the rest is facing deadly fallout. Here's where the toughness comes in. I would love to probe the average bush-bashing anti-war leftie as to how America should proceed. I believe that if such a scenerio occured tomorrow, with our ally Israel essentially being blown off the map, President Bush would take decisive nuclear action against Iran. This would be the only appropriate response. This would be an "American" response. Because America is tough... or are we not. I would ask the anti-war left what they believe would be an appropriate course of action in such a scenerio. Since most liberals are hard to pin down on any given actual stance on an issue (other than abortion of course) asking this hypothetical question would be a difficult proposition. If you were to ask this question you would get a lot of hemming and hawwing and if you were lucky you would get a genuine response. The true inclination of a leftie in such a scenenio as presented above would be to "go to the United nations" or "seek a diplomatic solution".

It would be genuinely scary to me if a nuclear war started and someone like John Kerry were in charge. (and I'm not specifically picking on Kerry, its just that he was the latest offering to be commander-in-chief by the left) If Iran were to start a war by nuking Israel the time for diplomacy is officially over. Decisive brutal action has to be taken in a timely (read immediate) manner. The vascilating and consulting that a John Kerry would go through before doing anything meaningful would waste critical time and any kind of initiative would be squandered. I shudder to think what would happen next.

This is the world we live in. It requires toughness. To quote "Full Metal Jacket": It's a hard-ball world. At the moment, Europe is attempting to use diplomatic solutions to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities. They will fail. Iran has no intention of pursuing diplomacy. They have no intention of using nuclear capabilities in a peaceful manner. In one regard, the Europeans have succeeded. They have succeeded in delaying and allowing Iran even more time to develop nuclear capabilities. This situation is a disaster. I just pray that if war starts a conservative is in charge of our country so that our response may be characterized as "expedient decisive action" rather than "diplomacy and negotiations".

CNN article

5 days later the brilliant syndicated columnist Charles Krauthhamer gives his acerbic take on this catastrophe in the Washington post.
The Iran Charade Part 2