Oh, Were These The Jobs Americans Don’t Want?

The Los Angeles Times takes a long, hard look today at Mara Salvatrucha, the international criminal conspiracy that uses illegal immigration into the US both as a fundraiser and as a staging ground for the most hard-core gangsterism currently seen on the streets. MS-13, as the Central American-based syndicate is better known, goes back to the last amnesty offered by the United States and now has its tentacles throughout North and Central America. The US efforts to interdict the gangsters have been laughable at best:

On a sweltering afternoon, an unmarked white jetliner taxies to a remote terminal at the international airport here and disgorges dozens of criminal deportees from the United States. Marshals release the handcuffed prisoners, who shuffle into a processing room.
Of the 70 passengers, at least four are members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a gang formed two decades ago near MacArthur Park west of the Los Angeles skyline. …
But a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States. Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States.
A gang that once numbered a few thousand and was involved in street violence and turf battles has morphed into an international network with as many as 50,000 members, the most hard-core engaging in extortion, immigrant smuggling and racketeering. In the last year, the federal government has brought racketeering cases against MS-13 members in Long Island, N.Y., and southern Maryland.

How did the United States allow such a large-scale criminal enterprise grow in its own yard? Lax immigration enforcement, politically-correct policing policies, and a wink-nudge attitude towards garnering cheap labor for business gave everyone an incentive to look the other way while the worst of the wave of immigrants transformed themselves from a violent street gang to a terrorist organization bent on personal enrichment rather than political activity. For an example of the cluelessness of American border policy, the Times provides this anecdote:

Cruz-Mendoza has been riding the merry-go-round for eight years.
He was a minor when he was deported in 1997 and again in 1998, federal immigration officials said.
In December 2003, he was convicted of attempted robbery, after he shoved a woman into a fence while trying to steal her purse at a South Los Angeles bus stop, court records show. As he demanded money, she said, he made threatening gestures and reached into his pocket, where police found a six-inch steak knife when he was arrested shortly thereafter.
In March 2004, he pleaded guilty to a second felony of drug possession, which was dismissed in a sentencing deal for the attempted robbery.
After serving little more than a year in jail, Cruz-Mendoza was deported for a third time in January, records and interviews show.
U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested him in Arizona a month later. At that point, he could have been charged with a felony for reentering the country after deportation, which could have landed him in federal prison for as long as 20 years.
Instead, federal court records show he struck another plea deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona, admitting to a “petty offense” of being in the country illegally. He was ordered to serve 90 days and pay a $10 fine, and was put on the July flight to San Salvador.

Small wonder that people continue to flood across the border in waves numbering millions every year. Why bother obeying the law when even the authorities don’t bother enforcing it? While a good portion of these people want nothing more than economic opportunity, their flight enables others — in some cases, their children — to join MS-13 or other criminal outfits to exploit the American people who shrug their shoulders at their invasion of the southern border.
Stupidity such as this has enabled MS-13 to grow from a street gang of a few hundred illegals to a syndicate of over 50,000 international hardcases who will commit any crime for its own purposes. Michelle Malkin has long written about the foolishness of American immigration policy in general and specifically about the MS-13 organization on many occasions.
We need to demand that Congress finally do something about the southern border and the flood of illegals that come across it if we purport to take security seriously, especially in this age of terror. We made an impact on the Supreme Court and on spending just by speaking out — and we need to do so on this issue as well.

Syrian Power Brokers Start To Disperse

As more pressure gets applied to the Bashar Assad regime to answer for the assassination of Rafik Hariri, it looks like the impulse to run has become irresistable for some members of the autocracy. The New York Times reports that Assad’s wealthy and powerful cousin, Rami Makhluf, has fled Syria for the UAE as the country becomes more dangerous for those who prop up the erstwhile opthalmologist on his creaky throne:

During a United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri that threatens the power of President Bashar al-Assad, a first cousin who is one of the most powerful businessmen in Syria has left the country.
While it remains unclear why the president’s cousin, Rami Makhluf, left – his allies say he is in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, working on the expansion of his business empire – many people with close connections to the ruling Baath Party say his departure underscores the investigation’s threat to the Assad family’s grip on power.
Already, the United Nations has implicated important Syrians in the killing of Mr. Hariri in February, and the Syrian government has since been searching for a formula to satisfy its international critics without undermining its authority at home.

The UN has identified members of Assad’s family as suspects in the assassination conspiracy, notably his brother Maher and brother-in-law Asef Shakwat, the commander of the military intelligence apparatus that struck fear into Lebanese for a generation. Makhluf, however, wasn’t one of the suspects. The Makhlufs come from Assad’s mother’s family and comprise some of the richest supporters of the regime. Their wealth helps prop Assad the Younger on his perch as the nominal head of the regime.
If the monied class has truly begun to flee Syria, as the Times suggests, it’s not because they conspired to assassinate Hariri and want to get out. Those who conspired against Hariri would find it much safer within Syria than outside of it. Until the regime collapses, they will never have to face a trial for his murder, unless Assad coughs them up as part of an arrangement to keep himself in power — and even then, those big enough to get Assad off the hook at first would inevitably wind up implicating him in the end.
The flight of Makhluf means something entirely different, if it truly is flight. Monied interests will go to the places of greatest security in times of trouble. For decades, the Makhlufs have seen the Assads as that kind of guarantee. If Rami senses that his cousin can no longer provide that kind of assurance, fleeing to the UAE on the notion that he needs to take care of his finances abroad signals that even the closest bonds of support for the Assaf regime have weakened, perhaps fatally for Bashar.
The Times reports also that Bashar may have ordered Rami to leave in order to clean up the culture of corruption and recapture the confidence of the Syrian people. That rumor may sound good in Western circles, but the Syrians don’t vote and don’t have any freedom to express themselves in Assad’s Ba’athist state. The Assads did not come to power or maintain it through populist means, nor are they beloved in any sense of the term. If the Syrians asserted themselves in a populist movement, it wouldn’t be to keep Bashar on the throne, and Bashar knows it.
The only analysis of Rami’s apparent flight is that the Assad regime has come to an end, for all practical purposes. If the Security Council puts a squeeze on Syria, it will utterly collapse. The Americans and the French should work quickly to ensure that the UN takes some sort of decisive action and that supporters of democratization stand ready to apply the coup de grace that will end the tyranny of the Assads for good — and replace it with a democratic republic that will further isolate Iran in Southwest Asia.

Charles To Follow Royal Tradition Of Appeasement

What is it about frustrated members of the British royal family who, when unable to garner the throne for themselves, decide to campaign on behalf of genocidal nutcases? After being forced to abdicate the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson, Edward Windsor flirted with the Nazis to such an extent that the British thought they might have to forcibly remove him from Spain. Churchill had to order him to the Bahamas to separate the Duke from German agents.
Now we have Prince Charles, the man who would be King if his mother would just let him, deciding that George Bush just doesn’t understand how wonderful Islam truly is — and wants to travel to the United States to deliver a lecture on the Religion of PeaceTM:

The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.
The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America’s “confrontational” approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam’s strengths.
The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001. The gathering took place just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. “I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational,” the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.

May I suggest that if the Prince wants to kiss the rear ends of imams that he continue to do so in his own country. We’re not beating Muslims in the streets here. We understand that moderate, law-abiding Muslims don’t represent any problem; we have many here who contribute to our society when they assimilate and accept religious tolerance. If Charles wants to debate traditions of religious freedom, perhaps he would like to bone up on a little bit of British history — including the debacle the British created in Northern Ireland, which continues to this day.
Our problem lies with Muslims who don’t accept Western values of religious tolerance — those Islamists who demand that infidels have no rights except for those of servants of Islamist masters, who consider the stoning of women to be justice for exercising some sexual and cultural freedom, who behead teenagers for going to Catholic school — that’s where the problem lies. Instead of coming to the one nation that has traditionally led the world in promoting the peaceful practice of all religions within a single culture, perhaps Charles should travel to places like Saudi Arabia and Iran to defend Christianity. Better yet, travel to any Arabic nation and defend Judaism. After all, Charles says he wants to be the Defender of All Faiths. Why not start in places where those who practice their faiths get murdered for it with their government’s blessings?
I’ll tell you why; because it’s easy to be the Defender of All Faiths in places where making that argument won’t result in danger for the defender. Charlie’s taking the cheap shot because he hasn’t the balls to go lecture the truly intolerant on their murderous policies that oppress competing faiths. He’s a dilettante that even his mother won’t trust with a meaningless crown for more than a few years at the end of his life, and this is an excellent example of why. (via The Anchoress, and several CQ readers)

What Does The Right Want?

The New York Times asks this question in its Sunday edition after the rejection of Harriet Miers as a Supreme Court nominee. The Bush administration has signaled that it will announce its replacement for the seat opened up by Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement, and the Times wonders what kind of nominee will satisfy the conservatives who objected so strenuously to Miers — and whether such a nominee can find confirmation in the Senate:

In his two choices for the Supreme Court so far, President Bush has tapped what some conservatives called “stealth” nominees: jurists without a clear record of legal opinions on abortion rights or other contentious social issues.
But with the announcement of a third nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor expected as early as Monday, prominent conservatives said they were confident that this time would be different. They argued that the reaction against the nomination of Harriet E. Miers had proven the perils of such an approach, even though some also acknowledged that the failure of the Miers nomination may have weakened the president if the next nominee sets off a battle.
“To the degree that Bush was enamored of a stealth strategy, I have got to believe he has learned there is a real downside,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the first conservative thinkers to call for withdrawal of the Miers nomination.
But if the next nominee provokes a fight with the left instead, Mr. Kristol added, “it is tougher having made a mistake with Miers.”

Elisabeth Bumiller makes the common mistake coming from most media outlets. Conservatives haven’t asked for a consistent record opposing abortion or demanding a reversal of Roe v Wade, although I suppose either would delight most of us. What we have first asked and lately demanded are candidates that have a public record of originalist scholarship or jurisprudence, justices who not only will vote conservatively but push the transformation of the Supreme Court from its current status of a superlegislature to that of an arbiter of the Constitutionality of actions taken by the Legislature, Executive, and lower courts — based on the actual text of the Constitution and nothing else.
We want candidates who understand that the Supreme Court, or any other court, did not spring into existence to tell legislatures that they have to legalize gay marriages. We hope to find nominees who have publicly demonstrated a commitment to separation of powers, either by way of scholarly writings, jurisprudence, or a long history of legal work. Furthermore, we want a Republican president and a Republican Senate to quit feeding into a perception that this represents some fringe thinking, instead of a return to the original use of the judiciary as intended by the framers of the Constitution. That means that we find stealth candidates utterly inappropriate, given that Republicans control the White House and the Senate and both were won on the basis of an election in which this issue received plenty of debate on both sides.
We won the election and increased the GOP majority in the Senate based in large part on that issue. That shows a mandate for change.
For those who argue that the Senate GOP does not have the will to confirm such candidates, that may unfortunately be true. It has nothing to do with the Democrats, however. The GOP has all the tools it needs to confirm anyone they want; if the Democrats want to abuse the filibuster yet again, this time on an eminently qualified and scholarly Supreme Court nominee, the GOP can eliminate the use of teh filibuster with little effort.
If the so-called Gang of Fourteen wants to stall that option, we need to remind them of their commitment to presidential prerogative on highly qualified candidates during Bill Clinton’s term — and Ruth Bader Ginsburg supplies us with the perfect example. Ginsburg had impeccable credentials as a scholar and an attorney; she had practiced law and written many treatises on her view of Constitutional law. Her views coincided nicely with the elected President of that time, Clinton, and he exercised his prerogative in nominating her. The GOP helped confirm her to the bench, despite her rather extreme liberal viewpoint, on the basis of her clearly sufficient scholarship and understanding of the law.
Of the present Gang of 14 Republicans, the vote went as follows:
Lincoln Chaffee: Yea
John McCain: Yea
John Warner: Yea
Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mike DeWine, and Lindsay Graham did not hold seats in the Senate at the time. Other so-called squishes in today’s upper chamber did, including Chuck Grassley and Arlen Specter. If these men could vote for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the basis of Clinton’s prerogative, then they had better find themselves capable of defending it for a J. Michael Luttig or Samuel Alito, or even Janice Rogers Brown.
(Before anyone starts arguing about Presidential prerogative and Harriet Miers, I’ll remind you that that was the only basis on which I supported her nomination until the speeches came out. After that, my first and primary objection to her focused on her lack of scholarship and apparent mediocrity in expressing herself, along with an almost-complete lack of any record of public thought on Constitutional law and philosophy. Even then, I had no problem with her getting her hearing and up-or-down vote, but opposed her confirmation and thought that a withdrawal made much better political sense.)
Given the names floating out from the White House this time around, I’m a lot more confident that the administration now understands what the Right wants. The Times just hasn’t been listening, a problem that we resolved with the Bush administration earlier.

India Rocked By Terrorist Explosions

Islamic terrorism appears to have visited India, a nation that has had traditional tensions with Muslims on and within its borders but has championed Palestinian cause, in the form of several bombings today. Reuters reports that more than 50 people have died in the attacks, and that the United States had issued a warning to its citizens in the country shortly beforehand about potential al-Qaeda attacks:

Three powerful bombs ripped through New Delhi markets packed with families and shoppers on Saturday ahead of the biggest Hindu and Muslim festivals of the year, killing over 50 people and wounding scores more. …
At least 51 people were killed in the blasts which occurred within minutes of each other, said an aide to Delhi state Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Fifty-four people were injured, the aide said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared it an act of terrorism, while adding it was too early to speculate who was responsible.

It may be early to assign blame, but an earlier warning from the American embassy seems too close to be coincidental. American and Indian authorities had chased a suspected AQ terrorist to India and had predicted attacks within days based on their intelligence. Since the Hindus have a religious holiday on Tuesday, it would appear that AQ wanted to make a big statement to the infidels.
Again, this shows that AQ and Islamism wants to control the entire subcontinent and recreate the medieval Caliphate — and through that, control the world via the oil supply in the region. They do not want to just be “left in peace” — they want the peace of Islam, meaning that they want to run the world as a theocracy in the mold of the Taliban.
These lunatics put themselves beyond understanding. The only understanding that will solve this problem will be the long-term strategy of denying them the desperate and the hopeless recruits that come from the oppressive tyrannies and kleptocracies in the region and spreading democracy. That’s why Brent Scowcroft and his decades-long pursuit of stability diplomacy in the Middle East is terribly wrong and in fact created the sitution in which we find ourselves. We allowed massive oppression in the name of “stability” ever since we discovered cheap oil under Arab sands. All that has brought is misery and radicalism.
Scowcroft and his version of realpolitik have consigned themselves to the ashheap of history. Scowcroft just won’t recognize it.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notes that Islamists continued their other tradition in terrorism, beheading infidels. This time, they set their sights on unarmed teenage Christian girls, targets apparently considered worthy of the level of courage found in the mujaheddin of Islam:

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded and a fourth was seriously wounded in a savage attack on Saturday by unidentified assailants in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi.
The girls were among a group of students from a private Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class, police Major Riky Naldo said.

I’m sure these big, brave men with knives must have quaked in their boots when squaring off against children such as these, given the craven nature of Islamofascists in general. Let’s hear more about how we should offer our understanding for their cultural issues and feelings of hopelessness and negotiate for peace with such slime.
Islamofascists are cowards. They attack unarmed civilians precisely because they know they cannot succeed with their activity any other way. Anyone who would plan and carry out this kind of crime has no sense of humanity, honor, or worth. The only rational response is to find them and kill them before they attack more children for their sick and twisted motives.

FM Says [Cough, Cough] ‘Hello’ To All

Just a quick update before I go to the hospital this morning — I spoke to the First Mate, and she wants me to thank everyone who has kept her in their prayers and thoughts. She still has a fever, but it’s down just a bit to 101.1, and her cough unfortunately remains bad. I’ll be there in an hour and will update this post throughout the day. I plan on taking some DVDs with me so that we can watch movies off the laptop instead of the college football games she, er, loves so much.
More later …
UPDATE: Well, it looks like pneumonia, but it’s controllable and it doesn’t appear to have affected the transplants. She’ll be in the hospital for at least a couple of days while they run all the necessary tests. They have her in a private room, but it’s on the far side of the hospital where the wireless connections are all proprietary (locked out from weaselly folks such as me!). The guest lobby has a signal I can use, so I’ll be updating irregularly as I can.
UPDATE II, 3:00 pm CT: I should note that the diagnosis is somewhat preliminary, but they’re pretty sure about it. It’s not critical; they don’t have the FM in Intensive Care or on a respirator, or even an oxygen feed. They want to do a bronchoscopy to make sure of the diagnosis later today, but we’re still waiting. In the meantime, she’s drifting in and out of a nap this afternoon, so I’m watching football after all.
UPDATE III, 4:47 PM: She’s going in for her bronchoscopy now, after getting the first of two units of blood. Her hemoglobin level was down to 7.8 (13.5 is considered the lower end of normal). Even with the serious anemia, though, her oxygenation level looks good. They want to confirm the diagnosis and find the specific bug that’s causing the pneumonia. I’m eating an early dinner and staring out the window in the lobby where the signal seems passable.
UPDATE IV, 5:11 PM – I’ll have Mitch know that I’m not wearing the Irish jersey today — Notre Dame has a bye week. So there. But I appreciate his thoughts and prayers.
While I’m updating, I’ll throw in a minor bleg – if anyone knows how I can get a login for the Fairview University wireless networks, it would be mucho appreciado.

Islamists Smuggled SAMs, WMD Into France

According to the London Telegraph, European counterterrorist agencies now hunt a group of Islamofascist terrorists with “links to al-Qaida” that successfully smuggled surface-to-air missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons into France. The missiles, they fear, will serve as the next phase of terrorist attacks on commercial air service, possibly outside one of the major French airports such as Orly:

French and Algerian extremists with links to al-Qa’eda bought the Russian SA-18 Grouse missiles from Chechens in 2002 and smuggled them via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro.
Both missiles and several of the extremists are reportedly still at large.
French anti-terrorism investigators learned of the missile terror plan while interrogating a Jordanian al-Qa’eda operative close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the Islamic terror group in Iraq.
Adnan Muhammad Sadik, alias Abu Atiya, is now being held by the Jordanian authorities.

Sadik has quite a terrorist pedigree. He apparently arranged a purchase of Russian SAMs from the Chechens while training new al-Qaeda terror cells throughout the Caucasus. He also has worked closely with Zarqawi in Iraq. Sadik’s resume shows the intertwining of these varied “insurgencies” and how they all relate back to al-Qaeda and the coordinated Islamofascist attack on the West. These are not isolated nationalist movements, but a region-wide effort by Islamists to re-establish the Caliphate or to end the world trying to do so.
One has to wonder, when seeing Sadik’s list of chemical and biological materiel he admits to sending into Europe, where al-Qaeda managed to get it. He told the Jordanians that he sent ricin, botulin, and cyanide with the SAMs. All three will kill with great efficiency, but ricin is especially deadly and not exactly difficult to produce. However, it seems unlikely that AQ has a stable enough shelter system to have its own production facilities. If it doesn’t, the WMD had to come from somewhere — either the Russians, who deny having any, or one of the countries which AQ has infiltrated, perhaps even Iraq.
The Europeans now have a new terrorist crisis to face. This could, of course, be a hoax or a disinformation campaign. If not, the French might find themselves the next target of AQ violence after the Americans, Spaniards, and British. If that happens, how will the French government explain this to their people? They have appeased the Islamists at almost every turn; they actively undermined the effort to topple Saddam Hussein and still refuse to cooperate with the Coalition in establishing a democracy there. Just the fact that AQ has targeted France shows the emptiness of the argument that AQ only attacks America because of our policies in the Middle East. If any country could have avoided attack because of appeasement, it would be the French; and yet, now they not only have to protect against two SAMs but also track down these deadly chemical weapons before they get unleashed against the French people.
Will this change minds about the nature and span of this conflict? Doubtful, but the extent to which people ignore it will be telling.

CQ Media Notes

I will appear on tonight’s “On The Story” on CNN, chatting with Abbi Tatton and Jeralyn Merritt about the Harriet Miers nomination and the effect of the blogosphere on the mainstream media. Jeralyn did a fine job on the Libby indictment, which doesn’t surprise me — she’s one of my favorite liberal bloggers (and I do read blogs on the left). It runs at 7 pm ET tonight, and at 1 pm ET on Sunday.
While most television appearances require guests to drive into town and get to a television studio with a satellite uplink, CNN tried something different with OTS during its taping last night. They shipped out a basic Mac box and a webcam, and I hooked it up directly to my DSL modem to initiate a webchat. What you see when I appear on camera is not a set, but the inside of my home office — although I had the good taste not to point the camera towards my messy desk. For a real trivial point, the map on the wall behind me is in Irish, but I doubt anyone will make it out. I didn’t have time to change from my casual clothes, so I’ll look a bit relaxed for CNN, I think. My father, the Admiral Emeritus, will recognize the shirt as one he bought me from the Galapagos Islands, but fortunately the camera didn’t pick up the I LIKE BOOBIES logo, with an embroidery of the blue-footed booby just above it.
I think it went very well, and even though we had to rush through the initial setup, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. CNN and especially Abbi and Josh the technician were just wonderful with us; if anything, Abbi is even nicer than she comes across on TV, and she is a big fan of the blogs. They’ve asked me to keep the equipment handy, so I hope I will get a chance to make more appearances on CNN.
The next time, though, I’ll wear a different shirt.

The Return Of Hospiblogging

Looks like we’ll be hospiblogging this weekend, at least at some point. The First Mate has a respiratory infection that now looks like it needs immediate intervention, along with a nagging fever that has the transplant staff concerned. Blogging may be a bit light, along with other efforts this weekend, although I may have a few surprises up my sleeve.
Keep her in your prayers. This is nothing life-threatening, but it’s a serious development any time for a double-transplant recipient, even more so during flu season. We both appreciate it.
UPDATE: The FM is waiting for a bed to open up at the hospital, which we think will happen in about 90 minutes. Her temp had been as high as 103.1F (39.5 for my friends in Canada and Europe), but now it’s down slightly to 102.4/39.1. We’re not sure what she has going on, but she’s going to the right place to take care of it. More later …
UPDATE II, 9:00 pm: The FM is resting comfortably at the hospital, and her fever has dropped down a bit more. I spoke with her an hour or so ago, and she wanted to just get some sleep. She thanks all of you for your prayers. I’ll spend the day with her tomorrow.

Ahmadinejad Responds, ‘And The Horse You Rode In On’

Newly-appointed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed no remorse or signs of retreat after making a demand that Israel be “wiped off the map” at an Islamist conference in Teheran earlier this week. Instead, after facing near-universal condemnation even in Arabic countries, Ahmadinejad rejected the criticism as “invalid”:

Iran’s president has defended his widely criticised call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.
Attending an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his remarks were “just” – and the criticism did not “have any validity.”
Last Wednesday’s comment provoked world outrage. Israel has called for Iran’s expulsion from the United Nations.
Egypt said they showed “the weakness of the Iranian government”. A Palestinian official also rejected the remarks.

In fact, Saeb Erekat said on behalf of the Palestinians that they had already accepted Israel’s right to exist and that the extant question should be about adding Palestine to the map. In the UK, Tony Blair hinted about military options for the first time in conjunction with Iranian intransigence on nuclear disarmament, and in the background, the US presence in Southwest Asia looms as an ever-present threat. Ahmadinejad might delight the Iranian mullahcracy and its thin band of supporters with his genocidal rhetoric, but all it has done is to remind the international community why nuclear technology should be removed from Iran.
Even Kofi Annan rebuked Ahmadinejad.
If democratic activists in Iran ever intend on doing something about their present state and government, now would be the time. Their position vis-a-vis the radical Islamists that Ahmadinejad appears to be inviting to Iran will only get worse over time. As Iran continues to provide both provocations such as Ahmadinejad’s speech and the refusal to comply with nuclear treaties, Western nations get closer to military options to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear bomb. They will find it more difficult at that point to maintain their credibility in the debacle that will inevitably occur if it comes to that.
We can help, but the push should come from within. As Michael Ledeen says, “Faster, please.” We stand ready.