VDH, Ten Iranian Questions:
Trump had warned the Iranians on numerous occasions. They never got the message. They were apparently listening to the American Left’s smears of Trump as a “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”)—a silly slur phrase that just died Saturday night.
And die it did. To hell with the American Left with its Tampon Timmies, its Joyless Behars, its cortically-challenged Cortezes, and its Kamalian clowns. (It should be clear that I am no longer quoting my man Hanson.)
Some fear that Midnight Hammer will lead to a wider war. It might. The world, led by the USA, will then have the opportunity to rid itself once and for all of the current Iranian Islamist theocracy. That would be a good thing, and easy to accomplish: destroy the oil refineries first, and see if that gets them to back off, and "build back better," to coin a phrase. If they remain recalcitrant, destroy their power grid. No more pussy-footing around with these evil-doers. It's not 1979 any more, or the Carter administration.
Their particular brand of Islamist insanity would then be finished forever. Do you doubt that? It would be finished in its concrete exemplification just as Nazi ideology was finished in its concrete exemplification in 1945. By 'concrete exemplification of an ideology' I mean its existence in an actual State. Once the current Iranian Islamist theocracy is concretely at an end, it is not likely to come back. I will fire off two more points and you guys can have at me in the combox.
First. A great power such as the USA cannot be wholly non-interventionist, although it ought to be as non-interventionist as it can be consistent with self-preservation and the defense of its allies. No nation-building! Non-interventionism is good, but it has limits. One limit is reached when anti-civilizational savages pose an existential threat to we us the (more or less) civilized. I call our enemies 'anti-civilizational,' but you ought not call them 'medieval' as some pundits do unless you want to advertise your historical ignorance and slam an entire epoch.
An existential threat is a threat not merely to one's physical existence or biological life, but to one's way of life. The radical Islamist trilemma: conversion, dhimmitude, or death is radically unacceptable — which is why I call it a trilemma: three prongs, each of which is unacceptable. If one has been nuked out of physical existence, then one has been 'nuked' out of cultural existence as well.
This is why Khamenei and the boys cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. We do not yet know the extent or efficacy of Trump's bunker-busting despite Trump's typical boasts and exaggerations. (Trump is a builder, a promoter, and a bit of a carnival barker, but still vastly superior to any of the electable Democrats.) The Iranian nuclear program has, however, surely suffered a major set-back. If they get it going again the IDF and the USAF will kick the mullahs' collective ass one more time.
Second. The Iranian people have a right to any system of government they choose so long as it poses no existential threat to any other State. Who the hell are we to tell them how to live when our Western societies, dripping with decadence, are hanging by a thread? (Leastways, until Trump came along.) If the Iranians want a theocracy, that is their business. Is it objectively certain that our classically liberal system is better than a theocratic system? No, or so say I, even though I firmly believe that our system is better than any theocracy. What if they want an Islamic theocracy? No problem with that either, so long as the Islam in question is moderate and wields no such trident as the one lately described. I wish Zuhdi Jasser the best of luck in his quixotic quest to reform Islam.
Ann Coulter a while back said that we should invade the Muslim lands and convert them to Christianity.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.
Convert Muslims? Sheer madness. Coulter is a very intelligent woman, but sometimes intelligent people say stupid things. Of the Abrahamic religions, Islam is the worst. Schopenhauer describes it as "the saddest and poorest form of theism." It is the religion of terror at the present time. An inferior religion, it gives rise to an inferior culture, downstream of which is a benighted politics. But Islam is their religion and it is better than no religion. Try barging into people's lives to convince them to renounce their parents, their hometown, their region, their religion, their folkways. Try that down in Hillbilly Holler or anywhere.
Convert the benighted Muslims for the sake of their immortal souls because Jesus claimed to be via, veritas, vita? "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6, KJV. I was brought up on Douay-Rheims, but I love that old English.) Why not make it more specific: extra ecclesiam salus non est, where the ecclesia in question is the Roman Catholic Church? That won't sit well with our Protestant or Eastern Orthodox pals, and it shouldn't. I go a step further: paths to salvation are many. I won't argue it out, leastways not now; I'll just refer you to the work of Frithjof Schuon. See, for example, The Transcendent Unity of Religions.
How about converting the Jews? Another form of folly. Here is an instructive short piece by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko.
