Another of the Axis of Evil has announced that they have nuclear power.

During a speech delivered in the Western Iranian province of Javanroud, Ahmadinejad said: " The Islamic Republic of Iran is now a nuclear power, thanks to the hard work of the Iranian people and authorities."

Time to start moving into position.

What do "neocons" think the current situation is, and how is that different from what other people see?

Here's a good summary.

We really are in a global war. Its dimensions are hard to conceptualize since our enemies, while aided and abetted by sympathetic Middle Eastern dictatorships, claim no national affinity. Indeed, the terrorists deliberately mask the role of their patrons. The latter, given understandable fears of the overwhelming conventional power of the United States military, deny culpability.

Well, Iran has indicated, once again, that it has no intention of complying with the treaties it signed. China and Russia, big trading partners with Iran, have indicated that unless the US bribes them extensively, they have no interest in making Iran comply with UN sanctions.

The problem is that UN sanctions, as demonstrated before, don't actually do much in the face of determined cheating. Further thoughts here.

It may be easier to impose sanctions on the UN.

UPDATE: Perspectives are not lacking in this matter.

The Secretary of Defense gave a couple of speeches recently, in the process of which he asked four, very interesting, questions.

In speaking to our veterans, I suggested several questions to guide us during this struggle against violent extremists:



• With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that vicious extremists can somehow be appeased?

• Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

• Can we truly afford to pretend that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems rather than fundamentally different threats requiring fundamentally different approaches?

• Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world's troubles?

These are the central questions of our time, and, as in all periods of conflict, we have no choice but to face them honestly.


I would point out that the fourth has been of real interest as I read some of the commentary which exhibits a displacement reaction: instead of worrying about those who want to kill us, people focus on Bush, insisting that he is the reason that people want to kill us, and on Israel, ditto. It means that they don't want to pay attention to the frequent utterances of those who want to kill us, which dismissal reflects poorly on the critic's ability to accept them as human beings.

I'd invite you to read the whole speech, as well as this one and this one by President Bush. For those needing a historial refresher, check this out.

UPDATE: Added links to frequent utterances: Hezbollah's next round. Added link to those who, the program of the jihad. Added link to displacement: Noam Chomsky.

Further Update: The Iraqi perspective:

For the most part, our queries were politely and somewhat laconically dismissed. Iraq is not in a civil war, Mahdi said, and doesn't need more U.S. troops. It has a constitution and elected government, and thus there is no need for an international conference. As for constitutional reform, the Shiite and Kurd parties that wrote the charter last year are waiting for proposals from Sunni dissidents. Mahdi added: "So far we have heard nothing."

So what is the solution? "Time -- that is it," Mahdi replied. "A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system. We can't import ministers to Iraq. There will be many mistakes. The Americans made many mistakes, and Iraqis had to support that."

"Our options as Iraqis are that we don't have an exit strategy or any withdrawal timetable," Mahdi said, somewhat bitterly. "We simply go on. . . . It is a process, and brick by brick we are working on it."

Sounds worthwhile to me.

Further update: A good discussion of the virtues of appeasement and its applicability appears on Townhall, citing the noted appeasers Charles V and Abraham Lincoln.

For those who have said "There is no war on terror, it is just a bunch of different scenarios you are alleging have a common thread", the recent action in Lebanon has an interesting subtext, pointed out by Michael Barone:

the biggest blunder was made by the rulers of Iran.

Inevitably, the trouble they have stirred up in the region over the past month is bound to boomerang right back at them.

Indeed, by transferring advanced rockets and weaponry to Hezbollah, Tehran, and Damascus they have just unwittingly proven one of the Bush administration's central contentions regarding the need for pre-emptive action against rogue states in the global war on terror.

The two countries have demonstrated that they are ready and willing to share missile systems with a terrorist organization, thus strengthening the case that they must be prevented from obtaining weapons of mass destruction at all costs.

Yes, there is a unified enemy. This was pointed out before, in 2002, and was part of the national conversation before the war in Iraq.