What Is The World Doing About Preventing Genocide, Besides Talking?

Isn’t it about time we stop diddling around and wipe out Iran’s capacity to build and launch a nuclear bomb? If we don’t do it, we ought to give full help and encouragement to Israel or any other nation that wants to go on that great humanitarian mission.

The world, for the first time in history, has to be more concerned about genocide. That’s because with the advent of nuclear materials, nuclear weapons and missile technology in the hands of genocidal maniacs like Iran and Korea who do business with terrorists and freely sell their weapons and technology to all buyers, the whole world is in danger. What’s more, it is clear that if the Islamofascists in Iran hit Israel, they won’t stop there. Europe and the U.S. will be next in their cross hairs. The first genocide will only be considered a dress rehearsal for more and bigger genocides to come.

The Korean missile launch is another signal that we’re not going to talk our way out of this danger. You might as well be negotiating with a hungry lion. And we’re in double danger now, as we have a president and an administration that, when it comes to foreign policy and the war on terror, is all tongue and no guts.

If some nation was about to complete work on a nuclear bomb and they, in effect, said they were going to use it on us, and repeatedly said we should be wiped off the map, what would we do? Would we negotiate or offer to negotiate with the rogue nation? Would we make apologies for past foreign policy mistakes? Would we pretend that prior years of fruitless negotiations never happened and act like we wanted to try again?

Just to add a little flavor to this, would it make any difference that the threatening country was supporting international terrorism, including in Iraq where they have in the past and are now killing our troops?

And would it make any difference if this rogue nation was in violation of the international law against genocide, thus supplying the right to take action to prevent the threatened genocide? And what if it had violated many U.N. regulations on its road to nuclear production and weaponry?

By now you know where I’m going with this all too-true hypothetical. I’m talking about Iran’s threats against Israel. But Israel is only the first target. Iran’s nuclear bomb will put all Europe into jeopardy and threaten the entire oil-producing region of the Middle East. We in the U.S. will be at risk, as nuclear material and bombs will almost certainly be supplied to terrorists by the Iranians. Iran is now and will continue to be the center of international terrorism.

Don’t forget, we are the “Big Satan,” hated even more than the “Little Satan,” Israel. Even without a bomb, the Iranians could be supplying nuclear material for a dirty bomb to terrorists right now or they might supply material for a crude nuclear bomb.

How long is it safe to delay? We’re coming down to five minutes to midnight, and we don’t even know for sure whether the clock is ticking closer to midnight or may be a little further from it. But do we really want to take the chance? The consequences of betting the wrong way are too catastrophic to chance. We have to err a long way back on the side of caution

One of the biggest foreign policy jokes of history is that these fanatical religious zealots and extremists can be sweet-talked into giving up their aspirations. Consider the history of what’s been going on in Iran, if you persist in thinking that negotiations will be productive.

This history is fully documented in an article by Con Coughlin, “His Master’s Angry Voice: A disciple of Ayatollah Khomeini’s apocalyptic ideology, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is about to turn Iran into a nuclear rogue state,” that appeared in the British magazine Standpoint (February 2009). Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of the British newspaper, The Telegraph.

As soon as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in July 2005, he called a cabinet meeting for an urgent discussion of an issue close to his heart — the return of the 12th Imam.

All of Muslim theology believes in the 12th Imam, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, who went into occlusion at age 9 in the ninth century. For many Shia Muslims, the 12th Imam is the main object of their faith.

But this is the worrisome aspect of that article of faith, as related by Mr. Coughlin:

“Devotion to the 12th Imam is particularly prevalent in Iran where the majority of the population are known as ‘Twelvers.’ It is an article of faith for Iranian Shia that the return of the Hidden Imam, as he is also known, will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed and then lead the world to an era of universal peace.” Since he became president, Mr. Ahmadinejad has been preparing Iran for the return of the 12th Imam. These genocidal maniacs do not fear Armageddon; they look forward to it as the “‘cosmic chaos and bloodshed’ that will lead to universal peace. They are not deterred by mutually assured destruction; they welcome it and would like to precipitate it.”

Couple that obsession with the 12th Imam with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s other inflammatory views about America, the West and Israel. Right after his election at a conference held in Tehran, he said Israel was a “disgraceful blot” and should be “wiped off the face of the earth.” And that would only be a warm-up for bigger and better targets.

On top of that, remember that these are not just the views of Mr. Ahmadinejad, but are also the views of the hardline conservative clerics who stand behind him. The ruling establishment of Iran will do anything to maintain their power and to execute their game plan for Iran and the world. One little statistic proves the point, reported by Mr. Coughlin. When Mr. Ahmadinejad ran for president of Iran, the Revolutionary Guard was so determined to get him into office that they managed to produce six million more votes than there were voters. This is a feat, which even the corrupt Chicago Cook County machine could not come close to. And this kind of feat will assure that the Iranian people won’t have a real chance to express their views in the election coming up this June.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is totally devoted to the views of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the power behind the Islamic revolution that turned Iran into a rogue and terrorist state. Like Ayatollah Khomeini, Mr. Ahmadinejad is determined to export his radical ideology throughout the Muslim world, including both Sunni and Shia states. Also like Ayatollah Khomeini, he is determined to build nuclear bombs. So don’t be comforted by those who say Mr. Ahmadinejad isn’t calling the shots; he is in lockstep with those who do.

The export of radical terrorism and jihad and building nuclear bombs are absolutely central to the Iranian Islamic revolution. Only total, absolute fools would think the Iranians could be sweet-talked out of their holy central objective. The central legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini is not to be turned aside by negotiations, however endless and eloquent. We only fool ourselves and waste time and resources, perhaps because we want to avoid hard realities (as the Obama administration does by calling an act of terrorism a man-caused disaster).

It is clear that the Iranians don’t take Barack Obama’s overtures with sweet-talk seriously. Even after Mr. Ahmadinejad made encouraging noises about talking to Mr. Obama, the government-owned paper, Kayhan, made the Iranian position clear, with the pronouncement that the complexion of the Great Satan has changed, but nothing else. In an editorial, it warned: “Obama’s views on talks with Iran is not strategic, it is a hostile tactic … He does not regard talks as a means to reach a solution, but as a way to increase pressure on Iran.”

President Obama can continue to grovel before Iran and our other enemies. He can continue his disgraceful criticism of America in his bootlicking approach to enemies and allies. But this will still get him nothing. The most recent example of that is Mr. Obama’s attack on America on foreign soil to please the French crowds. That will get him nothing, and his attempt to talk to Iran will only bring us close to nuclear Armageddon in the Middle East.

The world is failing to act on a threat of Armageddon in the Middle East that may be more dangerous to the survival of Western civilization than even that of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. It should be apparent that the world learned nothing from the lessons of the 1930s and Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler.

It is also apparent that the world, the West, and the U.S. are not prepared to stop genocide. We already know that from Darfur and the Sudan. And we know that by the failure to act on the threatened genocide in the Middle East. As far as the slogan, “Never again,” the world seems to have changed that to “Again and again.” If you want to stop a genocide, the threatened victims have to do it on their own.

There is a clear legal basis for stopping genocide. But it is not being utilized. For details, see an article, “The Only Way to Prevent Genocide: Creative diplomacy can make a difference. But in the end, it may all come down to the willingness of the United States To Act,” in Commentary (April 2009). It is by Todd Lindberg of the Hoover Institution.

He documents the international law on the prevention of genocide. In 1946, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution declaring genocide a crime under international law. Then there was an ensuing Genocide Convention of 1948, that provides for the “prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.”

Mr. Lindberg writes that this does “provide an international legal and, more important, moral framework for preventive action in response to the risk of genocide.”

“A further attempt to ‘internationalize’ the Declaration’s ‘right to life’ came in 2005, when the world summit at the United Nations embraced in its ‘Outcome document’ the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect.’ The doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect,’ known colloquially as ‘R2P’ holds that a state has an obligation to protect those living in its territory from atrocities (specified in the Outcome Document as ‘genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity’).

“If a state is unable or unwilling to fulfill this requirement, the protection function falls to the international community which can take measures up to and including the use of force in order to protect populations.”

What do these three pieces of international law on genocide mean? Mr. Lindberg says “these words are tools of moral suasion.” We have now thought about the subject and this is where the world stands.

All that having been said, Mr. Lindberg says stopping genocide comes down to a question of whether there is the will to stop it. And that all means, as is so often the case, whether there is the political will in the United States to stop it. In the case of the forthcoming attempt of Iran to commit genocide by destroying Israel, there is no political will to stop it in the international community, the West, or the U.S. The great tools of moral suasion pro vide no morality or no suasion.

So its up to Israel to protect itself. We can only hope it has the capability to do so. Because we have learned that those who commit genocide are not satisfied when their first target is eliminated. They have such unbounded hatred that they are propelled to seek new targets, and in the case of Iran that new target will be the West and the U.S.

And as to all those glorious words on preventing and punishing terrorism, I can only recommend the prayer of Mother Elizabeth Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s: “Lord, strengthen our souls, so that many firm resolutions may be more than mere words.”

Whatever you do, don’t assume that President Obama will match his rhetoric with action. During the campaign he said America deserves a leader who “responds forcefully to all genocides.” But I’m afraid his actions to date do not reflect that statement. The Financial Times (London) headlines, “US may cede to Iran’s nuclear ambition.” I suspect he will rely on diplomacy and the U.N. to accomplish nothing, and then perhaps will solve the problem by one of his now famous semantic back flips.

You’ll recall a terrorist act was abolished by calling it a man-caused disaster. Perhaps nuclear weapons will be put out of mind by calling them “high-intensity energy release devices.” As this column often said, President Obama has a severe case of the talking disease, rendering his perception of reality into whatever is said, with no relation to whatever is done. He also suffers from the campaign disease, rendering him unable to realize the campaign is over and now governing time has arrived.

As I finished writing this column, North Korea, now a nuclear power, launched a missile capable of reaching the U.S. This is not just a North Korean event, but is part of an Iranian collaboration with North Korea. So we are about to have two rogue nations with nuclear bombs and the means to deliver them to the U.S. and Europe.

What will be Mr. Obama’s response? He’ll give a speech, and call on the U.N. to come forward with its impotent resolutions and sanctions. What did the U.N. do? It agreed to keep conferring. In a speech in Prague, Mr. Obama then called for an international summit on nuclear security, which is another Obama pipe dream to take the place of action. Mr. Obama does a Kabuki dance, while Iran and North Korea continue to tighten the noose around the neck of the Middle East. Yes, Iran moves ever closer to its genocidal plans.

Elie Wiesel has said, “Remember silence helps the killer, never the victims.”

Perhaps this should be amended to read, “Remember words without action helps the killer, never the victims.”

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

US not into combatting genocide effectively or sanely....The US Dept of State weighs in with this: Houston, Texas, Mar 30, 2009 / 10:24 am (CNA).- Speaking at Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national conference in Houston this past Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that promoting “reproductive rights” –including abortion- will be at the top of the government’s international agenda.

Planned Parenthoods’ success means failure of Western Civilization in Europe. The debt being piled on by our bankers and Congress will require a massive reindustrialization and energy use expansion to pay off the incurring debts...lots of bodies for labor. US State Dept seems to have something in mind other than success or effectively coping with problems. Maybe the goal is world depopulation as a goal in itself...genocide by another title. World population is expected to decline after 2050...cannot they wait?...just thinking.

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