Patrick Buchanan: Is the Superpower Afraid Of Iran? – OpEd

Albany Tribune ^ | November 26, 2013 | Patrick J Buchanan

[HiTech RedNeck]

No, you are confusing the two. Their CLAIMING that they do, and actually objectively doing so, are two states of affairs. Have you audited every verse of the Koran against the practice there? No, I do not think you have. Also you probably haven’t visited the more enraged Al Qaeda sects.

[Tau Food]

I don't believe that the Iranians or the Israelis really want to destroy one another or to send the Middle East back to a radioactive form of Biblical Times. But, if they do want to, they can do it and we can't stop them.

Personally, I believe that the whole bunch of them are bluffing. I don't believe Israel is going to send troops into Iran and I don't believe Iran is going to send troops into Israel. Nor do I believe that they will agree to just nuke one another just so that the rest of us can move on with life.

But, in the final analysis, their future is in their hands and not ours.

[kabar]

According to journalist Robin Wright,

During the Fateh offensive [in February 1987], I toured the southwest front on the Iranian side and saw scores of boys, aged anywhere from nine to sixteen, who said with staggering and seemingly genuine enthusiasm that they had volunteered to become martyrs. Regular army troops, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards and mullahs all lauded these youths, known as baseeji [Basij], for having played the most dangerous role in breaking through Iraqi lines. They had led the way, running over fields of mines to clear the ground for the Iranian ground assault. Wearing white headbands to signify the embracing of death, and shouting "Shaheed, shaheed" (Martyr, martyr) they literally blew their way into heaven. Their numbers were never disclosed. But a walk through the residential suburbs of Iranian cities provided a clue. Window after window, block after block, displayed black-bordered photographs of teenage or preteen youths.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

They’re mean all right. I Just think even then they were sacrificing others and exploiting their fanaticism while staying safe themselves.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

But, in the final analysis, their future is in their hands and not ours.

I wish the people in Washington would realize that.

[kabar]

You can’t compare current day Christians with Muslims.

[kabar]

But there is a level of fanaticism that most in the West don’t understand. Buchanan is trying to use western logic on a culture that has a much different world view.

[kabar]

No, you are confusing the two. Their CLAIMING that they do, and actually objectively doing so, are two states of affairs. Have you audited every verse of the Koran against the practice there? No, I do not think you have. Also you probably haven’t visited the more enraged Al Qaeda sects.

I have lived five years in Saudi Arabia, two in Iran, and two in Indonesia. There are variations in how countries and people practice Islam, but the Koran is still central to the daily lives of the individual. When you pray five times a day, fast for a month, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca, you are far more involved with your religion than most Christians or Jews. In many ways Islam is more akin to a cult than a religion. Apostates are treated harshly.

[RichInOC]

I’m not a fan of people assuming Iran has good intentions.

[rmlew]

Evidently, Pat wants Iran and Saudi Arabia to have nukes.
We'll be much safer then.

[nathanbedford]

As one who invariably supports Pat Buchanan on these threads, I nevertheless agree with you on this one.

Perhaps it is Buchanan's reflexive anti-Zionism (I deliberately did not say anti-Semitism) or his isolationist proclivities, but he seems to have got this wrong. I take seriously your observations concerning the mindset of Islam because it is confirmatory of what we have heard from other sources. I do not believe that Netanyahu is so exercised about the situation for no reason.

But it does not take a fanatical Muslim to be self-destructive. Consider the fanaticism of the Japanese in World War II, consider the degree of self-sacrifice and destruction they were willing to endure. Consider the degree of suffering borne by the Germans under Nazi administration in World War II. When you have tens of thousands of people dying every night in Japan and in Germany and those administrations nevertheless carrying on the war when it was utterly hopeless, we have a mindset that is not far from inviting Armageddon.

We must understand that this situation is not put to a plebiscite in Iran, rather it is the policy of a theocracy. Consider the fanaticism of those who ruled Japan, we consider them to be militarists but it was also in a sense a theocracy in that the Emperor was considered divine and the "militarists" were in a sense his apostles. No one can deny that Nazi-ism was a kind of secular religion and that Hitler himself enjoyed a super human charismatic reputation among the Germans.

It does not take the whole of Iran to make a conscious decision to invite Armageddon to gain the gates of Allah's paradise, it requires only the fixed determination of a few fanatical mullahs in custody of the bomb.

[SunkenCiv]

Once again, Pat Buchanan shows his associations.

Iran’s Rouhani: Nuke Plan ‘Continues Today and Will Continue Tomorrow’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3095914/posts

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I don’t think anybody is arguing that Iran is a model nation. But if we fought every nation with a less than ideal regime, we’d be in perpetual war. We don’t have unlimited manpower or unlimited money, so sometimes we have to chose the lesser of evils.