[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links: FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson 
His website: http://victorhanson.com/     NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

[rhombus]

Finally, we can be far more quiet abroad about our intentions while carrying an even bigger stick. In other words, wrinkle our brow, bite our lip and praise the United Nations and multilateralism to the skies publicly – while acknowledging that ultimately only the American military can keep the United States safe

Probably good advice but extremely hard to stomach.

[DustyMoment]

neither the United States nor Israel are eager to be damned by the global community for sending in bombers to take out Tehran's dispersed and hard-to-find subterranean nuclear factories.

Frankly, I could give a crap less about the global community. They already hate Israel and the US, what would taking out Iran's nuke facilities do - make them hate us more??

If memory serves, respecting the global community's opinions during the USS Pueblo affair caused our sailors to remain in NK custody for nearly a year because Tricky Dicky wouldn't go in and obliterate a few NK cities as a way to explain to the Koreans that they had done a bad thing by hijacking our ship on the high seas.

So, as arguments go, fear of the global communitity's response doesn't sway me much. I know that isn't the bulk of VDH's argument, it's just the part that leaped out at me. Destroy the nukes, worry about the global community later.

[rightinthemiddle]

ping

[happyathome]

The alternative is to publicly negotiate bi-lateral agreements with the Iranians and the North Koreans: "Attack the US, Israel, Japan or Taiwan and we'll turn your countries into radioactive wastelands. Do what you want to anyone else." And then sit back and enjoy the Euro trash panic.

Course that isn't very smart in the long term either, but it would give us a lot more near-term schadenfreude than our "friends" are getting at our expense today.

[oldbrowser]

Russians, Chinese, Saudi, Euros, the only ones he left off is the Democratic Party.