{"id":236,"date":"2008-11-07T22:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T22:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/11\/07\/236\/"},"modified":"2014-08-24T15:57:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T20:57:45","slug":"236","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"We Don’t Learn From History – Russia and Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Didn\u2019t Take Long: VP-elect Joe Biden said that once Barack Obama was elected, some nation or force would confront the US, just as the Soviet Union was thought to have put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 to rattle President John Kennedy. (\u201cWatch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy\u201d, Oct. 20, 2008<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

Well, the votes from last Tuesday haven\u2019t been completely tallied yet and already two threats have arrived on the proverbial radar screen. Iran just issued a statement threatening to shoot at US aircraft operating near the Iran \/ Iraq border (Reuters quotes<\/a> an unnamed Iranian politician as saying “This is a clear message to the American president-elect because radicals are not very happy that Obama has been elected.” ) And, Russian President Medvedev just announced<\/a> his intent to station tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad sector of Russia, that isolated little portion of Russia squeezed between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. He claims this to be a necessary countermeasure to the anti-ballistic missile interceptors that the US plans to install in Poland. Interestingly enough, the US rationale for placing those missiles in Poland is to blunt the threat of a missile attack on Europe from Iran. <\/p>\n

(This sounds rather crazy at first; Iran\u2019s missiles should logically be aimed at Israel, not Europe. BUT, if a nuclear-emboldened Iran eventually plans to attack Israel, it might also want to discourage Europe from uniting with the US in defense of Israel. Iran\u2019s ability to lob a nuke at Vienna or Paris might bring back those old European pacifist instincts that served it so tragically in the 1930\u2019s, should Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian surrogates bring Israel to its knees.)<\/p>\n

I am currently listening to a Teaching Company lecture series on \u201cThe Lessons of History\u201d by Prof. Rufus Fears. One of his lessons is that we don\u2019t learn from history. Before WW1 and WW2, according to Prof. Fears, Americans and Europeans didn\u2019t think that another big war could happen. They were convinced that technology and world trade had changed things such that no one anywhere would remain interested in the barbaric tradition of war. Life was good, everyone seemed happy; another big war just didn\u2019t seem possible. And yet, more big wars tragically occurred.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but wonder if some of that mentality lives on, as reflected in President-elect Obama\u2019s solid victory over Senator McCain. This is not to belittle the credentials that Senator Obama earned over the past year as a skilled politician and an intelligent leader. He survived two extremely brutal political campaigns and proved that he has \u201cthe right stuff\u201d. I previously expressed my reservations about him, and I still have some concerns; but I do feel a bit better now. However, a segment of his supporters (young people and liberal Democrats) cast him as \u201cthe peace candidate\u201d, the guy who they hope will successfully conclude the two US military involvements in the Middle East which have dragged on since 2001. <\/p>\n

(Two more lessons of history \u2013 the USA gets very tired of war after a few years; and the Middle East is the graveyard of empires.)<\/p>\n

In my opinion, there are still strong forces out there in the world today for whom war IS still thinkable. Even worse, they may see war as an extension of an historic vision, just as Hitler once convinced Germany of an historic destiny to conquer Europe. Such modern forces could well include Russia and Iran. Russia lost the Marxist vision, but I\u2019m sure it can come up with some new \u201clesson\u201d (or older lesson about the greatness of its past) that it feels bound to teach the world. With Iran, the lesson is very old, regarding the superiority of the Persian people (they\u2019re still getting over that defeat by the ancient Greeks) and the ultimate victory of the Shia vision of Islam. How better to gain dominance over the Islamic world but to take out Israel, something that Sunni-based al Qaeda can only dream of. (Al Qaeda showed us that pan-national \u201cmovements\u201d can be extremely dangerous; but we must NOT take that to mean that the world has changed such that powerful nation-states will never \u201cgo Napolean\u201d on us.)<\/p>\n

I think that President Obama will be smart enough to see the warning signs and realize the need to quickly and forcefully prepare for and respond to what Biden predicted. Unfortunately, the political pressures from his supporters will make it difficult for him. He will be urged to get US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan quickly, and to avoid installing that anti-ballistic missile system in Europe (which Russia hates so vehemently even though it\u2019s too light-weight to knock down their nuclear missiles). There are intelligent arguments for this. BUT, if this is done too quickly, it might create the impression of weakness and pacifist delusion, just what the bad guys are looking and hoping for. I suspect that Obama will in fact \u201cstand strong\u201d militarily, and will take a lot of criticism from some who vigorously supported him (he might wind up being called \u201ca Bush in sheep\u2019s clothing\u201d; or would that be too ironic?). <\/p>\n

Hopefully, Senator McCain will be among the first to speak up and defend President Obama in time of crisis \u2013 and in preparation for a coming crisis that the public doesn\u2019t yet see. McCain, for all his failings, does have an old-fashioned sense of sin and the need for atonement. Recall how he vigorously promoted campaign reform after being caught in the Keating banking scandal in the 1980s. Well, Senator McCain sinned again by unleashing Sarah Palin from the frozen wastes of Alaska (what if she appoints herself to replace a re-elected Senator Ted Stevens once the Senate banishes him?). And McCain probably knows it. Hopefully he will realize that his penance is to once more cross the line of party loyalty, so as to do all that he possibly can to promote the success of President Obama. I expect nothing less of John McCain over the next four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Didn\u2019t Take Long: VP-elect Joe Biden said that once Barack Obama was elected, some nation or force would confront the US, just as the Soviet Union was thought to have put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 to rattle President John Kennedy. (\u201cWatch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4434,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/4434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}