ROMNEY WOULD APPROVE AN ISRAELI MILITARY STRIKE AGAINST IRAN, DESTROYING WORLD PEACE FOR NEXT 500 YEARS

Mitt Romney is in Israel and, in a talk that he will give today, he makes it clear that he would approve of any military strike that Israel may decide to carry out against Iran.  According to Romney, Israel has the right to bomb Iran to stop any nuclear "capability."  This means Romney would approve attacking Iran even if it never developed nuclear weapons, yet it had the "capability."

Harriet Sherwood writes in The Guardian:

"In comments echoing Netanyahu's position that a nuclear Iran is the biggest threat to the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Romney will say: "We have seen the horrors of history. We will not stand by. We will not watch them play out again."

"Preventing the Iranian regime developing a nuclear weapons capability "must be our highest national security priority," Romney will say according to excerpts of the speech released in advance. "The security of Israel is in the vital national security interests of the United States.""


And here's the irony—Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has about 100 nuclear warheads, maybe more, while Iran is a signatory to the NPT, and has said that it has no intention of producing a nuclear warhead.

This is madness. Romney cavalierly approves of a strike against Iran for the act of processing uranium, something allowed to all signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty! How many Iranians will the Israelis need to kill in order to stop Iran from developing nuclear power and even a nuclear deterrent?

Imagine Romney as President.  He would allow an illegal war against Iran that kill thousands of Iranians.  The result would cause hatred and killings for at least the next 500 years.

LET IRANIANS SHOUT, "DEATH TO AMERICA," BUT DON'T BOMB THEM

Supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ("Ahmadi") marched through the streets of Teheran two days ago supporting their candidate in this Friday's elections and shouting,"DEATH TO AMERICA."

People like John Bolton and Dick Cheney would interpret the chant as a casus belli, as proof that Iranians are evil and irrational. For Cheney and Bolton and people like them, Iran is the "enemy," and should be destroyed.

Just like there are those in Israel and elsewhere who think that Israel must attack Iran because Ahmadi has denied the Holocaust, the Iran demonizers in the U.S. would like nothing better than to bomb Iranian cities and nuclear power plants.

Have any of these people ever heard of freedom of speech? Just because someone insults you or says, "Death to America," that is no reason to kill him. Words, after all, are merely words. Everyone, including the Iranians, should be able to say anything he or she wants, without having to fear physical retaliation. So a kid in grade school can call your mother any number of disparaging names, and you don't have any right to beat him up.

Iran has shown no threat to the world and has invaded no other country in the last 100 years. It hasn't dropped a nuclear device on another country. It hasn't been the aggressor as has been the U.S. in wars every 10 years.

So let Iranians chant anything they want about the U.S. Let them yell, "Death to America." That is their political right. Neither the U.S. nor Israel has any right to say, as a result, that Iran is the "enemy," and therefore they can bomb Iranian cities and towns because of Iranian verbal insults.

SOME MEAN PEOPLE DENY THE HOLOCAUST, DON'T KILL THEM FOR SAYING IT

Michael Gerson claims in his op-ed in today's The Washington Post that anti-Israel types in the Middle East deny the Holocaust so as to deny legitimacy to Israel itself. However, he himself repudiates this connection:

"This conception of Israel's history is itself a distortion. The Holocaust is important to Israeli identity; it is not identical to Israeli identity. Zionism existed well before the European genocide. The ties between Jews and the land of Israel reach back for millennia. Israel does not exist merely because of Holocaust guilt. It exists because of its own tenacity, sense of purpose and national success."

I agree with Gerson that Israel exists apart from the historical fact of the Holocaust. Six million Jews died in WWI, most at the hands of the Nazis and Soviets. But Israel would exist whether or not the Holocaust took place.

For this reason, I strongly disagree with those who would kill anyone who dares to utter the falsehood that the Holocaust was made up. So Ahmadinejad of Iran denies the Holocaust, let's bomb and kill Iranians. I object to this view, seemingly adopted by some Zionists such as Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, and even by some of my friends and acquaintances.

Attacking and killing a person who denies the Holocaust is like beating up the kid who calls your mother a slut. How about some free speech? I don't care what someone SAYS, let him say it. Don't kill him because of it, no, not even if he denies the Holocaust.

BOGUS ARGUMENT: CRITICIZING ISRAEL FOR GAZA DESTRUCTION MEANS DENYING HOLOCAUST

So Walter Reich writing in The Washington Post would have us believe that anyone who criticizes Israel's war crimes in Gaza is an anti-Semite and a denier of the Holocaust. A good way to silence criticism of Israel's cruelty to civilians and children in Gaza who were shot, bombed, incinerated by the IDF. No, we must resist the charge of being anti-Semitic and continue to decry Israel's inhumanity towards the Palestinians in Gaza.
1/31/2009 10:05:19 AM

WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR WORLD WAR II?

Richard Cohen writes in today's The Washington Post that the Second World War was a "good war" worth fighting for. It reminds me of my post several months ago in my other blog, Public Radio & TV Stations in Utah, complaining about KUED-TV Channel 7's series on Utahns fighting in WWII, and how I thought that series glorified what seemed to me to be a horrible mistake.

A reader complained that I had not considered the Holocaust as a justifying reason. I backed down, agreeing that the Holocaust would be about the only cause to go to war.

But since then, I have been reading up on WWII and much to my surprise, I found that the Holocaust was not the reason why the U.S. entered the war. In fact, historians say that the Holocaust came to be seen for its terrible product only after WWII ended in 1945. The United States did not enter WWII to rescue the Jews in Hitler's concentration camps but to support England. Furthermore, both England and the U.S. sided with the USSR and Josef Stalin, who, it turns out, was as evil and as cruel as Adolf Hitler in killing and torturing people on account of their race and ethnicity.

More on this in future posts.

EVIDENCE POINTS TO A FUTURE U.S. ATTACK AGAINST IRAN

The UK Daily Telegraph has an article today by Tim Shipman on the chances of Bush attacking and bombing Iran before the end of his term January 2009.

Shipman writes:

"On Tuesday, President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the US government accuses of overseeing a covert programme to develop nuclear weapons. In a speech to war veterans, Mr Bush said: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

"He went on to condemn Iranian meddling in Iraq, where America increasingly blames the deaths of its soldiers on Iranian bombs and missiles. Mr Bush made clear that he had authorised military commanders to confront "Iran's murderous activities"."

Shipman is right to emphasize Bush's choice of words. For example, Bush's use of the word "holocaust" is probably designed, as Shipman notes, to appeal to the Israeli hawks who can take this word and run with it in their own determination to strike Iran for its perceived nuclear threat. Also Bush uses the word "murderous," a word that clearly calls out for the "righteous" (read "Americans") to go after and kill the "murderer."

Of course, left unsaid by Bush is the proof that Iran is attempting to create a nuclear bomb and use it on the Israelis. Also not shown is any evidence that Iran or the government of Iran is supplying, aiding or arming Shiite militias in their quest to kill Americans.

We are left with Bush's characterizations of the Iranians as "murderous" and intent on creating another "holocaust." From these intemperate and unsupported-in-evidence reckless words, what can we think? Bush is preparing the country for an attack against Iran.