The choice before the Cambridge Debating Society was whether one should choose war to stop Iran from going nuclear, or simply accept a nuclear Iran.  Douglas Murray offers a devastating rebuttal to those who say, “Who cares if Iran goes nuclear?”  The 11 minute video starts out good and, halfway through, gets great:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hat tip:  Seraphic Secret

As a companion piece, please watch a different video that Robert Avrech posted about challenging Muslim ideology vis a vis the Jews and Israel.

According to Barry Rubin, who has forgotten more about the Middle East than most people (including State Department employees) will know in a lifetime, Ron Paul is Wrong Paul when it comes to Iran.  First, what’s happened in the last decade is irrelevant, since Iran hatred long preceded that.  The real issue is whether the U.S. decision in 1953 to put the Shah in power was the trigger that deserved the animus that now comes our way.  Rubin, with access to key contemporary documents, says it is not.  Not only was it a rational and reasonable decision at the time, the mullahs wanted it:

What is especially interesting in retrospect is that one of the main supporters of the move were the Iranian Muslim clerics, including Ayatollah Kashani, the man who would be a role model for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. I saw how he and his colleagues met with U.S. officials and urged a coup, since they also feared a Communist regime. It is ironic for Islamists to complain about a U.S. policy that they actively backed at the time.

Read the whole thing, which succinctly summarizes decades of Iran policy. It’s fascinating.

And while you’re at it, you might want to check out Barry Rubin’s new book, which got a great review in the latest edition of Commentary Magazine:

Yes, that’s a wildly mixed, virtually unintelligible metaphor in my post title, but I can actually explain it.  Iran is pranking the U.S.  Considering the way in which we were assured that an Obama in the White House would inaugurate a new era of foreign policy, what the Iranians are doing is funny, but it’s also terribly frightening.  One of the good things about George Bush’s presidency was that, even though he wasn’t really a cowboy, the bad guys thought he was, and that kept them in line.  Now they know that America is under the control, not of a paper tiger, but of a paper cat, so these wacky, nuclear-armed mice are out to play.  No good will come of this.

Charles Krauthammer has one of his best articles ever, regarding Obama’s class warfare.  He notes, too, that it’s easier to unleash than to control the mob.  Here’s a sample, but I think you should read the whole thing — and then send it to people you know:

After three years, Obama’s self-proclaimed transformative social policies have yielded a desperately weak economy. What to do? Take the low road: Plutocrats are bleeding the country, and I shall rescue you from them.

Problem is, this kind of populist demagoguery is more than intellectually dishonest. It’s dangerous. Obama is opening a Pandora’s box. Popular resentment, easily stoked, is less easily controlled, especially when the basest of instincts are granted legitimacy by the nation’s leader.

Exhibit A. On Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed punitive legislation over China’s currency. If not stopped by House Speaker John Boehner, it might have led to a trade war — a 21st-century Smoot-Hawley. Obama knows this. He has shown no appetite for a reckless tariff war. But he set the tone. Once you start hunting for villains, they can be found anywhere, particularly if they are conveniently foreign.

Exhibit B. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin rails against Bank of America for announcing a $5 a month debit card fee. Obama echoes the opprobrium with fine denunciations of banks and their hidden fees — except that this $5 fee is not hidden. It’s perfectly transparent.

Yet here is a leading Democratic senator advocating a run on a major (and troubled) bank — after two presidents and two Congresses sunk billions of taxpayer dollars to save failing banks. Not because they were deserving or virtuous but because they are necessary. Without banks, there is no lending. Without lending, there is no business. Without business, there are no jobs.

Exhibit C. To the villainy-of-the-rich theme emanating from Washington, a child is born: Occupy Wall Street. Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over.

These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause.

Except that the real Tea Party actually had a program — less government, less regulation, less taxation, less debt. What’s the Occupy Wall Street program? Eat the rich.

Speaking of Obama, it will be interesting to see how he ultimately handles this Iran thing.  Right now, he’s framing it as a low level insult to America, and he couldn’t care less.  My bet is that, if he can be made to see that it is a direct attack on himself, he will come out frothing blood, because the only thing Obama will defend is his own ego.  As to that, let me repost here the telling anecdote that Mike Devx found (emphasis mine):

In June 2002, during a budget crisis in Illinois, a state senator from Chicago’s West Side, Rickey Hendon, made a desperate plea for a child-welfare facility in his constituency to be spared the axe. A junior senator from Chicago’s South Side, Barack Obama, voted against him, insisting hard times call for hard choices.

Ten minutes later Obama rose, calling for a similar project in his own constituency to be spared, and for compassion and understanding. Hendon was livid and challenged Obama on his double standards from the senate floor. Obama became livid too. As Hendon has told it, Obama approached him, “stuck his jagged, strained face into my space“, and said: “You embarrassed me on the senate floor and if you ever do it again I will kick your ass.”

“What?” said an incredulous Hendon.

“You heard me,” Obama said. “And if you come back here by the telephones where the press can’t see it, I will kick your ass right now.”

The two men vacated the senate floor and, depending on whom you believe, either traded blows or came close to it.

Obama is a malignant narcissist.  Malignant narcissists will fight for what they care about — but the only thing they care about is themselves.

Yesterday, I asked what Valerie Jarrett would tell Obama to do now that the administration, in an effort to save Holder’s delicate derriere from the Fast & Furious fallout, has gone public with a nefarious Iranian plot, one that is tantamount to a declaration of war, that Obama already knew about in June.  (Wag the Dog, anyone?)

Today, we have the answer.  The Obama administration, in language that would befit an irate, but still proper, Victorian maiden, has announced loud and clear that it’s going to scold Iran.  There may be some finger shaking involved too, but I gather that the administration doesn’t want to escalate the matter too quickly.

I don’t like flying.  Truth to tell, I hate it, but I’m still a fairly placid passenger.  During a bumpy flight, the white knuckles and the occasional gasping breaths are the only sign that I’m agitated.  One memorable trip, though, when we hit turbulence over the Midwest, the women in the row behind me spent over an hour screaming “We’re gonna die!  We’re all gonna die!”  I’m not going to do imitate that woman as our airplane of State bounces around, but my knuckles are white as I type, and the occasional gasping breath echoes over my keyboard.

Iranian agent caught on U.S. soil plotting terrorist attacks.  Obama, I’m sure, is in a dither.  What will Valerie Jarrett, who is currently about the only person he’ll talk to, tell him to do?

North Korea assumes presidency of U.N. arms control conference

http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/29/north-korea-assumes-presidency-of-u-n-arms-control-conference/#ixzz1Ql1gXN44

“Bare months after the U.N. finally suspended Libya’s Col. Muammar Qaddafi from its Human Rights Council, North Korea wins the propaganda coup of heading the world’s disarmament agency,” the executive director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer said in a statement protesting the move. “It’s asking the fox to guard the chickens, and damages the U.N.’s credibility.”

Damages the U.N.’s credibility? What credibility is there left to damage?

(h/t Weaselzippers.net)

Britain: Iran Testing missiles with nuclear capability

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=227120
Iran has been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday.
He told parliament the tests were in clear contravention of UN resolution 1929.

Again, the credibility of the U.N.? But then, after the attack on Libya by (largely) the U.S. and Europe, it’s doubtful that any country would ever give up its nuclear weapons programs.

(h/t Weaselzippers.net)

To think that once it was once only lunatic fringe groups like the John Birchers who were claimed to be crazy for advocating that the U.S. get out of the U.N. Can anyone provide cogent reasons for the U.S. to keep subsidizing this vile organization’s budget today?

The nuclear cat is out of the bag and, unfortunately, it appears to be leading to its inevitable conclusion. It feels like mid-1930s deja-vu all over again, with the inevitability of world war looming and significant parts of the world either enables it or remain powerless to stop it.

I’ve been quiet about a lot of the revolutions in the Middle East.  The only one as to which I was really vocal was the attempted revolution in Iran — and that was because I thought the uprising could only benefit America.  That regime is so evil, that destabilizing it for awhile, even if would eventually be replaced by an equally bad regime, would still be good for us.  As long as Obama is in the White House, the bare minimum that would benefit America would be to buy time until a competent, pro-American (and, one hopes, pro-Israel) president is in the White House.  Obama, of course, was conspicuously absent during the attempted Iranian uprising, and I can’t fault him enough for that silence.

As for the other “revolutions” . . . .

Tunisia did not affect America one way or another.  It was short, sweet, and seemed to have a good outcome for the citizens, which is a blessing, and I’m pleased for them.

Egypt!?  Oy.  Mubarak was a slimeball but he was our slimeball.  He kept the peace with Israel and he did not threaten American interests.  Obama’s first response was to say nothing, then he said nothing useful, then he suddenly announced that Mubarak had to go, then he didn’t know what to do after having made that announcement, and then it became clear that he had no idea what to do in the vacuum following Mubarak’s departure.

Right now, Egypt is poised on the knife’s edge, as the Muslim Brotherhood, having waited for this moment for decades, slowly and carefully begins to consolidate power.  The MB is helped by the fact that this radical, nationalist, sharia oriented movement got the official Obama stamp of approval.  I’m not saying the Egyptian revolution could have been stopped or (since I lack a crystal ball) that it will be a bad thing in the long term.  I am saying, however, that Obama proved himself totally inept and incapable of shaping the situation to America’s advantage.  He was a reactor, not an actor.

In Libya, Obama again plays the helpless idiot.  He cedes leadership to France, which seizes it with gusto but that doesn’t mean that the seizure is to America’s benefit.  Libya’s oil supply is neither here nor there for us.  He’s now snuck is into a war that not only confers zero benefit on us, but that aids al Qaeda, which is currently trying to kill our troops in Afghanistan.  There is no good outcome here.

Three revolutions, three missteps by Obama.  Meanwhile, he and his State Department made all sorts of silly noises about President Assad being a reformer, despite the fact that his is one of the most evil, corrupt regimes in the world, not to mention the fact that it’s hand in hand with Iran.

So then, Syria blows up.  And what does the Obama administration do?  Nothing.  Burned twice, and trapped by its own recent word’s praising Assad’s presidency, it’s paralyzed.  The problem is that, Syria, like Iran, is a place where a revolution is not necessarily bad for America’s interests.  The Syrian people might go from the frying pan into the fire, which would be unfortunate for them, but we, at least would buy time.  A country in disarray is not usually a country that is capable of pursuing evil against nations outside its border.

The score for Obama is four revolutions and four leadership failures.  Sadly, given America’s staggering but still existent preeminence, that’s the exact same score for the Americans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Iranians and, so far, the Syrians.

I’m with Sadie, that there’s something deeply off-putting about Obama casually applying the ancient Passover story to the uprisings in the Middle East:

Passover recalls the bondage and suffering of Jews in Egypt and the miracle of the Exodus, but U.S. President Barack Obama says its message is reflected in Muslim uprisings.

In his annual message, prior to his third straight participation in the Passover Seder, President Obama stated, “The story of Passover…instructs each generation to remember its past, while appreciating the beauty of freedom and the responsibility it entails. This year that ancient instruction is reflected in the daily headlines as we see modern stories of social transformation and liberation unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Aside from the superficiality of Obama’s message, it has two other problems.  First, typically for a Progressive, he fails to understand revolts that are keyed to a people’s freedom versus revolts that simply raise up a new oppressor.

In America, because of the American Revolution, our template is that revolutions bring about greater freedom.  However, as France, Russia, China, Cuba, etc., show, our revolution was not typical.  As often as not, a “revolution” simply brings about an equal or greater tyranny.  It remains to be seen, for example, whether Egypt results in greater freedom for the people (since Mubarak was very oppressive) or lesser freedom (since there is nothing more repressive than an Islamic regime).  At least Mubarak was dormant when it came to waging war against Israel and America.

Libya sees exactly the same problem. Gaddafi is a monster but, vis a vis America, he has been a benign monster since 2003.  Now, though, we’re cheerfully spending millions of dollars a day (dollars we don’t have) to overthrow Gaddafi so that al Qaeda can take his place.  Al Qaeda, which is killing our troops in Afghanistan, will not improve the Libyan people’s lot (because radical Islam is always oppressive government), but it will put America at greater risk.

In Iran, I supported the Green Revolution because it was good for America:  anything that rocked the current Islamic government had to improve the status quo as far as Americans were concerned.  It was, frankly, questionable whether the Iranian people would simply be trading the frying pan for the fire.  While I applauded their courage, I had my doubts about their freedom quota.

Not all uprisings are created equal.  That’s problem number one with Obama’s facile little analysis.

Problem number two is that there’s something horrible about quoting one of the greatest stories in Jewish history, a story that has been retold annually in Jewish homes for thousands of years, to justify revolutions that will put into power people who have as their primary goal . . . killing Jews.  That’s just wrong.  Deeply, deeply, classlessly, tactlessly wrong.

Israel as the next Saudia Arabia?

According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, Israel’s unusually large and high-quality shale oil reserves may yield as much oil as all of Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242420737584278.html

These discoveries are in addition to of Israel’s recently diclosed gas reserves, also anticipated to be vaste.

There are few countries in the world as reality-based as Israel, because Israel has no other choice. It must be reality based in order to survive. This convinces me that Israel will waste  no time in developing these deposits, not only for self-sufficiency but also to gain leverage with the international community. Imagine the political consequences,, if you would, if Europe no longer had to depend upon the Middle East for its oil.

Oh, I wish I could say the same about our own country, rich beyond imagination in oil, gas and coal reserves. In our own country, a far-too-comfortable bourgeoisie entertains unicorn visions of Shangri La-like utopias, unspoiled by any energy development other than windmills and solar panels manufactured in China. The price of these idle visions is steep, as measured by lost jobs, investment capital, trade balances and tax revenues, not to mention military missions to fund our energy needs and keep world energy supplies safe. The self-satisfied American bourgeois elites sleep well, oblivious to the environmental, economic and social disasters inflicted upon our own country and others to satisfy our presumptions of environmental virtue. Not even a record recession (depression?) and all its accompanying miseries is enough to shake our self-satisfied masses from their ut-opium dreams.

The bottom-line is that most of the bad international news that we read about today, from Iraq to Libya, Iran, North Africa, Sudan, Nigeria and world jihadism in general, has to do with the quest for affordable energy. Take away oil as an issue by crashing its price on world markets through oversupply, and most of these issues cited above simply fade away, along with the revenues transfered to countries that use them to fund activities inimical to our prosperity and civilization. Crash the price of fuel, jihadism dies. Crash the price of fuel, the world’s poor and unemployed benefit. Israel gets it, we don’t.

North America enjoys the world’s largest deposits of oil, gas and coal. Europe has recently discovered immense gas deposits that should more-than meet its internal needs. It’s time for our civilization to wake up: we should be developing our own energy resources as a crack pace, if for nothing else than to avoid a world disaster. War and poverty also have environmental consequences.