[FoRK] Upmanship / Pandering

[Jeff Bone]

On Apr 22, 2008, at 12:01 PM, Bill Humphries wrote:
>
> On Apr 22, 2008, at 9:04 AM, geege schuman wrote:
>> I presume this is a pitch to the Jewish voter, but to mention  
>> obliterating
>> Iran (retaliatory) seems a little extreme.  I guess Barack could  
>> come back
>> with "vaporizing."
>
> Actually, Senator Obama's response was reasonable, and probably lost  
> on the voters.
>
> > In response, Mr Obama said: "Using words like 'obliterate' - it  
> doesn't actually produce good results, and so I'm not interested in  
> sabre-rattling."

That sounds entirely reasonable...

Unless you understand that war is the continuation of politics by  
other means (von Clausewitz) and that sabre-rattling has its place,  
perhaps particularly when confronting medieval fanatics on a mission  
from Allah.  Senator Obama's comments on this reinforce my belief that  
this made severely misunderstands the nature of the threat posed to  
Western modernity by the Islamo-fascists.

For all that pacifists would like it to be otherwise, the threat  
nuclear annihilation has proven to be an effective deterrent against  
aggression historically - even with far more powerful and  
diplomatically sophisticated opponents such as the former Soviet.

We had an opportunity to win Iran memetically back before Bush's  
colossal "Axis of Evil" gaffe.  For better or worse, they are now the  
enemy, and it's a lot harder to turn enemies (particularly  
irrationals) to friends or neutrals w/o the application of force than  
it is to turn friends or neutrals into enemies.

I applaud Hillary for her clarity on this issue.

jb