I want to add an ironic point to the coverage (here, here, here and here) of Benjamin Netanyahu’s eloquent speech this week before more than 3,000 people at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities in Los Angeles.
There is a video of Netanyahu’s speech at Jerusalem Online (hat tip: Atlas) that is essential viewing. It is a powerful speech, with its repeated refrain that “it is 1938,
The irony is that the most haunting part of the speech came from someone else’s words. Here is a critical part of Netanyahu’s speech:
There is time to act in a variety of ways, and all ways must be considered, and all ways that work must be employed, because we cannot let this thing happen again.
Now to do this requires something that is particularly difficult. It requires what I call pre-emptive leadership. And of all the activities required in the political, economic and military fields, pre-emption is the most difficult. You can never prove to people what the situation would be if you do not move. . . .
All leadership exacts a cost -- because otherwise you don’t need leaders. You just need managers . . . you just run to the head of the herd. As it charges in one direction, you just charge along with it.
Today what is required is leadership, leadership to change this tide of history, leadership to confront this danger -- leadership to act. . . .
For us the Jewish people, too many times in our history we didn’t see danger in time, and when we did, it was too late. Well, we see it now. . . . But can the world wake up? Can we wake up the world? Can we get the
United States to act on its commitment -- a commitment made by President Bush -- he said we will not letarm itself with nuclear weapons? Everybody in his right mind should support that position. It should be carried out. Can we get the world to do that? Iran
A man I very much admire -- he said “no.” This is what Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons in 1935, about this tendency of democracies to sleep, while dangers lurk and gather up:
“There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as
. It falls into that long, dismal category of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” Rome So where are we in this? Do we get it? Does the world get it? Do they think it will pass? We’re overstating it? We’re not. It’s 1938,
Iran is, and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons. Germany
Great speech. Hope he's right about Iran's nukes. Could spoil the whole day if these guys are correct:
The ... accusation, that Iran has "regularly hidden information about its nuclear program" is equally specious. Much of what the United States has called "concealment" was never concealed at all, when the reports of the United Nations inspection team are examined. Many of the U.S. charges about removing topsoil and bulldozing material at some of the research sites are unsupported by the United Nations. Moreover, even if one concedes that Iran did conceal some processes, this activity started 18-20 years ago, when the revolution was still young and Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive, under completely different political actors than are in power today.
Indeed, whatever Iran did or didn't do in the past, they are in compliance with the NNPT at present. Indeed, there would be no way to accuse them of anything if they had not been so compliant about responding to NNPT requests for information. The NNPT grants all signatories the right to pursue nuclear research for peaceful purposes of precisely the kind in which Iran is currently engaged.
The mantra "Iran must not get nuclear weapons" has been repeated so often now that most people have come to believe that Iran has them or is getting them. This implication is completely unproven. The tragedy would be that in the end, U.S. hostility may goad Iran into a real nuclear weapons program.
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ac517cce4e1b80d6fa76f4089315a243
U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel
Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A17
U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091302052_pf.html
Posted by: Bruce | November 16, 2006 at 03:13 AM
THE NEXT ACT
Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-11-27
Posted 2006-11-20
The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.)
The C.I.A.’s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061127fa_fact
Posted by: Brewer | November 19, 2006 at 01:11 PM