Waited Too Long

A brush fire not confronted early can become an inferno. A threat not contained when manageable can have unprecedented and unimaginable consequences. The international left that consciously advances evil is likely to bring charges against Israeli leaders, military officers, and possibly even enlisted men for non-existent war crimes that never took place as Israel finally answered the barrage of missiles, rockets, and mortars from Gaza. Now the Jewish state faces a threat unimaginably worse than any issuing from Iran's proxies in Gaza or Lebanon- total nuclear annihilation. The lunatic religious fanatics of Iran have unleashed carnage on their own citizens since the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. Jimmy Carter, who waxed moral while facilitating the rise of the world's most murderous brand of fanaticism, is the first and therefore most blameworthy in the line of leaders that could have prevented what the world now faces. He saw the Shah as repressive with SAVAK trying to prevent the rise of Islamism and incidentally infiltration and overthrow by neighboring Soviet Reds using unsavory techniques including violence and even torture against the most dangerous elements that sought to undermine the Pahlavi regime. Carter simply could not tolerate what he saw as an autocrat and allowed Khomeini to rise in his place. Khomieni went after the apparatchiks of the Shah's government with a vengeance- slaughtering thousands. Perhaps that was to be expected, but then he turned his attention to the pacifist Baha'i community particularly in Shiraz and as the world was silent, killed thousands more. Khomieni persecuted other ethnic and religious minorities, disappearing several Jews who unlike the Baha'i had enough influence in the world that violence against them was not ignored (at least generating some attention). Carter was given the ultimate opportunity to reverse Khomeinism when the Shia leadership conspired with "students" to seize the US embassy in Tehran. Carter dallied, refused to use US might to the extent he could have when it mattered and oversaw the national humiliation of the United States at the hands of the mullahs. The US squandered more opportunities to thwart the Iranian madness as that nation focused her resources on developing atomic weaponry through the Clinton administration and the last President Bush, who rightly saw Iran as one of the three heads of the Axis of Evil. But Israel saw the looming threat and also did not do what was needed to stop it. Sharon, who was supposed to be a brilliant tactician and bold military adventurer, contracted Israel security needs vis-a-vis Iran out to the world when Israel could have staged her own attack while the threat was just budding as she had done when Iraq was aiming for a nuclear capacity, but he did nothing. Olmert seemed more interested in feathering his own nest in petty ways than advancing Israel's safety. Now, Netanyahu faces the Hobson's choice of destroying as much of Iran's nuclear, industrial, and military capacity in a preemptive first strike as Israel can, or the loss of his own nation to nuclear carnage- a new holocaust Iranian leaders have said they would gladly sacrifice twenty million of their own people to achieve. Even as the world sees Ahmadinejad unleash the force of the mullah regime against Iran's own people, leaders with the ability to stop genocidal intentions do not sense the urgency. As has been the case in events far too often, the world makes itself willfully powerless against evil because while the virus was small, no one bothered to halt its spread.