GlennFrazier.com

Bill Bennett has for a little while, now, been intricately involved in a campaign to show solidarity with democracy-seeking citizens of Iraq during their upcoming election. The idea is to cover America with purple-dyed index fingers, starting this Monday.

I like the idea, and will probably be participating myself.

As part of the campaign, he has penned a letter to retailers with suggestions for supporting the campaign. Go read the letter. In it, Mr. Bennett quotes President Abraham Lincoln. The quote was an intriguing one, so I hunted down the source. The part Mr. Bennett quoted is toward the end, regarding the abstract truth implanted in the Declaration of Independence. The whole letter is worth reading, though, so in case you haven't seen it before, here it is in its entirety:

Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859

Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.

Gentlemen

Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.

I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.

But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.

One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.

We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln

Indeed.

(Yes, I just 'indeed'ed President Lincoln. What of it?)

Posted by Mac at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you get the time, you really, really should read the U. S. Army War College's Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran, edited by Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson and just released last month.

More and more, I've found the headline news links at Glenn Beck's website to be a very good resource. Today I noticed a link there to the World Tribune article, "U.S. Army report: Israel can't stop Iran nukes":

Geopolitical limitations render Israel's air force militarily incapable of halting Iran's nuclear weapons program according to a new report published the by U.S. Army War College.

The report asserts Israel lacks the military capability to locate and destroy Iranian nuclear assets. The report said the Israel Air Force cannot operate at such long distances from its bases.

After reading the article, I went to the amazingly informative and provocative Strategic Studies Institute of the U. S. Army War College, and found the report in question. The download page for the publication has an abstract:

As Iran edges closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb and its missiles extend an ever darker diplomatic shadow over the Middle East and Europe, Iran is likely to pose three threats. First, Iran could dramatically up the price of oil by interfering with the free passage of vessels in and through the Persian Gulf as it did during the l980s or by threatening to use terrorist proxies to target other states’ oil facilities. Second, it could diminish American influence in the Gulf and Middle East by increasing the pace and scope of terrorist activities against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Israel, and other perceived supporters of the United States. Finally, it could become a nuclear proliferation model for the world and its neighbors (including many states that otherwise would be more dependent on the United States for their security) by continuing to insist that it has a right to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then withdrawing once it decides to get a bomb.

The synopsis goes on to comprehensively list the possible U. S. responses, which are quoted completely below, but broken out into a list format:

To contain and deter Iran from posing such threats, the United States and its friends could take a number of steps:

• increasing military cooperation (particularly in the naval sphere) to deter Iranian naval interference;
• reducing the vulnerability of oil facilities in the Gulf outside of Iran to terrorist attacks, building and completing pipelines in the lower Gulf region that would allow most of the non-Iranian oil and gas in the Gulf to be exported without having to transit the Straits of Hormuz;
• diplomatically isolating Iran by calling for the demilitarization of the Straits and adjacent islands, creating country-neutral rules against Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty state members who are suspected of violating the treaty from getting nuclear assistance from other state members and making withdrawal from the treaty more difficult;
• encouraging Israel to set the pace of nuclear restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit;
• and getting the Europeans to back targeted economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to shut down its most sensitive nuclear activities.

You can (and should) directly download the 322 page report in PDF format and read it, if you really want to understand the matters surrounding the crisis we are blithely rushing into with Iran.

From the first chapter of the report itself:

When it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, most U.S. and allied officials are in one or another state of denial. All insist it is critical to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet, few understand just how late it is to attempt this. Iran is now no more than 12 to 48 months from acquiring a nuclear bomb, lacks for nothing technologically or materially to produce it, and seems dead set on securing an option to do so. As for the most popular policy options―to bomb or bribe Iran―too few analysts and officials are willing to admit publicly how self-defeating these courses of action might be.

This report, based on commissioned research and 2 years’ worth of meetings with the nation’s leading experts on Iran, the Middle East, and nuclear proliferation, is intended to highlight sounder policy options. It makes seven recommendations designed to reduce the
potential harm Iran might otherwise do or encourage, once it gained
nuclear weapons or the ability to have them in a matter of days. The report reflects analysis done at a series of competitive strategies workshops that focused on the next 2 decades of likely competition between America and Iran and what comparative strengths the United States and its allies might use to leverage Iranian behavior.

Read the rest if you get the time. I'm not (necessarily) endorsing all of the recommendations in the report, but it certainly is one of the more clear and complete examinations of a problem that, frankly, the people of the United States do not appear politically/emotionally prepared to face.

Posted by Mac at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)