Friday, August 30, 2013

The British Parliament Was Also Wrong About Hitler

Stamp of the Greater German Reich, depicting A...
Stamp of the Greater German Reich, depicting Adolf Hitler as the Führer of the Reich. The stamp's value is 42 Pfennig. Deutsch: Die Briefmarke des Grossdeutschen Reiches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For a decade the British parliament stayed in denial on Hitler. As long he does not directly attack Britain, he is fine, that was the thinking. Churchill was the lone voice who saw Hitler for who he was. It took some major catastrophes for the British parliament to finally start making sense on Hitler.

If the British parliament had woken up to Hitler years before it did, the world might have been able to skip a world war.

The car is the modern day horse carriage. Assad is a modern day Hitler. The guy has already slaughtered over 100,000 of his own people in less than a year.

The White House has to make a call on this one.

Wars are always ugly. You never have the best intelligence and the best resources. The timing is never right. You make mistakes along the way. Wars are expensive. They are almost always hard to get out of. But there are times when a war is the only just option and a just nation just has to make the plunge. Gandhi was alive at the time Hitler was alive. But I doubt Gandhi had a solution for Hitler.

There is the British parliament and then there is this thing called leadership.
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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Political Benefits For Obama From A Syria Strike

Official photographic portrait of US President...
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(1) Greatness

You liberate people, you enter the greatness department as president.

(2) Avoid Being A Lame Duck

An Obama who pushed out Assad will be a stronger Obama in domestic politics. He will still be able to do things all the way to 2016. In short, a strike on Syria makes immigration reform more possible, for example.

(3) Help The Economy

World War II got America out of the Great Depression. Bringing democracy to Syria, Iran and Russia will bring the unemployment rate in America down to around 5%.

(4) Clarity Of Purpose

I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in New York City. I am talking early 2007. To me the case for a military strike on Syria is as clear as the case for Obama was back then.
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Iran, Russia: Election Holding Non Democracies

Why Iran Is Nervous

Iran (Persia) with Black, Caspian and Arabian ...
Iran (Persia) with Black, Caspian and Arabian seas around (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Think of Iran as a chair. You take Assad out of the picture and now the chair has only three legs. Is the chair nervous at the prospect?

Assad is worth taking out with or without chemical weapons. The chair ending up with three legs is a good thing for what the Iranian regime did in 2009 to its own people.
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Israel Can Defend Itself

English: Map showing the maximum territorial e...
English: Map showing the maximum territorial extent of countries under the direct influence of the Soviet Union — between the Cuban Revolution/21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union/Sino-Soviet split. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For Iran to say if the US attacks Syria, Iran will attack Israel is kind of like suggesting a few things. One is that Iran and the US are equivalent powers, like the Soviet Union and the US back in the days. I have a hard time believing Iran is the new Soviet Union. It is a little itty, bitty state.

During the Cold War it would have been like the Soviet Union saying to the US, if you attack Cuba, we will attack your ally Turkey. That was proportionate talk somewhat. This talk by Iran is outlandish. Oh really? You are going to attack Israel?

I don't mean to take sides, but objectively speaking, in terms of sheer military capability, Israel could take Syria and Iran at once. Or Israel would not have been talking - like it has for years - in terms of going solo into Iran to take out its nuclear sites.

This is kind of like if Poland threatened a trade war with the United States. China threatening a trade war would be plausible. But Poland?

The president should not worry about Israel and do right by the people of Syria.
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