Tag: Iran

“Peace for Our Time”

The phrase “Peace for Our Time” was spoken on 30 September 1938 by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in his speech concerning the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German Declaration.[1] The phrase echoed Benjamin Disraeli, who upon returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878 stated “I have returned from Germany with peace for our time.” It is primarily remembered for its ironic value: less than a year after the agreement, following continued aggression from Hitler and his invasion of Poland, Europe was plunged into World War II.

In an exclusive interview with Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist in the New York Times, the president explains why he has no second thoughts about the accord with Iran. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/thomas-friedman-obama-makes-his-case-on-iran-nuclear-deal.html?_r=0

In my opinion President Obama has provided the world “Peace for Our Time.” He offers a series of explanations justifying his decision to reach a deal with Iran. The problem is that Iran has a history of supporting terrorists throughout the Middle East. The agreement does not stop Iran from obtaining conventional weapons that are used against everyone they consider an enemy. Iranians gather in their streets to yell “Death to America.” Is that the sign of a new friendlier Iran? We will live to rue the day this agreement was put in play.

North Korea’s lessons for an Iran Deal

If you think the Iran nuclear deal is a breakthrough, said Max Boot, in contemporary.com, consider how the same approach worked with North Korea. The 1994 Agreed Framework was supposed to prevent Pyongyang from developing nukes. But North Korea cheated, developed a uranium enrichment program on the sly, and tested its first bomb in 2006.

“Today it is a full-fledged nuclear power.” Last week, Chinese experts warned that Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal is more advanced than previously feared, with an estimated 20 warheads and another 20 on the way over the next year. U.S. defense officials believe North Korea can now feasibly mount a nuclear bomb on an intercontinental ballistic missile, with enough range to hit California. “It’s not too hard to imagine, a decade from now, reading similar reports” about Iran. And whereas North Korea is “a declining, bankrupt” regime whose leadership only wants to stay in power, Iran is an “expansionist state” with oil wealth, hostility toward Israel, and a goal of exporting its Shiite Islamic revolution throughout the region. The U.S. was duped by a untrustworthy dictatorship before. Why repeat that mistake?

Killing the Iran deal could backfire

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeds in getting Congress to kill President Obama’s deal with Iran, “it may be a Pyrrhic victory, said Ben-Dror Yemini in Yedioth Ahronoth (a national daily newspaper published in Tel Aviv, Israel). Of course the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programs in exchange for lifting of sanctions is terrible. The draft deal is full of loopholes and will lend legitimacy to the Islamic Republic’s repressive and dangerous theocracy. Most Arab countries are against the deal and privately support Netanyahu’s position rather than Obama’s. But America is still our most important ally and an even more open rift with the Obama administration could hurt. “Humiliating the president of the United States could evoke anti-Semitic blast waves” by seeming to give evidence to those who argue that rich Jews manipulate world events.

Even in the U.S., there is “an anti-Zionist coalition radical left and radical right” that would ramp up its anti-Semitic propaganda to frightening heights.” Instead of publicly defeating Obama by lobbying Congress, Netanyahu do far better to persuade the president to “climb down,” perhaps by pointing out that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khomeini is already backtracking from the deal as framed. Netanyahu needs to remember that while “Obama is wrong, he isn’t an enemy.”

There is NO PROOF We Can Trust Iran

The agreement with Iran over its right to a nuclear program that is for peaceful purposes must be viewed with significant skepticism.  There should be no agreement without a complete and verifiable elimination of all their facilities that could develop a nuclear weapon.  A new president was selected in Iran and suddenly that country has turned a page and is willingly agreeing with demands of the world.  It is too incredible to be taken seriously.

I don’t have to be an expert on nuclear and missile diplomacy to be suspicious of Iran’s ultimate intent.  I only have to look at the time line of events that ultimately led to a North Korea with the ability to shoot nuclear armed missiles at the United   States, Japan, South Korea and most of the nations rimming the Pacific Ocean.

Iran is using the North Korean template to further its development of nuclear weapons that will threaten the world.

The Arms Control Association has posted on its web site Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy along with some extra details from Wikipedia.

Here are the highlights of the sequence of events dealing with North Korea.

December 12, 1985:North Korea accedes to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but does not complete a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Under Article III of the NPT, North Korea has 18 months to conclude such an arrangement. In coming years, North Korea links adherence to this provision of the treaty to the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea.

September 27, 1991: President George Bush announces the unilateral withdrawal of all naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad. Approximately 100 U.S. nuclear weapons had been based in South Korea. Eight days later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocates.

January 30, 1992: More than six years after signing the NPT, North Korea concludes a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

February 9, 1993: The IAEA demands special inspections of two sites that are believed to store nuclear waste. The request is based on strong evidence that North Korea has been cheating on its commitments under the NPT. North Korea refuses the IAEA’s request.

Late 1993: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea had separated about 12 kilograms of plutonium. This amount is enough for at least one or two nuclear weapons.

January 1994: The director of the CIA estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons.

June 15, 1994: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter negotiates a deal with North Korea in which Pyongyang confirms its willingness to “freeze” its nuclear weapons program and resume high-level talks with the United States. Bilateral talks are expected to begin, provided that North Korea allows the IAEA safeguards to remain in place, does not refuel its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, and does not reprocess any spent nuclear fuel.

October 16, 1996: After detecting North Korean preparations for a test of its medium-range Nodong missile, the United States deploys a reconnaissance ship and aircraft to Japan. Following several meetings in New York between U.S. and North Korean diplomats, the State Department confirms on November 8 that the missile test has been canceled.

July 15, 1998: The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission concludes that the United States may have “little or no warning” before facing a long-range ballistic missile threat from “rogue states,” such as North Korea and Iran.

September 9, 1999: A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reports that North Korea will “most likely” develop an ICBM capable of delivering a 200-kilogram warhead to the U.S. mainland by 2015.

January 14, 2005: North Korea says it is willing to restart stalled talks on its nuclear programme, according to the official KCNA news agency. The statement says North Korea “would not stand against the US but respect and treat it as a friend unless the latter slanders the former’s system and interferes in its internal affairs”.

January 24, 2013: The North Korean National Defense Commission announces its intentions to conduct another nuclear test and continue rocket launches.

March 13, 2013: North Korea confirmed it ended the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, declaring that North Korea “is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression” and warned that the next step was an act of “merciless” military retaliation against its enemies.

March 26, 2013: The U.S. again dispatched B-52 bombers from Guam to overfly South Korean territory as part of the ongoing Foal Eagle exercise. These flights were, according to US Department of Defense sources, routine flights intended to demonstrate America’s capability of maintaining a “continuous bomber presence” in the region.

March 30,2013: North Korea declared a ‘state of war’ against South Korea. A North Korean statement promised “stern physical actions” against “any provocative act”. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared that rockets were ready to be fired at American bases in the Pacific. This was in response to two nuclear-capable American B-2 stealth bombers flying over the Korean peninsula on March 28.

Is America Finally Understanding the World?

The answer to the question is “maybe not.”

Almost 4,500 American solders lost their lives in Iraq.  Thousands more were seriously injured.  Was it worth the harm?  I do not see sufficient benefits to justify the investment.

President George W. Bush really believed that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was the right thing to do.

 You could argue that the information about WMD was faulty and that should have been enough to deter the invasion of Iraq. We really do not know what was in Mr. Bush’s mind nor what he was really told.

The invasion of Afghanistan was easier to justify.  The Taliban refused to extradite al-Qaeda leaders to the United   States.  al-Qaeda was the group that carried out the World Trade Center attack.

Mr. Bush argued that part of our mission was to spread democracy to Islamic nations that had lived under tyranny for hundreds of years.  The idea of spreading democracy is a wonderful theory that looks good on paper.  The problem is that most of the people in those countries do not understand the ideas of Western Democracy.  Those that do, do not accept the basic premises of western freedom and democracy.  It’s those words in the American Declaration of Independence that best express the idea of our system of society and government.  Let’s be honest, it took America 89 years to actually implement our own ideals.  That’s the time from the American Declaration of Independence to the end of the American Civil War.

So how can we expect Iraq, Afghanistan, or other Middle Eastern Islamic nations to become Western democracies in just a year or two?  We Can’t!

Thus the United States needs to be concerned with its own survival in a world where many of the players have alternate ideas of how government and society should function.  I believe that President Obama has not yet fully understood this reality.  Why?  1) Our lack of preparation for an attack at Benghazi.  2) The mild response to North Korea’s stated intention to shoot a nuclear weaponized rocket at the United States.  3) The lack of progress in talks with Iran.

North Korea and Iran have stated repeatedly that they consider the United States their enemy.  They have stated their hatred on numerous occasions.  North Korea has stated it is preparing a nuclear armed missile that will target the U.S.A.   Iran had states that their first target is Israel followed by the United States.

We should be concerned and we should be prepared.  Neither North Korea nor Iran has participated in real talks to end the ongoing diplomatic conflicts.  There is nothing that has been reported that indicates that there will be a reduction in the disagreements we have with these two countries.

Unless a new approach to the two America haters is developed I predict there will be a war with both of them.  I hope President Obama has made adequate preparations.

American Preparation for a Nuclear Attack

America does not appear to be prepared for a nuclear attack!

Associated Press report, “The Pentagon announced Friday it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to an Alaska-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.”

Chuck Hagel“We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,” Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, told a Pentagon news conference.

I take issue with this plan.  Are we waiting for North Korea to shoot missiles at the United States before we would attack them?  If we saw North Korea preparing to attack, why wouldn’t we take a pre-emptive strike against a facility that is being prepped to shoot a rocket at the United States?  News reports say that America’s anti-missile system is flawed and may not work at all.  I wonder why we are not using Israel’s Iron Dome system.

Furthermore, where have our leaders been all of these past years when we knew that their objective has been to obtain nuclear missiles for war?

Today we are trying to dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.  When will we determine that they cannot be persuaded to stop the development efforts?  What are the signals that tell the United States that we must take military action to stop the Iranian nuclear development?

I am disappointed with our government’s lack of plans.

Perhaps moving to Mexico or Canada now might be something to consider.