If I listened long enough to you,
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true.
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced, while I cried,
Still I'd look to find a reason to believe.
-- "A Reason To Believe"

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK that a rich and powerful organ grinder like the New York Times spend a little money and hire a "Stupidity Editor" (SE) ? No, not an internal SE, since just riding herd on the anonymous Editorial scribblers would be a full time job for at least five Pulitzer finalists, but simply an external SE to play "Katie, bar the door!" for all the gunk that consistently seeps onto the OP portion of the OP/ED page.

An old friend who works at the New York Times once confessed to me, not without a certain shame, that the overarching game plan of the Times was to become "the national newspaper of teachers and college professors." And in this they are, beyond a doubt, succeeding. But that does not mean they have to give space every other day to the kind of sludge seeping from the hyperbolic sump pumps that ceaselessly churn in the petrified forests of the Groves of Academe.

Today's seepage is entitled, in a heart warming and positive manner, We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran . It was pumped out of the fervid mind of one Barry R. Posen, a professor of political "science" at MIT. It is a soothing, calming item that, blithely overlooking the unremitting dementia that has ruled Iran for decades, purports to prove that a nuclear Iran would simply be a 'management' problem for the Western Elites to 'handle.' On the one hand, the message of the essay is "Don't worry. Be happy," while on the other it is the parallel message of "What? Me worry?"

While there may in some alternate universe be a cogent argument for simply kicking back and letting events in Iran unfold as they will, there's nothing resembling it in Mr. Posen's article. The unstated premise is that an Islamic nuclear weapon developed by the world's leading Radical Islamic state would forever remain specific to that state. This concept evolves from the idea that nation states are still the only social structures of significance in the 21st century. It's a tidy concept, but it is wrong. The globalization of ideology driven by instant communication and the ability of men and material to be anywhere on earth within 48 hours, makes Posen's premise of nation states as the only significant actors on the world stage quaint to say the least.

What the "What? Me worry?" intellectuals in our universities fail to see, or, seeing, fail to credit, is the fact that Islamic Fascism is a global virus which is replicating with all the speed of other viruses in the modern age. Indeed, it is currently outpacing avian flu. While it may take the resources of a state controlled by religious fanatics and fat with oil funds to create a nuclear weapon, the distribution network for such devices is already in place use them.

For example: If we can only monitor 5% of the containers coming into US ports, how many containers can Mexico monitor? Indeed, to deliver a nuclear weapon to Mexico, you don't need a container or a port of entry at all. A fast boat and a beach in the Yucatan will do quite nicely, thank you. Once that's done, you don't have to control a US port to attack the US with a nuclear weapon, or even drive it into the country. You merely have to get it into Mexico and truck it to the border fence at Juarez. Nuclear blasts are not stopped by border guards. [See Nukes South of the Border Will Do Nicely, Thank You published here in November of 2004.]

Still, Posen has no fret in him. He begins with a soothing bromide followed by a hopeful assertion:

Indeed, while it's seldom a positive thing when a new nuclear power emerges, there is reason to believe that we could readily manage a nuclear Iran.

As for Posen's "reason to believe," well there is always a "reason" to "believe" in a positive political outcome when dealing with Fascist states. That this belief is regularly confounded in past and present history has to also be factored into the equation. Mr. Chamberlain had many reasons to believe he had achieved "Peace in our time," when all he had achieved was to give the Nazi state the time and the space to arm and maneuver. Fascist states, during their rise, depend on reasoned diplomacy to buy them time while they fashion a larger stick. When it comes to dealing with Fascists, as a friend of mine once said in a different context, "Hope is the enemy."

The United Nations recently went through numerous iterations of hoping, and threw away many years and many more lives with their "reasons to believe" that Saddam Hussein would comply with their various demands backed by huffery and puffery. It went on believing right up to the point that their mission to Iraq was blown to bits in the early days of the US occupation of Iraq. The UN is currently following the same secular religious notion in the Sudan and elsewhere with similar tragic and criminal results.

Absolutely top-shelf.  Go read the rest.

American Digest