Obama Must be Churchill, not Chamberlain

Iran is playing “Hitler.” Who is in the White House? Chamberlain or Churchill?

When it comes to foreign policy, it appears that it is amateur hour in the White House.

President Obama appears to be an ideologue, with immutable opinions -- opinions that take no account of existing facts. He is like the television weatherman who tells us, “It will be partly cloudy and sunny for the rest of the afternoon,” while at that very time, hail is pouring down outside his TV studio -- he has his teleprompter, and can’t bother to look out the window!

In case you haven’t noticed, the Muslim world is in utter chaos.

While President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry continue to dither (“negotiate with Iran”) over its efforts to build a nuclear bomb, Iran has built an 88.5 foot ballistic missile, which is sitting on a launch pad just outside Tehran. According to the Jerusalem Post, “The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States. The reason why is obvious, if even without a nuclear bomb, Iran possesses chemical and biological weapons.

In addition, in March, the Iranian defense ministry ceremoniously displayed eight new anti-ship ballistic missiles, known as the Khalij Fars. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, these weapons have the capacity to hone in on a ship’s infrared signature, which means that it can change direction while in flight to more accurately pursue a moving target up to 190 miles away.

In June, 2014, Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told a congressional subcommittee the  Khalij Fars “is capable of threatening maritime activity throughout the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”

In Lebanon, Iran provides Hezbollah with financial aid, training, weapons, and explosives from Iran. In November 2013, Israeli security officials learned that Hezbollah had close to 200 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles, including those that can track movement from high altitude and “kamikazes” that can avoid capture by radar and fire or drop munitions from low altitudes. In a rare televised appearance on Nov. 4. 2014, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned of a third Lebanon war and stated that Israel should close “all of your airports and your ports” in the event of one.  Nasrallah threatened Israel and claimed that “there is no place on the land of occupied Palestine that the resistance’s rockets cannot reach.” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/hizbollah.html)

And now, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, forcing the pro-American President to resign. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer writes, “While Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb has provoked a major clash between the White House and Congress, Iran’s march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked -- In Washington, that is. The Arabs have noticed. And the pro-American ones, the Gulf Arabs in particular, are deeply worried.”

Recently, the pro-American King of Saudi Arabia died. His successor will find his Saudi Arabia (Sunni) surrounded by Shiites, loyal to Iran: Yemen to the south, Iran to the East and Syria (pro Iranian) to the North. And worse, an unreliable ally in the White House. An American president who believes that America should “lead from behind” (to wit, Libya). A president who draws “red lines,” only to later ignore them.

Regardless what you think of Mr. Obama’s predecessor in office, one thing was clear to Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia: America was their ally, and America would go to war to protect them. The first President Bush demonstrated that when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait.

Now pro-Iranian Shiites have seized Yemen. Will Mr. Obama intervene as President Bush did, or will he be content to “deplore?”

If he fails to intervene, in the short term, he will destroy all belief that America is a reliable ally in the capitals of Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf States. In the longer run, I am afraid it will lead to the worst war the world has ever seen in the Middle East.

I say this, because I don’t think Israel is going to wait until Iran is so powerful that Israel has no chance of winning. Right now Saudi Arabia is doing the best it can: It is seeking to put off the war by depressing the price of oil to deprive Iran of oil money it would otherwise have to finance its military build-up.

I have quoted Winston Churchill before. It is even more applicable today.

“The duty (of the ministers of state) is first so to deal with other nations as to avoid strife and and war and to eschew aggression in all its forms, whether for nationalistic or ideological objects.

“But the safety of the State, the lives and freedom of their fellow countrymen ... make it right and imperative in the last resort, or when a final and definite conviction has been reached, that the use of force should not be excluded.

“If the circumstances are such as to warrant it, force may be used.

“And if this be so, it should be used under the conditions which are most favorable. There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win ....

“For the French Government to leave her faithful ally, Czechoslovakia, to her fate was a melancholy lapse from which flowed terrible consequence.”

If war is coming, and I think it is, I would rather fight Iran now when it is without nuclear weapons and a fully tested, fully operational ICBM. Mr. Obama has a fateful choice:

He can be Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill.

Iran, like Hitler, is advancing one step at a time, and is playing for keeps.



Posted: Saturday, February 7, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea