View 391 December 5 - 11, 2005 (original) (raw)

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Sunday, December 11, 2005

I had occasion to look this up for reply to a correspondent, but it is worth recording here.

"If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."

Benjamin Disraeli.

It is my understanding that the National Security Policy of the United States asserts that establishing democracies world wide is the best security for the US, and that democracies never go to war with each other. I can understand the desire to submit to this delusion, but I hope there are enough cold hearted realists in our policy making establishment to make that policy mere fair words, and not something we actually use in planning. Alas, the Iraqi war looks to me as if such Jacobin sentiments were taken quite seriously.

Scam warning over in mail. Worth your time.

I got through my weekend by using the nose pump. It really works on plugged up painful sinuses:

===============

I received this from a friend:

I found the current National Security Strategy document online. It is enlightening.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

You might also find the national strategy for victory in Iraq interesting.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_national_strategy_20051130.pdf

Invite comments, including from the Jacobins among us.

=============

So we live in Perilous Times?

Subject: Israel readies for strike on Iran nuclear facilities

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-1920074-524,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1920074,00.html

The Sunday Times December 11, 2005

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, and Sarah Baxter, Washington

<http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gif>

ISRAEL�S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran�s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was �losing patience� with Iran.

A senior White House source said the threat of a nuclear Iran was moving to the top of the international agenda and the issue now was: �What next?� That question would have to be answered in the next few months, he said.

So. What next?

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