Year-End Greetings From Ahmadinejad

President Obama waves farewell to his adoring fans as he prepares to head off to the sunnier climes of Hawaii to spend the Christmas-New Year holiday with his family (whoever they may be). Shortly before Christmas, he received an end-of-year message from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad summing up the autocrat's year long dealings with the open hand of The One. The message was essentially "stuff it you fool, we're going to do whatever we damned well please, so kindly keep talking while doing nothing."

Almost a year ago, Obama promised to extend the open hand of friendship to everyone, so long as they would unclench their fists. And how well has that worked out with the leader of Iran? So far, he's sucker-punched the Lamb three or four times with that clenched fist. "Let's talk some more--Pow!" In his most-recent suicidal gesture of naivete, Obama proposed that the world rid itself of its nuclear arms. Ahmadinejad's reply? "Bam! Sure, fool, just as soon as you get rid of all 8,000 of your nuclear arms. Trust me. I'm not really going to sock you again." It's like Charlie Brown and Lucy on an international scale. And like Charlie Brown, Obama just refuses to learn.

While Obama spent the year on the America's Apology Tour, his counterpart in Iran has been very busy as well. When Obama timidly questioned A-Jad about the discovery of a secret nuclear development facility, the leader of Iran replied: "Zap! And if you like that one, wait until you see the rest of them, you wuss." While The One was busy flitting around the world extending his open hand to everyone and bowing to foreign royalty, Ahmadinejad was generally at home, tending to business. Like the development of two-stage rockets to carry the nuclear arms he is developing at his energy research facilities.

The Iranian masses were in revolt against the Iranian rigged election, and although Obama doesn't know how to make a fist, he gave them a good swat with the back of his hand. Then he returned the open hand to his competitor. Even during the huge anti-government demonstrations last week at the funeral of dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Obama made a few tepid remarks about "possible" oppression in the vile dictatorship which he insists on referring to as "The Islamic Republic of Iran." Most recently, the oppressors have killed and wounded dozens of anti-government demonstrators. Obama's criticism of the Islamic Republic from the greens in Hawaii was "fore!" The Islamic Republic isn't the problem, jerk, it's the Ahmadinejad government of Iran. Obama's advisers at home have advised him never to miss an opportunity to exploit a crisis, but overseas he has been advised never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Obama believes he can out-talk Ahmadinejad, but there's little chance of that. And unlike Obama, A-Jad can talk and chew gum at the same time. While hurling insults at the West, tossing death-threats at Israel, and heaping verbal offal on Obama, the dictator's other ability is in play. He's supervising the rapid development of Iran's nuclear capabilities. Obambi is still just talking and making cow-eyes at the cameras. The opportunity missed, of course, is open support for the dissidents and the cessation of mere talk. If our peacenik-in-chief is unwilling to take any military action to stop the threat to Israel and Europe (and eventually, the United States), the least he could do is throw a monkey-wrench into Iran's machinery by distracting the military and the politicians in a battle simply to hold onto their ill-gotten power.

Obama has already peace-talked Russia into open opposition to meaningful sanctions against Iran by unilaterally pulling the missile defense shield out from under Eastern Europe. They haven't exactly punched him yet, but at one meeting, the entire Russian delegation pointedly refused to shake his open hand. While talking about "fundamentally re-making America," he has gotten America so far into hock that major creditor Red China also laughs at the idea of sanctions against Iran. Western Europe shares the talking trait with Obama, and though publicly willing to go along with sanctions against Iran, the governments are privately terrified by Iran's threats, and see no reason to believe that their former military benefactor across the Atlantic is willing to help them defend themselves.

Dogs can smell fear, and Ahmadinejad is a son of a, well, you know. Back on November 4, which is tenderly know as "hate America day" in Iran since it marks the date of the seizure of the American embassy during the watch of another talker (from Georgia), there were staged government demonstrations. But they weren't the only ones. An even larger group of dissidents showed up, and shouted, among other things, "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them." And The One largely ignored their pleas, instead recommitting himself to good relations with The Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmadinejad thereupon strengthened the police and the military to roust the dissidents, as violently as possible without arousing the suspicions of the fellow travelers at the Associated Press.

And what of the rapid progress of nuclear development in Iran? If it can't be stopped, and were the Iranian dictatorship to be overthrown with the assistance of American support, we would at least face a much more reasonable, and perhaps even pro-Western Iran. Though a nuclear Iran would change the entire dynamic in the Middle East, it would at least be one less murderous regime out to nuke Tel Aviv, Paris, London, or New York City.

The secular head of the current Iranian regime is a madman with delusions of grandeur. If you know the story of the Iranian version of Islam, you know that he is working hard to bring about the conditions that will bring "the hidden imam" out of the closet to oversee the Muslim version of Armageddon. Meanwhile, America has a messiah with no clothes (or brain, for that matter). Although Israel denies that it has nuclear weapons, it is unlikely that it does not. But Israel would use nuclear weapons only against an attack on Israel itself, never offensively. The Great American Talker has just recently denied Israel a viable alternative--a new generation of bunker-buster bombs which would easily penetrate the underground facilities where Imadinnerjacket is building his nuclear weapons and preparing to deploy his missiles in violation of a long string of UN reprimands and meaningless threats. With Iran's Russian and Chinese-developed long-range radar antiaircraft facilities nearly in place and operable, Israel is quickly being estopped from making conventional airborne attacks on Iran.

Obama could use an updated version of the chastened and reinvigorated John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union upon the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." Just add Israel to that list, replace Soviet Union with Iran, and you've got one helluva an argument for scaring the other members of the Iranian government into a more reasonable course while strengthening the resolve of the Iranian people not to be utterly destroyed to preserve a government they hate. By then the Russians had figured out that Kennedy was no longer a callow youth to be dragged around by his ear. I'm not very confident that the same can be said about the waffling Obama.

In order to avoid a Middle East theater-wide war it is vital that the Iranian dissidents become successful Iranian revolutionaries. Obama doesn't know or care about the concept "if you want peace, prepare for war." But A-Jad clearly know its mirror version--"if you want war, prepare for it." If the terrorist regime in Iran is not overthrown, and soon, there will be only military options remaining. And those will be necessary as the result of an Iranian attack, possibly nuclear, on one of its neighbors. I think we can guess which one would be first.

Obama's leftist credentials leave him almost entirely incapable of finding a way to supply arms and military support to the Iranian dissidents. But the Iranians are the best-educated Islamic nation of all, and the huge and growing youth population is plenty smart enough to know how to obtain what they need if a major power like America gives at least strong support to their movement. But Obama thinks he can still play both ends against the middle and talk everybody into a satisfactory resolution of "the problem." Not much real physical support was given to the Russian, Polish, Czech or East German dissidents, but we had a President who was willing to challenge them on their own ground, and speak forcefully enough that the oppressors had at least to wonder if we might cross that line into covert or even overt military support of the freedom movements. Ultimately, not only did that allow the satellite states to overthrow their regimes, but ended the seventy-year reign of the communist party in the former Soviet Union. Reagan put cruise missiles into Europe, Obama took missile defenses out.

Time is not on the side of the West. America must prepare the way with more than sweet words, and convince Russia and China that at the very least they should stay out of the way and not assist the tyrannical Iran regime against whatever action is taken. Saddam Hussein used biochemical weapons to protect his mad regime, and it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurds and other citizens of his own country. What makes this verbose sissy of a President think that someone like Ahmadinejad won't do far worse with nuclear weapons and a means to deliver them into places that now will have no missile defenses?