Coruscating through the bloodstream of American history are wars that devastated the young and plunged the nation into despair. In World War II millions lost their lives across the globe. Recently thousands were casualties of the attenuated war in Afghanistan and the conflict in Iraq. Bodies were broken, minds impaired, suggesting yet again that war is hell.
So moved by conditions in the recent past, the West will do whatever it can to avoid war. Appeasement is in the diplomatic air. Verbal arabesques are employed to avoid saying the obvious. Yet despite all the efforts at avoidance, war is encroaching. As Trotsky noted, you may not want war, but war may want you. Alas, war wants us.
It is axiomatic to contend that if you are unwilling to sacrifice in order to defend liberty, the enemy will sacrifice to tyrannize you. The choice we face is not war or peace or even war or conciliation. The real choice, the one we want to reject, is war or enslavement.
The radical Islamic forces may represent a small faction of the total Islamic population, but that claim is irrelevant. Small groups invariably dominate historical forces. Although tactics may vary, radical Islamists share basic principles: the desire for a global caliphate; the imposition of sharia and the use of violent jihad as an instrument for advancement. If we do not oppose these ideas directly in battle and on the ideological front, we will be dealing with them on our doorstep.
While ISIL at the moment does not have the capability of reaching our shores, Iran, the newly anointed ally of the United States, does. As the principal state sponsor of terrorism whose tentacles have reached Argentina, Venezuela and European capitals, it is odd that the P5+1 has been so accommodative in nuclear negotiation. It appears that we have backtracked from our stance that Iran must not have nuclear weapons, to a position that supposedly delays their acquisition. This, of course, has been stated before and in many quarters, including a letter written by Senator Tom Cotton and signed by 47 senators.
In the quiver of these senators is sanctions, alleged to be a factor in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. However, even with the sanctions of the past, Iran never expressed an unwillingness to suspend its nuclear development activity. What most people will not say, what even I shudder at contemplating, is that only force will alter the direction of the Iranian threat.
No one knows precisely what this means or the logistics behind this claim. Yet it is time to consider present reality. An Iran with nuclear weapons represents a threat to Israel, every European capital and possibly the United States. Its missile force in Parchin is not open to negotiation. The IAEA indicated that there is much that is unknown about the Iranian nuclear program and probably much that will never be known.
Surely, war is not something anyone wants or desires. It is the last possible recourse. But in my judgment, we have reached that juncture.
To preserve the United States as a free society, sacrifices must be made, however unpleasant that may seem. Nicholas Chamfort, the writer and dramatist said, “Nearly all people live in slavery for the reason the Spartans gave us as the cause of the slavery of the Persians: they are not able to utter the syllable ‘no’.” We should say “no” to Iran and simultaneously be prepared to defend that decision.
Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries atwww.londoncenter.org
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