Sense Of Urgency

What really grinds me is that for the most part; be it taxation, energy policy, education or Islamic terrorism, we have been cleaning up the messes created by Jimmy Carter while he tours the world lamenting about how "we've lost our American Values". Since when have military weakness, illiteracy, foreign dependency and a totalitarian government ever been American Values?

From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006

Nuclear Terror: Iran's intent is now clear: It means to build a nuclear bomb, no matter what the rest of mankind thinks. And once it has one, it'll use it. A world that stands by and lets this happen deserves what it gets.

Fortunately, spines are already starting to stiffen in response to Iran's announcement that it has used a "cascade" of 164 centrifuges to produce 3.5% enriched uranium — not quite bomb grade, but close.

Japan, Australia, the EU, Britain and France have all joined the U.S. in condemnation. And in a surprising and heartening development, Russia and China — the two nations that have the biggest financial stakes in Iran — have also criticized the Islamic Republic.

Diplomatic condemnations, however, are one thing; actions to halt proliferation are quite another. And in Iran's case, it's getting a bit late in the game.

Iran hopes to have 3,000 centrifuges operating by year-end and 54,000 sometime after that. That many could easily create enough fuel for a handful of bombs far larger than those that decimated Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We simply cannot let that happen.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has played a clever game. Most forget he was identified as one of the radical Islamic "students" who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Our lack of resolve and refusal to retaliate under President Carter no doubt were two great lessons of Ahmadinejad's young life.

Ahmadinejad and his cohorts got away with kidnapping American citizens on the equivalent of American soil. Now he's sitting back, carefully watching how we respond this time.

Surely he knows that Europe, no matter how much it may bluster, can do nothing except stop buying Persian rugs and pistachios. As for Russia, it is strapped for cash and owed an estimated $8 billion by Tehran. It also has its fingers in dozens of Iranian projects, including a nuclear plant in southern Iran. China? After a flurry of recent deals, guess what country is its top energy supplier?

Nor can we count on U.N. chief Kofi Annan. His advice to the West in the wake of Iran's disclosure: "cool down the rhetoric." Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, is in Tehran this week. Don't expect any great breakthroughs.

Iran has threatened Israel with extermination and considers the U.S. the "Great Satan." Yet in response to its progress in developing a weapon of mass destruction, Democrats in Congress counsel that we have "more time" before responding (note that this is the same thing they said in 1980 after the Iranians took all those Americans hostage).

Well, Iran has already been given "more time." It supposedly had until early March to end its enrichment program. That deadline came and went, and a new one of April 28 has been imposed.

U.N. threats, in other words, don't seem to be working any more on Ahmadinejad than they did on Saddam Hussein.

The world, says John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., needs a "sense of urgency." We couldn't agree more. Ahmadinejad, an extremist who believes he's been sent to earth to bring about the salvation of Islam, is watching. Will we do nothing — again?