War with Iran – 27 Years and Counting

After more than a quarter century of war with Iran, we still haven’t really started fighting, and they have only fought us openly once. Now Iran’s aggressive behavior is escalating, they seek nuclear weapons, and Ahmadinejad said only this week that we “will soon come to the end of our lives.” Another Iranian official said “the Iranian nation will strike 10 slaps to the face of America, in such a way that it will no longer be able to get up on the stage.”

They ran roughshod over Jimmy Carter, but they knew better than to play those games with Ronald Reagan. And that, in a nutshell, is how we still ought to be dealing with them. Carter was and is weak, advocating begging our enemies to behave themselves and appealing to higher natures that they simply do not possess. Today’s Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, emulate him.

Our hostages were released on Reagan’s Inauguration Day – a testimony to the fact that peace cannot be achieved by giving in to an enemy. Carter tried, as did Chamberlain before him, and exposed himself as a fool before the entire world. It’s time we re-learned that lesson.

1981: Hostages arrive home from Iran

A group of 52 Americans arrived back in the United States today after being held hostage by Iran for 444 days. The hostages were released just five days earlier, the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th U.S. President.

“The released hostages stepped off ‘Freedom One,’ the jet that brought them home from West Germany, to an explosion of cheers at Stewart Airport and threw themselves into the arms of waiting and weeping relatives,” wrote The Post Standard on January 26, 1981. “The hostages were serenaded along the route with ‘God Bless America’, ‘America the Beautiful’ and chants of ‘USA! USA! USA!’ by people teeming behind barricades along the route under trees streaming with yellow ribbons.”

UPDATE: I’ve said before that we need another Churchill or at least a Reagan. And I’ve supported the Iraq war in no small part because it puts our troops near Iran’s border. My frustration with President Bush over allowing the troops to be restrained by what I think are excessively protective rules of engagement has been huge. His stubborn refusal to fight back against the propaganda war being waged by the enemy and aided and abetted by our own media most of the time infuriates me. But looking beyond that, he’s accomplished a lot in one area of the larger war on terror. Few people would accuse the Bush administration with subtlety, but maybe they ought to. This Captain’s Quarter’s post about trouble between Iran’s mullahs and their pet Ahmadinejad makes a great point:

However, even if this is a put-on, it still could indicate some insecurity on the part of Iran’s real power brokers. They may have decided that the Bush administration would cave on its tough stance, or that the other Western nations would force him to moderate his position. The Iraq Study Group report may also have given them hope that the US would come hat in hand to Teheran, ready to cut a deal that would allow them much greater hegemony in the Middle East and with better opportunity to pressure its bete noir, Israel.

Bush hasn’t blinked — and the Iranians are slowly realizing that he won’t. Having parked two carrier groups off their shores and in position to take action in the Straits of Hormuz, the mullahs are running out of options for threatening gestures, especially since Saudi Arabia announced a spare oil production capacity that exceeds Iran’s total exports. They can look around their borders and see the US in almost every single adjacent nation.

That’s power, and the Iranians recognize it, even if most Americans do not. Bush has slowly and quietly surrounded the Iranians and threaten every line of communication they have. The US has led the march towards expanding the sanctions we have had on Iran for a generation to most of the West, and even Iranian oil hasn’t been able to reverse the momentum.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Common Folk Using Common Sense, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Thought Alarm, Conservative Cat, Sujet- Celebrities, Wake Up America, third world county, The HILL Chronicles, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.