Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600 links)

Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600 links)

Daniel Pipes on the Consequences of an Attack on Iranian Nuke sites

JUNE 26, 2012 12:00 A.M. on NRO

After an Israeli Strike on Iran

The consequences wouldn’t be cataclysmic.

By Daniel Pipes

How would Iranians respond to an Israeli strike against their nuclear infrastructure? The answers given to this question matter greatly, as predictions about Iran’s response will affect not only Jerusalem’s decision, but also how much other states will work to impede an Israeli strike.

Analysts generally offer best-case predictions for policies of deterrence and containment (some commentators even go so far as to welcome an Iranian nuclear capability) while forecasting worst-case results from a strike. They foresee Tehran doing everything possible to retaliate, such as kidnapping, terrorism, missile attacks, naval combat, and closing the Strait of Hormuz. These predictions ignore two facts: Neither of Israel’s prior strikes against enemy states building nuclear weapons — Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 — prompted retaliation; and a review of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s history since 1979 points to, in the words of Michael Eisenstadt and Michael Knights, “a more measured and less apocalyptic — if still sobering — assessment of the likely aftermath of a preventive strike.”

Eisenstadt and Knights of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy provide an excellent guide to possible scenarios in “Beyond Worst-Case Analysis: Iran’s Likely Responses to an Israeli Preventive Strike.” Their survey of Iranian behavior over the past three decades leads them to anticipate that three main principles would likely shape and limit Tehran’s response to an Israeli strike: an insistence on reciprocity, a caution not to gratuitously make enemies, and a wish to deter further Israeli (or American) strikes.

The mullahs, in other words, face serious limits on their ability to retaliate, including military weakness and a pressing need not to make yet more external enemies. With these guidelines in place, Eisenstadt and Knights consider eight possible Iranian responses, which must be assessed while keeping in mind the alternative to preemptive action — namely, apocalyptic Islamists controlling nuclear weapons:

1. Terrorist attacks on Israeli, Jewish, and U.S. targets. Likely, but causing limited destruction.

2. Kidnapping of U.S. citizens, especially in Iraq. Likely, but limited in impact, as in the 1980s in Lebanon.

3. Attacks on Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very likely, especially via proxies, but causing limited destruction.

4. Missile strikes on Israel. Likely: a few missiles from Iran getting through Israeli defenses, leading to casualties likely in the low hundreds; missiles from Hezbollah limited in number due to domestic Lebanese considerations. Unlikely: Hamas getting involved, having distanced itself from Tehran; the Syrian government interfering, since it is battling for its life against an ever-stronger opposition army and possibly the Turkish armed forces. Overall, missile attacks are unlikely to do devastating damage.

5. Attacks on neighboring states. Likely: especially using terrorist proxies, for the sake of deniability. Unlikely: missile strikes, for Tehran does not want to make more enemies.

6. Clashes with the U.S. Navy. Likely, but, given the balance of power, doing limited damage.

7. Covertly mining the Strait of Hormuz. Likely, causing a run-up in energy prices.

8. Attempted closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Unlikely: difficult to achieve and potentially too damaging to Iranian interests, because the country needs the strait for commerce.

The authors also consider three potential side effects of an Israeli strike. Yes, Iranians might rally to their government in the immediate aftermath of a strike, but in the longer term Tehran “could be criticized for handling the nuclear dossier in a way that led to military confrontation.” The so-called Arab street is perpetually predicted to rise up in response to outside military attack, but it never does; it’s likely that unrest among the Shiite Muslims of the Persian Gulf would be counterbalanced by the many Arabs quietly cheering the Israelis. As for Iran leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and starting an overt, crash nuclear-weapons program, while “a very real possibility,” the more the Iranians retaliated against a strike, the harder they would find it to obtain the parts for such a program.

In all, these dangers are unpleasant but not cataclysmic, manageable not devastating. Eisenstadt and Knights expect a short phase of high-intensity Iranian response, to be followed by a “protracted low-intensity conflict that could last for months or even years” — much as already exists between Iran and Israel. An Israeli preventive strike, they conclude, while a “high-risk endeavor carrying a potential for escalation in the Levant or the Gulf . . . would not be the apocalyptic event some foresee.”

This analysis makes a convincing case that the danger of nuclear weapons falling into Iranian hands far exceeds the danger of a military strike to prevent this from happening.

— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

I was a Teenage Hippie

Well not really teenage, more like my early twenties. My first wife J and I moved from NYC to Fort Collins CO. The fires now burning in the mountains above the town brought back memories of that time. Mostly sweet ones.

One of my friends was P L scion of a tobacco family. We worked together as part of the crew on the renovation of an irrigation dam. The bosses were rednecks, and our hair was too long but somehow the work got done.

J loved, still loves, dogs and we always had too many of them. Those pooches could smell her love, and the free ones always came by looking for a home. One day a Russian wolfhound showed up at our door, our pack leader Gerling made sure that he knew who was boss, not the best situation for keeping a happy home. Since Gerling was a border collie mix the wolfhound thought it would be easy, just move in and take over. But Gerling was seventy pounds of dog in a twenty pound bag; no way Jose, or was it Ivan? So we had to find the wolfhound a home.

PL was living with a lady up in the mountains above town in a cabin that her grandfather had built, so we took the hound up there, he loved it. I loved it to. Her land butted up to the National Forest, elk walked through her back yard, the galaxy put on a light show every night, and the air had that smell that you don’t get in the East Village.

The weekend ended and it was back to town and my workaday world of pouring concrete.

We soon heard that the wolfhound was dead, brought down by a pack of coyotes while defending his new territory. But Linda still lived in her cabin in the hills.

Those memories drew me to Google where I learned that the only death was our friend Linda, lost in her magical cabin in the mountains.

To Linda Steadman dead at age 62. RIP.

On the Question of the Ethical Carnivore

[In April the NYT ran an essay contest on this subject. I didn’t expect to win as all the judges had been writing against the eating of meat for years. But at the publishing of the top six entries whose name should be among them but that of Ingrid Newkirk the founder of PETA. The fix went deeper than I had thought.

JimG33]

         

          Since the rules of the contest prevent arguments on hedonistic or epicurean grounds, and by statement Dr. Singer has taken the high ground of utilitarianism, I feel I, must of necessity, find some useful definition of ethics. When I fire up my Kindle and go to The Oxford Dictionary of English and look up ethics the definition given is: [usually treated as] moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. There is also a side bar: Schools of ethics in Western thought can be divided, very roughly, into three sorts. The first drawing on the works of Aristotle holds that the virtues (such as justice, charity, and generosity) are dispositions to act in ways that benefit both the person and the person’s society. The second, defended particularly by Kant makes the concept of duty central to morality; humans are bound, from a knowledge of their duty as rational beings. Thirdly, utilitarianism asserts that the guiding principle of conduct should be the greatest happiness or benefit of the greatest number.

          Unless we can find some way to give animals the same rights as humans then they don’t come under any of these three schools, if only because they do not have the capacity of reason. As an example; if my pet chimpanzee destroys my neighbor’s face he is not arrested, assigned a lawyer, asked to plead, and tried before a jury of his peers on a charge of assault and battery. Instead he is immediately put down and the owner, who will not be brought up on a charge of slavery, charged with criminal negligence. Animals do not know right from wrong, and they never will. Therefore we should treat them with as much kindness and generosity as is necessary to our purposes and one of those chief purposes is the harvesting of meat.

          In the silhouettes that illustrate the story both domesticated and wild food animals are shown. For the wild we are just one predator among many. I’m sure we have all seen what happens to the slowest wildebeest in the herd as it moves to new pastures. But for the domesticated animals an implied contract exists. Over the past few thousand years these animals the cow, duck, goose, pig, lamb, and chicken have given up their wild state so we can husband them; in doing so we have become their designated predator, killing the wolves and lions that they would have to sacrifice their slowest member to. The least obvious side of the contract is that if the Human race were to go vegan a mass killing of many millions of these food animals, leading to extinction, would have to take place as no one is going to take a feed lot cow as a house pet.

          Finally I think the question is not one of ethics but of aesthetics. In a culture where most people get their meat on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic the slaughter house is so off putting that one must turn away in disgust. Therefore arguments will be made to end the meat trade, no matter how much of the economy is destroyed in the changeover.

          I thank you for this contest as these are questions that have been stewing in my mind for years. And watching my niece agonize over whether to eat a spoon full of trout mousse this past Christmas seemed to bring it all to a head for me.