The war from over here, part 11
Take the fight to Iran.
My latest JNS column was published yesterday. It brings together several of the issues I’ve dealt with here into a broader assessment of the illegitimacy of the anti-Israel movement and how to smash it.
Speaking of illegitimacy and smashing, it should be clear by now—if it wasn’t before—that Israel must take this war to Iran. Certainly, Hamas and Hezbollah are the more immediate threats, but the theo-Nazi regime that rules Iran is their paymaster, armorer, and indispensable enabler. If the regime is destroyed, the majority of Israel’s security problems will disappear overnight.
Moreover, the Iranian regime is just as illegitimate as its terrorist clients and the fifth column in the West that supports them. It is a genocidal, racist, antisemitic, theocratic, totalitarian, misogynist, homophobic, and imperialist tyranny. It has made it very clear that its intention is to despotically dominate the Middle East and beyond by wiping out any ethnic or religious group of which it disapproves. It pursues this genocidal ambition through a regional conspiracy of systemic crimes against humanity. And it is on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons.
It has been clear for some time that this regime must be pulverized. The question, then, is why has it survived as long as it has? The answer is probably Western cowardice. While reticence to embrace regime change following the Iraq debacle is understandable, the failure to take the side of the popular uprising that has attempted to overthrow the regime several times from within is inexplicable and inexcusable. It can only be an expression of the West’s desire to avoid a fight at all costs.
Given this deficit of courage, Israel is going to have to pick up the slack, if only for its own sake. Israel cannot kill the snake without chopping off its head. So, while the immediate war is against Hamas, operations against Iran should begin immediately.
What these operations might be, I do not know. Certainly, arming and training domestic Iranian resistance groups should be a priority, as well as stoking rebellion among the country’s discontented ethnic and religious minorities. Direct assassinations of Iranian leaders should also be seriously considered.
In addition, Israel should not dismiss the possibility of employing its nuclear arsenal. Iran is an existential threat and must be dealt with existentially. I do not mean that Israel should nuke Tehran. Rather, it could use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, as well as eliminate military targets and intimidate the regime into something like surrender.
All of this is up to people with considerably more expertise and influence than I. But it should be obvious by now that the time has come to make it clear to Iran that its age of impunity has come to an end.
Regarding Hamas’ fifth column in the West, one of the most prominent ideological weapons employed by the column, especially its professoriate faction that rules academia, is “post-colonialism.” This is a more or less meaningless term, encompassing everything from historical revisionism to cultural studies to incomprehensible gobbledygook, but it tends to come down to the idea that the West is inherently evil, and thus so are Israel and the Jews.
Post-colonialism, of course, sells itself as a liberationist ideology, and thus on the side of the angels. In particular, it takes up the cudgels for those countries and peoples that suffered under European imperialism and colonialism. This is laudable enough, but quite often, it becomes little more than cheerleading for mass murder, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing. And not just in the case of Israel and its enemies.
For example, the atrocities France committed in Algeria are indefensible, but any thinking person must be forced to admit that the terrorism of the FLN and the ultimate ethnic cleansing of the French Algerians were, at the very least, morally problematic.
This example underlines the essential hypocrisy at the heart of post-colonialism, because the only reason the Algerian Arabs were there to fight the French in the first place was Arab-Muslim colonialism. The Berber and Jewish populations of Algeria far predated the Arab presence, yet it was the Arabs who accorded themselves absolute possession of the land, to the point that any atrocity they felt like committing was, in their minds, justified.
Looked at objectively, it is clear that post-colonialism may give us important insights into an often dark history; but ultimately, it does not condemn colonialism, it merely holds that some colonialism is more condemnable than others.
Not a single post-colonialist scholar or activist that I know of has demanded that the Arab population of the Middle East and North Africa be expelled and sent back to their homeland in Saudi Arabia. Nor have they called for the Turks to quit Anatolia and give it back to the Greek and Armenian populations they slaughtered and expelled. Nor will the post-colonialists ever do so. Not because the idea is obviously ludicrous, but because the Arabs and the Turks are not Western, and therefore they are exempt from both history and moral judgement.
It is possible, however, that the Hamas fifth column may have written post-colonialism’s death warrant. In its public celebration of Hamas’ rampage of racist war crimes, the column has exposed the dark secret of its favorite ideology: Colonialism can lead to atrocity and genocide, but post-colonialism can also lead to atrocity and genocide. The post-colonialists have not just ceded the moral high ground, they have detonated it.
We should exploit the opportunity this presents to the fullest.
To leave on a lighter note, I recently rewatched Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. Now, it is unquestionably Welles’ most problematic film, in that almost all the criticisms leveled against it are true: The plot makes no sense whatsoever, the film is terribly disjointed at certain points—though this is partly due to studio interference—and it has a general sense of over-the-top weirdness that sometimes works but sometimes comes off as almost comical.
Nonetheless, the film stayed with me for days. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There’s things in it that just won’t let you go, like Welles’ speech about the sharks’ cannibalistic feeding frenzy, the Chinese theater sequence, and, of course, the legendary hall of mirrors shootout. I believe very strongly in the instinctual reaction to a film, and if that is the ultimate judge of quality, then The Lady from Shanghai is a very great film indeed.
For those interested, here’s some wonderful interviews with Welles conducted way back when by Peter Bogdanovich. They’re a treasure trove for anyone who loves great movies and—as I do—Welles’ work in particular.
Give prior warning. Then hit the specific sites with very low-yield dirty bombs. No need to completely destroy what they have underground; just need to make sure that no-one can work there. Until there is regime change. They threatened us with extinction. We believe them.