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* Pete Hoekstra: The Need for Real Leadership: The Cost of Not Supporting Ukraine
* Amir Taheri: Iran: Freedom-Lovers Win a Round
** The Need for Real Leadership: The Cost of Not Supporting Ukraine ([link removed])
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by Pete Hoekstra • October 16, 2022 at 5:00 am
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* The difficult reality is that we may never know what would push Putin to make the decision to go nuclear.... The U.S. objective should be to deter him: make the potential cost to him so high that it would be suicidal for him even to try.
* The clearest and most welcome statement was made by Biden himself in March: he stated, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."
* Biden is old enough to remember that "what happens in Sudetenland does not stay in Sudetenland." If Putin is allowed to occupy Ukraine, Russia -- and undoubtedly all the other aggressor nations waiting in the wings -- China, Iran, Turkey, North Korea -- will be emboldened to begin a free-for-all of invading their countries of choice. Putin could further move to take over Moldova, Poland and the Baltic states, for a start; Turkey could move on Greece and southern Cyprus, and China would most certainly move on the world's computer-chip center, Taiwan.
* Biden.... on day one, effectively closed down America's ability to produce and export oil, thereby instantly creating an acute shortage of energy worldwide. Putin could not have dreamed of a bigger gift. Immediately, the price of oil tripled, from roughly $40 to $112. Russia was making a billion dollars a day, or $360 billion a year. Biden, with a stroke of his pen, had just financed Russia's entire war on Ukraine even before granting Putin the use of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, thereby guaranteeing Russia the ability to hold Europe hostage come winter.
* The problem with this response [wishing to isolate America to avoid restoring Ukraine's integrity] is that it is exactly the same view that, in 1938, led British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to wave around a piece of paper and inaccurately claim "peace for our time" with Hitler. Chamberlain evidently saw that his British voters did not want war, so he tried to give them what they wanted. That is not great leadership; that is great followership.
* People in thriving democracies usually do not want war -- ever. They can see that they are enjoying magical, free lives -- and wish to keep them. We all would like peace handed to us on a platter. Unfortunately, that is not always the available choice, particularly looking a few moves ahead. How much less costly it would have been in blood and treasure to have stopped Hitler before he crossed the Rhine. Surrender always remains an option -- but usually not a happy one.
* The U.S. and EU must put in place compelling plans to address the threat of slowing economies (growth); high inflation (stop government spending); rising energy prices (re-open the oil spigots), and potential shortages... at the same time as educating the public about the even worse consequences of not supporting Ukraine.
* The idea is to make Putin afraid, not Americans.
* Leaders of both U.S. political parties need clearly to articulate the American strategic interest in Ukraine, where a Western defeat could mean the beginning of the end of Europe, and let Putin know in no uncertain terms what the U.S. responses to any unpleasant escalation might be. The same can be done in European capitals and NATO countries, as well.
* Leaders of both parties also need to lay out how they will address the current internal economic crises, their continuing support for Ukraine, defeating Putin and deterring further aggression by Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Iran. Short of delivering on these questions, they are doing no less than seriously jeopardizing the long-term national security of the U.S. and the West.
The difficult reality is that we may never know what would push Russian President Vladimir Putin to make the decision to go nuclear. The U.S. objective should be to deter him: make the potential cost to him so high that it would be suicidal for him even to try. Pictured: Russian Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers parade through Red Square in Moscow, on May 9, 2022. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. President Joe Biden is known for making confusing and sometimes wild pronouncements that his administration is known for frequently walking back. This might have been the case when he randomly decided to tell an audience of well-heeled Democrats at a fundraiser that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "not joking" about using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. "We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon," he added, "since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis."
Biden has since refused to clarify his remarks or explain on what he was basing them. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby took to the Sunday shows to clarify that the president was not saying an attack was imminent and this his "comments were not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr. Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons."
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** Iran: Freedom-Lovers Win a Round ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • October 16, 2022 at 4:00 am
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* The various parts if the repressive machine didn't know what do. In the city of Sari, for example, they arrested 786 people in one day before they realized they had nowhere to keep them.
* Unlike supporters of the regime mostly of older generations, who gain self-esteem from bestowed but easily withdrawable privilege, the mostly young activists of horizontal society, regard themselves as being "somebody" even if only because they have the mandatory 5,000 followers on the Facebook. They want to be subjects in their own life-story, not objects in someone else's dystopian dream.
* The Khomeinist system was exposed as a colossus with a foot of clay.
What we have witnessed in Iran in these weeks, and continue to witness, is a gigantic clash between a vertical power structure and a horizontal popular movement. Pictured: The scene of an anti-regime protest in Tehran, Iran on October 8, 2022. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
As the uprising in Iran enters its fourth week, speculation about its future is rife.
Participants insist that they are on the path to victory, achieving regime change. They cite a number of reasons.
To start with, this is the first time that a national uprising isn't about any particular grievance that could be rectified by the regime; what is at stake is total rejection of a system.
Next, there is the fact that the regime has been unable to regain control of the public space with the speed and efficiency it did on other occasions since 1979.
Adversaries of the uprising, regime apologists or those concerned about socio-political disintegration, believe that though the massive rejection of the regime by so many Iranians, if not the majority, is bound to cause permanent damage to it, straight regime change is not yet in the cards.
To back their analysis they, too, offer arguments.
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