| Sunday,
December 11, 2005 I had occasion to look this up for reply to
a correspondent, but it is worth recording here.
"If you establish a democracy, you must in due
time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great
impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase
of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into
from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace
ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your
authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season
find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."
Benjamin Disraeli.
It is my understanding that the National Security Policy of the United
States asserts that establishing democracies world wide is the best security
for the US, and that democracies never go to war with each other. I can
understand the desire to submit to this delusion, but I hope there are
enough cold hearted realists in our policy making establishment to make that
policy mere fair words, and not something we actually use in planning. Alas,
the Iraqi war looks to me as if such Jacobin sentiments were taken quite
seriously.
Scam warning
over in mail. Worth your time.
I got through my weekend by using the nose pump. It really works on
plugged up painful sinuses:
===============
I received this from a friend:
I found the current National Security Strategy
document online. It is enlightening.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
You might also find the national strategy for victory
in Iraq interesting.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_national_strategy_20051130.pdf
Invite comments, including from the Jacobins among us.
=============
So we live in Perilous Times?
Subject: Israel readies for strike on Iran
nuclear facilities
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-1920074-524,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1920074,00.html
The Sunday Times December 11, 2005
Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear
Iran Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, and Sarah Baxter, Washington
<http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gif>
ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by
Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for
possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military
sources have revealed.
The order came after Israeli intelligence
warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities,
believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.
Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel
should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.
The crisis is set to come to a head in early
March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next
report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday,
warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.
A senior White House source said the threat of
a nuclear Iran was moving to the top of the international agenda and the
issue now was: “What next?” That question would have to be answered in the
next few months, he said.
<snip>
So. What next?
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