Right On The Right

Republican nominee John McCain is a national security hawk with the knowledge necessary to lead our nation through this dangerous age of Islamic terrorism. Barack Obama called Iran's threat "tiny" in comparison to that of the Soviet Union. Senator McCain disagrees:

The New York Times is currently running a story on Iran entitled "Reformers Make Gains in Iran." It's technically factually accurate, but it's misleading, because the actual results of Iran's recent elections show that the country is still deeply entrenched in hard-line Islam. Let's jump to Bloomberg for an accurate view:

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Iran's most devout Islamist factions took an early lead in an election for the nation's 290-seat parliament over opposition parties that are calling for more democracy.

Candidates backing the system under which senior Islamic religious leaders have the final say over policy gained 108 of the first 141 seats declared, and more than 70 percent of votes counted, state-run Press Television reported today. The Reformists' Coalition and National Trust Party, which oppose an Iran governed purely by Islamic rules, got 33 seats, it said.

Most of the conservatives who have won seats are from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's United Principlist Front, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, without saying whether the group was on target to retain a majority in parliament. Ahmadinejad is seeking to keep control of the legislature ahead of presidential elections next year in which he can run again.

Now, let's clarify a few things. First off, conservatives as listed in this article are religious extremists that believe in Sharia Law, and are very different from Conservatives here in the United States, who believe very strongly in the principles of freedom. Second off, a splinter group did decent in these elections, but it was a splinter group that also believes in the power of the theocracy. What these results show is, you can't expect the Iranians to reform their own system, which is already near-rigged. There needs to be serious intervention.

I've long been a proponent of military intervention against Iran, though not a ground forces invasion. As evidence builds that Iran is interfering in Iraq and is a major player behind terrorist groups like Hezbollah, we need to consider action. The newest development is that Iran isn't only behind Hezbollah, but they're training fighters for the terrorist group Hamas:

The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry.

Speaking on the record but withholding his identity as a target of Israeli forces, the commander, who has a sparse moustache and oiled black hair, said Hamas had been sending fighters to Iran for training in both field tactics and weapons technology since Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza strip of Palestinian territory in 2005. Others go to Syria for more basic training.

To analyze this, Iran has the power to launch a two-front war on Israel, as pointed out in that post. Add to that Iran's backing of Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and their backing of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran now has the power to influence wars against both major powers for Democracy in the region, Israel and the United States. Military action needs to be on the table, because obviously the upper eschelon of Iranian leadership is behind this.

The Presidential candidates said they agreed with the captains, and that they couldn't second-guess our military when it comes to when to open fire or not. These are folks auditioning for Commander in Chief. They're the ones that would set the policy, and obviously orders came down from high a while ago not to attack Iranians. We had the impetus, so if the Bush administration really wanted war, they could have brought about that scenario. The danger was there, via Hot Air:

In the simulation, General Van Riper sent wave after wave of relatively inexpensive speedboats to charge at the costlier, more advanced fleet approaching the Persian Gulf. His force of small boats attacked with machine guns and rockets, reinforced with missiles launched from land and air. Some of the small boats were loaded with explosives to detonate alongside American warships in suicide attacks. That core tactic of swarming played out in real life last weekend, though on a much more limited scale and without any shots fired…

In the war game, scores of adversary speedboats and larger naval vessels had been shadowing and hectoring the Blue Team fleet for days. The Blue Team defenses also faced cruise missiles fired simultaneously from land and from warplanes, as well as the swarm of speedboats firing heavy machine guns and rockets — and pulling alongside to detonate explosives on board.

The discussion in the comments section there is basically about whether the cruise missiles or the speedboats brought about the destruction of some of the ships. I think it's obvious from the language that some of the suicide bombings were responsible for the damage. What do I think? The ships should've opened fire.

We have plenty of reasons to expect air strikes against Iran. Their longstanding support of Hezbollah is one reason. The fact that they've been sending IEDs and weaponry into Iraq to help the former "insurgency" is another. One leftist is now so fearful of an attack on Iran that he's threatening to withhold tax money if we decide to go to war:

I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran--which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election--will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'état that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic.

This article was written by a man named Chris Hedges. Who is he? He's a former New York Times reporter and the former Middle East bureau chief in the 1990s. Hedges is no stranger to controversy, going as far as to call Christians fascists, and write an entire book about it. Hedges is a deranged opponent to a war that we're not in, and worse off, it's a war we'd have good reason to be fighting.