Views of Iran

Jay Nordlinger had a spectacular Impromptus column a week ago (June 13. In one piece of it, he related something he saw at the “Davos in the Desert” conference not long ago:

Well, at this conference, I witnessed a spectacular outburst from a Palestinian journalist, directed at an Iranian official. The Palestinian pointed out that Iran was acting as the enemy of the Arabs, sowing murder and chaos in Iraq, Lebanon, and the PA [the Palestinian Authority] — arming and training Iraqi militias, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

And what kind of murder and chaos is Iran sowing? And how effective is Iran being at their chosen method of warfare? Nordlinger quotes from an article by Victor Davis Hanson:

not only can “a suicide bomber with a $100 vest” destroy “$1 million worth of electrical infrastructure.” In a “gruesome equation,” he can “cast the American engineers into the role of the incompetent or sinister by their failure to repair and rebuild faster than an illiterate can destroy.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem we face in asymmetrical warfare — especially when major elements of our own population refuse to recognize we're in a war at all.

Nordlinger provides a fitting summation: “It is worth bearing in mind: Israel and the United States aren’t the only countries that fear and hate the Iranian regime. And those who fear and hate that regime the most, of course, are Iranian citizens themselves.”

Iran has declared war on us — the United States and the West. Can't we at least take them at their word on this?