Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links HERE. An excerpt from just one of their links, from AP: Iranian volunteers set off for Lebanon:
Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon. ...
Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors. ...
"We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran," said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. "More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help."
Military service is mandatory in Iran and nearly every man has at least some basic training. Some hard-liners have more extensive drills as members of the Basiji corps, a paramilitary network linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
Other volunteers, such as 72-year-old Hasan Honavi, have combat experience from the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
"God made this decision for me," said Honavi, a grandfather and one of the oldest volunteers. "I still have fight left in me for a holy war."
The group, chanting and marching in military-style formation, assembled Wednesday in a part of Tehran's main cemetery that is reserved for war dead and other "martyrs."
They prayed on Persian carpets and linked hands, with their shoes and bags piled alongside. Few had any battle-type gear and some arrived in dress shoes or plastic sandals.
Some bowed before a memorial to Hezbollah-linked suicide bombers who carried out the 1983 blast at Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 56 French peacekeepers. ...
"We cannot stand by and watch our Hezbollah brothers fight alone," said Komeil Baradaran, a 21-year-old Basiji member. "If we are to die in Lebanon, then we will go to heaven. It is our duty as Muslims to fight."
(bold emphasis theirs) And this group of volunteers is just the "first wave"? That's some religion of peace, huh? I guess the peace comes when they've blown to pieces everyone they disagree with, and we all submit to Islam.
And for anyone who thinks "It's just Israel, let's not get involved", I would ask: Do you really think it's just going to stop there? The Nazis started with the jews, and they didn't stop there.
And I'm not just making a flippent comparison; it's an historical reality and a strong influence currently. We must not forget the actual Nazi roots of Islamism. History has a tendency to repeat itself, when we don't remember and learn from our past mistakes. Hitler and the Nazis were allowed to grow and florish, to the point where it almost became unstopable. We don't need to do the same thing with a Muslim Nazi cult, which is on the verge of aquiring nuclear weapons.
Related link:
Lebanon: NATO into the Breach?
...The Israelis are willing to accept an international force on its northern border, provided that force has a robust mandate, and provided it is led by NATO. This is at once a good idea and a bad one...
...The first thing to remember is that Hezbollah is an Islamist organization, and as such it is not especially interested in having its warmaking capacity thwarted or taken away...
...The reality is that Hezbollah will fight. Even as it fights the IDF in the dusty valleys of southern Lebanon now, it will fight the Westerners who arrive to strip it of its core mission. It cannot do less: it knows that acquiescence means the end of itself in its own conception; and its mentors abroad do not fund and teach it on the premise of peace. If the present war is that of the IDF versus Hezbollah, the next will be NATO versus Hezbollah. The Europeans of NATO – and it will be all Europeans – may prosecute the mission with somewhat less enthusiasm than the IDF; but it will be the same mission nonetheless...
...NATO has had two combat missions in its existence. It drove Serbia from Kosovo, and it now fights Islamists in Afghanistan. The suppression of Hezbollah would constitute its third, and it would strongly imply a fundamental strategic realignment of the alliance...
...This direct response to Islamist aggression, compounded with the Afghan mission, and compounded with the prospective campaign against Hezbollah, all add up to a new role for NATO: as the anti-Islamist military front of the West at large.
This is hardly a wholesale or overt re-orientation, of course. NATO member Turkey would never acquiesce to the open realignment of the alliance in this manner. Nor would the more dhimmi-minded NATO members – Zapatero’s Spain, Belgium, et al. But that is formality: reality would be something different. As we travel further into the 21st century, the great questions of the age will be met by great combinations of states and peoples. NATO defended the West against the existential threat of the last half of the 20th century. If it assumes the burden, with Israel, of defending against the existential threat of this century, it will be, in one sense, a profound change...
(bold emphasis mine) Will NATO members become involved in the defense of Israel? I don't know. It could easily be argued that Europe does not recognise Israel as one of it's own. There is also the issue of Europe's new anti-semitism disguised as anti-Americanism.
NATO involvement is an interesting idea, and it will be even more interesting to see if it becomes a reality. Israel needs the help, the U.N. is ineffective, and NATO does indeed have some experience in this.
For those who will argue that NATO should not become involved, I can only say; if Israel falls, who do you think will be next? Because you can most assuredly believe, there WILL be a "next".
2 comments:
Yes. They look formidable, indeed.
Iran has had it's tentacles in Lebanon for decades, supporting and training the shiites there. They have dug themselves in, literally; they've been planning this for years.
The most formidable thing about them is their fanatical resolve. The only way to appease them is surrender and submission.
They must be destroyed, there is simply no other way to deal with them. Of course, they should have been crushed long before it ever reached this point.
This is the legacy of Jimmy Carter, and decades of multiculturalism, moral relativism and political correctness that has emboldened Islamism to advance as far as they have.
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