A post by Maynard
Newt Gingrich bluntly described Iran’s threat to the West in general and America and Israel in particular in his speech to the Herzliya Conference held by the Institute for Policy and Strategy.
“Three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust,” Gingrich declared, adding: “People are greatly underestimating how dangerous the world is becoming. I’ll repeat it, three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust. Our enemies are quite explicit in their desire to destroy us. They say it publicly. We are sleepwalking through this process as though it’s only a problem of communication.”
“Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany, and more determined that the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get. There is no rational ability to deny that fact. It’s very clear that the problems are larger and more immediate than the political systems in Israel or the US are currently capable of dealing with,” said Gingrich.
“We don’t have right language, goals, structure, or operating speed, to defeat our enemies. My hope is that being this candid and direct, I could open a dialogue that will force people to come to grips with how serious this is, how real it is, how much we are threatened. If that fails, at least we will be intellectually prepared for the correct results once we have lost one or more cities,” Gingrich added.
If history repeats — and let’s pray it does not — then Gingrich would find himself in the position that Churchill got to in 1939, when his correct assessment of the Nazi threat was tragically validated, and 60 million people (!) died horribly and unnecessarily.
See the full article, including supporting comments by Mitt Romney, who also addressed the conference, here and here. Newt Gingrich’s website is at www.newt.org.
Tammy, haven’t we heard this before? Remember being warned before invading Iraq that failure to do so would mean mushroom clouds over New York City? Remember all of the comparisons between Saddam and Hitler? As it turns out, there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq (they weren’t there, just like Hans Blix told us beforehand). Saddam couldn’t have mounted a serious threat against the U.S. even if he wanted to.
Perhaps Iran is a more serious threat to the U.S. than Saddam was. Perhaps it’s not. The problem is, the Bush administration and its cheerleaders like Newt Gingrich have no credibility left when they try to scare us with such apocalyptic crap-ola. Anyone wishing to make a responsible decision would do best to completely ignore Newt and his hair-raising propaganda, to find more reliable sources.
Somewhere inside of Mr. Peanut Gallery’s comment there is an important question, and it deserves an answer. But first, let’s roll back the fluff. Saddam Hussein had a history of WMDs and wars of aggression, and he came very close to getting nukes. It’s nonsense to represent him as some sort of harmless victim of neocon warmongers. And if the poster had actually read the Blix Report, he’d know Hans Blix did NOT tell us there were no WMDs to be found; quite the opposite, in fact. The entire world was pretty sure Hussein was hiding stuff, and indeed he acted like he was hiding stuff. Blix did feel that disarmament should progress through diplomatic efforts rather than war. Okay, fair enough if you want to make that argument, and if you want to point out that we didn’t find what we expected and the struggle has been worse than anticipated and the outcome still hangs in the balance. But on the flip side, critics must acknowledge that Saddam remained firmly in power after twelve years of sanctions, still defiant and threatening; meanwhile the common Iraqis were being squeezed, and America was (as always) being blamed. Meanwhile, American troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia as a buffer between that nation and Saddam; note that this was the factor that inspired bin Laden to attack us. So the pre-war circumstances were unstable. Either Saddam was going to break out of his cage, or he was going to be taken down.
And you don’t have to take Newt’s word about Iran’s intentions. President Ahmadinejad has announced what the Iranians plan to do in so many words, and their deeds have backed up those words. Peanut Gallery is willing to run the risk of nuclear holocaust in order to razz a politician he dislikes. If the civilized world is to survive, that had better be a minority opinion.