"Nuclear detonation at..."

For over 17 years now I've been watching the war unfold between Islam and the rest of the world.

Astonishingly, half of all Americans--liberals, Democrats and so-called "progressives"-- won't admit there's a war going on.

Or they rationalize any...um, what's the newest gubmint-approved term? Oh yeah, that's right: "man-caused disasters." So leftists use some dismissive phrase like "What do you expect? After all, we attacked them first."

No kidding--some on the Left really believe that.

Another favorite Leftist trick is to use America's famous tolerance against us. Thus anyone opposed to the building of a 13-story mosque at ground zero was denounced as an "Islamophobe" or a religious bigot. It's warfare a la Saul Alinsky: Make your opponent to live up to his own rulebook.

Well, enough.

It's time we took the controls back from the liberals. To hell with so-called "progressives." It's time to fight.

Reason? Iran. Russia just installed the uranium fuel rods in Iran's first large (as in, huge) nuclear reactor. And hours later the head of Iran's nuclear program said they were planning to continue to continue their program of enriching uranium fuel.

In case you're hazy on the mechanics of nuclear weapons, that means they're continuing with development of an atomic bomb.

Now: The track record of Iranian president Achmadinejad (student leader when Iranians took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979) suggests he wouldn't pass up a chance to take on the U.S. Osama bin Laden showed that Muslims could kill 3,000 Americans and cause more than $300 billion in direct damage to our largest city and the U.S. couldn't effectively retaliate--because the hijackers weren't State actors.

If the folks who attacked you are fewer than 50 fanatical suicidal lunatics instead of uniformed soldiers of a foreign government, it does seem a bit harsh to turn, say, 90 percent of Kabul and its residents into radioactive glass.

If massive retaliation is off the table, it's likely Achmadinejad probably wouldn't pass up the chance to try to top 9/11. Once Iran has a small stockpile of atomic bombs, the best way to do that would be for one to be "stolen by terrorists." Iran would announce this openly, and might even go through the motions of asking Interpol for help in tracking down the thieves. But it would just be for show.

Because of course the bomb wouldn't have been "stolen-stolen."

Over the next several weeks the intel would start to trickle in: 'Informants suggest the bomb's here.' Raid finds nothing. Repeat until law enforcement stops reacting. Then the alleged thieves start issuing specific ultimatums: "If the U.S. doesn't pull troops out of country X, we'll set off the bomb in city Y." This could go on for months.

The next level would be for the alleged thieves (let's just say al-Qaeda for convenience) to start the rumor that the bomb is being taken to a named American city, with a planned D-day of X. What would that do to the local economy, traffic and law enforcement as the alleged day approached?

Then eventually al-Qaida would detonate the bomb in an American port. And why not? Because they know we couldn't prove it was an inside job. And without abolute, ironclad proof (which liberals would always challenge as insufficient), then unless something remarkable changes in our mind-set before that day, 52% of Americans would prefer not to retaliate against
Iran rather than retaliate if it's even remotely possible they were telling the truth and had nothing to do with the "theft."

I've been war-gaming variants of this scenario for over a decade now, and I keep hoping to find a hint that some different result can be achieved. But I haven't been able to once Iran gets the Bomb.

That doesn't mean there's no way to change the outcome just described. It's always possible for Israel to take out Iran's nuclear program on its own. Or we can do it ourselves--though obviously not while Obama is in office.

Another possibility--not at all unlikely--is an Iranian revolution that takes out the entire radical leadership. The Iranian people very nearly had one last April, but when they didn't get any word of encouragement from the U.S. government the mullahs unleashed the thug squads and the protesters were crushed, hanged or tortured.

Still another possibility is that Iran's nuclear weapons program suffers a series of mysterious accidents. After all, during WW2 an American scientist almost set off an accidental detonation while pushing a pair of uranium disks around a desk. It's dangerous business.

But once they have a few bombs dispersed to various locations, so they can't all be smoked at once, the die seems cast--at least from what I can see.


Bill Whittle has a good video essay of why we're at war, and why ignoring it or hoping they'll go away is no longer an option.