McCain's War Policy is a Dud

McCain’s War Policy is a Dud

By Joseph Kellard


So John McCain may "bomb" Iran. The important questions are
what should he bomb and to what extent.

A committed altruist-pragmatist Republican, McCain would likely
just compromisingly target Iran's nuclear facilities, thus leaving the
ruling theocrats unscathed to rebuild or import their nukes and
capabilities to strike us another day.

But even if McCain wiped out that whole lot of theocrats, they'd be
replaced by their ideological peers. The theocrats pull the strings on
everything in Iran, from how women must dress in public to the
thugs that have taken hostage, terrorized and murdered Americans
for nearly three decades. Supposedly most young Iranians are more
secular, pro-American and want "democracy," but how long must
we wait for them to overthrow their Islamic regime? They've done
little to even weaken it, and I'm suspicious about just how
committed they are to freedom. That the theocrats remain in power
tells me that they still have a lot of support.

So an effective bombing campaign would not only wipe out Iran's
theocrats, but also all their major mosques--especially those where
congregants chant "Death to America"--and any major religious
schools, as well as their nuclear facilities and military complexes.

If the Iranians dared to rebuild another Koran-based government,
our leaders must tell them they will suffer similar consequences.

I can dream, can't I?

Meanwhile, Obama wants to have a "dialogue" with the Iranian
theocrats. So, right now, about the best we can expect is that the
theocrats' own irrationality will do them in. But the timetable for
such a collapse is really impossible to predict, particularly when
you consider the endless propping up Iran receives from the
American Left, our appeasing, so-called European allies and our
enemies in Russia, China and North Korea.

Ultimately, McCain's limited bombing campaign would amount to
little if anything, just as Bush's "surge" is nothing more than a push
for "representative government" so that Iraqis can vote themselves
into some form of statism, as the Taliban-Al Qaeda regroup again in
Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iran contracts out to have others do its
dirty terrorist work.

Our terrible political choices are part of the suffering we continue to
endure due to years of pragmatic foreign policy, and we're assured
to suffer further deadly consequences under Obama or McCain.
This won't change much until our leaders start acting on what the
Yaron Brook- and John Lewis-influenced policy makers in America
propose: all out war!


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Conspiracy Theorists: The "9/11 Truthers"

By Joseph Kellard


The City Journal has an article on its website, “A Conspiracy of Crackpots,” by John Avlon, regarding the so-called “9/11 Truthers.”


http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0910ja.html


I sent the following post in response to the article:

Conspiracy theorists like the so-called 9/11 Truthers are fundamentally akin to the radical Islamics who, yes, actually attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Islamic 9/11 terrorists held radically to the essence of Islam (and religion as such): faith, that is, the suspension of reason to believe in something that otherwise has no evidence to tie it to reality. The Islamics have faith in the dogmas of their religion, which commands them to go slay non-believers, simply because they reject their particular faith.

Faith, too, explains the essence of the “Truthers.” The “Truthers” enemy is the actual truth, since it doesn’t conform to their particular faith: that America is an evil nation that deserved what it got (from the Islamics) on 9/11. But they try to mask this hatred by, figuratively speaking, faithfully flying planes into the facts, that is, by dreaming up conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact, that is, America itself perpetrated 9/11, so that it’s war-mongering leaders could go to war in the Middle East. The reality they evade is that the Islamics in the Mid-East, most particularly the Iranian theocrats, have been waging war on America for decades before 9/11.

Conspiracy theorists such as the “Truthers” are fundamentally at war with reality.

They Deserve Every Penny

By Joseph Kellard

Fellow Objectivist Sylvia Bokor and I had letters published in the Boston Globe in response to another letter-writer who challenged Ayn Rand fans to justify CEO pay. Here's the relevant part of his letter:

"The average chief executive makes 344 times as much as the average worker in major US corporations … I challenge any 'free'-market apologists, clutching their Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman books, to come up with a reasonable explanation for this execrable distribution of wealth."

http://tinyurl.com/5mheoc


Here's how our letters appeared:

They deserve every penny

September 2, 2008

RE BRYAN Tucker's challenge to Ayn Rand fans ("Too little outrage over pay inequity," Letters, Aug. 28): There's no need to apologize for free markets. But because of considerable miseducation, there is a need to explain them. Tucker's use of the phrase "execrable distribution of wealth" indicates his mistaken Marxist-Keynesian views. Properly, wealth should not be "distributed." It should be earned. Chief executives do that. They earn a lot of money because they have a great deal more responsibility than other employees do. Most important, they create jobs, expand production, and thereby raise the standard of living.

Politicians' promises to "create" jobs are self-aggrandizement. Politicians don't create jobs. CEOs do. That's why they're highly paid.

SYLVIA BOKOR, Albuquerque


CEOS MAKE much more money than the "average" worker because they are exceptional. In short, they are the brains behind a corporation, that is, the Atlases on whose shoulders the entire operation of the corporation fundamentally depends.

JOSEPH KELLARD, East Meadow, N.Y.

http://tinyurl.com/5mheocc