SC&A have an important post up that discusses the ramifications of this full court press by the antiwar crowd to undermine efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and "prevent" war:
It is not the Israelis who have threatened the Arabs or Iran. It is just the opposite. It is the Arabs who constantly threaten the Israelis with extermination. It is the Arabs and Iranians who announce ‘Israel’s destruction is near’ or the ‘fires of hell will engulf the Israelis.’ Those messages are reinforced in media, school curriculum and preached from the pulpit. Other messages, even less obtuse, praise and endorse the idea that Iran and the Arab world must acquire nuclear weapons for ‘balance’- and to endorse their stated foreign and religious policies of extermination.
There is a very big difference between the Israelis and the Iranians and the Arab world when comes to nuclear weapons. For the Israelis, they are real deterrent. For the Iranians, nuclear weapons are hammer, to be used to blackmail the west- or worse.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s pronouncement of his affection for Jews is suspect when his best friends are proud supporters of racism and genocide. The Iranians are the major political, economic and military backers of Hassan Nasrallah and Hizbollah. Nasrallah, never shy refers to Jews as ’sons of monkeys and pigs’ and has expressed his delight that there are so many Jews in Israel- ‘It will save us the trouble of rounding them up.’ Given the Iranian penchant for supporting Hizbollah, et al, do we really want to take the chance that the Iranians might supply that terrorist organization with a small nuke, to be deployed inside Israel?
Siggy is also very cognizant of the historical parallels and the devastating consequences of this sort of psychological denial:
Imagine being a black person in a neighborhood where you are surrounded by KKK members who for decades have promised to lynch you. They have no problem stating what is they have in store for you and they teach those lessons to their kids in neighborhood schools and in summer camps and and even in churches. Parents display their pride as their children play games like ’slaughter the nigger!’ and express their desire from a young age to participate in the killing of blacks.
One can only imagine the scenario if the Iranian and Arab world nuclear ‘imbalance’ and ‘inequality’ of nuclear programs were allowed to be addressed. If history tends to repeat itself, we have plenty to consider.
Prior to WWII, Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles, rearmed Germany to the extreme, beat the drums of war and put that nation on a war footing. The Europeans, loathe to fight another war, recalling the horrors of WWI, did everything they could to avoid another conflagration, even turning a blind eye after Hitler waltzed into Czechoslovakia and took the Sudetenland. They believed him when he said ‘that was all he wanted, to correct past injustices suffered by the German ethnic minority.’
(Does that ring a bell yet?)
Chamberlain, the gold medal champion of European denial and psychopathy, went to Berlin and met with ‘civilized’ Hitler to much newsreel fanfare. He returned home to an adoring crowd, waving a piece of paper ’signed by Herr Hitler.’ There was to be no war, Chamberlain assured a nervous nation and continent. In fact, he soothed European fears and declared, ‘There will be peace in our time.’
"Peace" in Chamberlain's time translated into millions of Jews exterminated before the West finally woke up and confronted the unbelievable evil that they had "learned" to stop worrying about as they indulged their psychological denial.
In fact, we can translate "learning to live with a nuclear Iran" into "learning to live without Israel and the Jews". Because that is what the practical consequence of this leftist line of reasoning amounts to.
Will we wait for the equivalent of more than 2000 WTC's when (not if) a nuclear Iran inevitably pursues it's religious destiny--the one that Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs have repeatedly emphasized over the years? You must admit that would be a strange sort of "love" and "compassion", wouldn't it?
If the German people with all their "ordnung" and their restrained national character-- which might lead one to imagine they would have abhored all the chaos, disorder and destruction they unleashed in WWII--could perpetrate the genocide known as the Holocaust, then what can we expect from the Arabs, whose entire bloody history is one of belligerance and emotionality, rather than a willingness to accommodate and compromise? Has Iran "accommodated" homosexuals--or has it exterminated them?
Unfortunately, the unwillingness of the left in this country to face the reality of the rise of Islamofascism and the barbarism it has unleashed around the world has had the consequence of facilitating that barbarism and even encouraging it.
I think of such people as beyond mere psychological denial...In a previous post I refer to them as "denialists" because their reliance on this defense mechanism is more than transiently striking--it is a dedicated way of life. They proudly and defiantly wear the multicultural and PC blinders of the psychologically obtuse. Usually they refer to themselves as "progresssive" and "reality-based"; which just goes to show how creative and imaginitive they are.
But, the reality is that some people in denial prefer the lethal consequences of their denial as long as they don't have to question their own motivations, beliefs, and ideologies.
Those individuals, groups, or nations who live in the world of deep denial are essentially untouchable by reality or rational argument. They go through their daily lives secure in the knowledge that their self-image is protected against any information, feelings, or awareness that might make them have to change their view of the world. Nothing--not facts, not observable behavior; not the use of reason, logic, or the evidence of their own senses will make them reevaluate that world view.
Thus the antiwar crowd are more interested in the halo they have drawn around their own heads for being against war--something no sane person is for.
In my post "Peace Like A River, i.e., Denial River" , I quote from ShrinkWrapped's excellent discussion on how people's conscious thoughts and actions, often reflect contradictory unconscious desires. In particular, he focuses on unconscious aggression:
Nowhere is this more significant than in our understanding of aggression. People typically fear their primitive aggression and defend against their awareness of the intensity and depth of their aggression as well as against the expression of their aggression. Yet it is a truism that unconscious impulses always seek ways to find discharge. It is not uncommon to see parents who are committed pacifists, who commit themselves to having homes which display no evidence of aggressive toys, raise children who are themselves aggressive and problematic; via the magic of unconscious processes which include identification and projective identifications, fantasy formation, primitive parent-child introjection and incorporation, among many others, the child becomes the agent for expressing the parent's disowned and disavowed unconscious aggression.
When our oldest was ~5, he often played with a neighboring child whose parents were ideological liberals and aggressively anti-aggression. This child owned no guns and wasn't allowed to play with toy soldiers, watch violent cartoons, etc; there were many other rules governing his play too numerous to enumerate. His parents were what one might refer to as "controlling" people (which is why we did not maintain a long term friendship.) We would carefully place our son's militaristic weapons/toys out of sight when this child came to visit. On one of his last visits, in his mother's presence, he quite cleverly took bites out of his grilled cheese sandwich in just such a fashion as to create a gun which fit quite nicely in his tiny hand; he proceeded to shoot everyone and everything in sight. His mother was quite apologetic, though I suspect managed in her own mind to blame us for her son's behavior. You will not be surprised to find that he was having some "issues" in kindergarten with aggression.
[...]
I have wondered for quite some time if this kind of projective identification is an aspect of the Left's fascination with, and (denied) support for, anti-civilization violence.
Indeed. This is the sort of psychological dynamic that is hard for a competent psychiatrist to miss--unless he or she has issues with their own aggressive impulses.
Shrink is absolutely correct in asserting that by denying our own aggressive natures we end up enabling and supporting the aggression of others. And, the most blatant example is the appeasement of terrorism and terrorists by the political left and the Democrats; or any who are totally invested in seeing themselves as "antiwar" as they cozy up to enemies whose explicit goal is to destroy our civilization.
The actual track record of so-called "peace" movements is abysmal. Look at how the same sort of "peace" movement in the 1930's allowed the rise to power and the subsequent aggression of the most dangerous evil ever to confront the world.
Once again we are faced with a loud contingent of the clueless, who would rather deny their own aggressive impulses and embrace the delusion that they are saintly, compassionate people--proudly standing against the horrible evils of war--rather than confront reality.
Thomas Sowell once commented that, "If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent. "
Clearly it is not. And there is an important psychological reason for this reality. Every aggressor today has been recast by the political left as a victim of the imperialist West; and thus those aggressors know that the full force of the left's postmodern rhetoric and its antiwar fervor will provide a protective umbrella shielding them from any consequences for their aggression. No matter how egregious their behavior is; or how many innocents they slaughter, they can count on endless demands for cease fires, negotiations and concessions; and that the left will blame the West.
Antiwar protestors always make a point of asking rhetorically what war is good for? You have heard them chanting this query at almost every one of their peace marches.
The truth is that no sane person wants war, but aggression may be the only possible response to evil.
And in human history, there have been many evils far worse than war.
The result of all this antiwar activism and rhetoric has been the ongoing enabling and appeasement of an intolerable evil that thrives on hatred and that has grown strong and sure of its holy mission to kill.
But still, after decades of self-delusion, the rhetoric continues, as diplomats insist on getting back on "the roadmap" that should lead to peace; but which--surprise! surprise!--seems to lead only to more violence and death.
Maybe it is time to give up on the idea of a Mideast Peace where it has come to either enabling one group of psychopaths versus another?
By not getting in touch with our own aggression, we have abandoned the very means by which peace could actually come about. By undermining any action that could serve, in the real world, to cause Iran to consider the negative consequences of becoming a nuclear power, they are ensuring a much more dangerous and violent future.
If the peace movement really were a peace movement, its members would be denouncing the true threats to peace and trying their damndest to disarm and neutralize the likes of Iran, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and so on.
Instead they invite tyrants like Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia and laugh at his ridiculous assertion that "there are no homosexuals in Iran." Yeah, the left can laugh at this deliberate, cynical lie----and that's why they have stopped worrying and learned to love the idea of a nuclear Iran--even as the stooges of the Mullahs murder and terrorize Iranian homosexuals. Very funny.
They don't take the reality very seriously either.
In the blissful state of denial, these saintly "pacifists" fail to understand how their behavior actually champions the terrorists; and rationalizes terrorist behavior. They fail to appreciate that by refusing to call terrorists like the rulers of Iran to account--not through words, but through actions-- for their uncivilized and barbaric behavior, they, these wonderful, compassionate, antiwar activists have become the root cause of the even more deadly confrontation that will inevitably ensue.
In today's world, those who are truly evil know they can get away with practically any horror; and that there will always be a large cadre of dupes who are willing to rationalize, excuse, or minimize any atrocity.
For all their rhetoric to the contrary, the actual beneficiaries of the "antiwar" movement are the warmongering tyrants of the world whose naked aggression remains unchecked and is always rationalized away. The only outcome in the real world of all that lovely pacifism is the triumph of evil.
War is a always a terrible choice. No reasonable person could believe that it is benign or intrinsically "good" to wage war. Yet, it is sometimes a choice that reasonable people need to make simply because evil exists in the world and it cannot go unchecked--that is, not if you truly care about innocent human life.
If you cannot consciously tap into the aggressive side of your human nature and permit the use of aggression and even violence to serve the good; you will inevitably end up serving all that is evil in the world.
Pacifists cannot deal with this simple truth.
The left's antiwar activism is simply part of its ongoing struggle against reality. Watch for more hysterical rhetoric in the days, weeks and months to come regarding the Iranian situation.
Watch especially as the new meme about being able "to live with a nuclear Iran" is pushed aggressively in the press, and as supposedly "reasonable" people piously mouth it. Don't forget when you hear them say it what they are really saying; and especially don't forget that the political left once again, is perfectly willing to sacrifice millions of people on the altar of their own narcissism and psychopathology.
UPDATE: Carolyn Glick hears what the left chooses to ignore: "Ahmadinejad's Overlooked Message":
During his visit to New York this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked every basic assumption upon which Western civilization is predicated. Ahmadinejad offered up his attacks while extolling his vision of Islamic global domination.
Refusing to note his existential challenge to the Free World, the Western media concentrated their coverage of his trip on his statements regarding specific Western policy goals....
Ahmadinejad gave two major addresses this week - at Columbia University and at the UN General Assembly. He devoted both to putting forward his vision for global Islamic domination. And while the Western media sought hidden meanings and signals for peaceful intentions in his words, the fact is that on both occasions, Ahmadinejad made absolutely clear that his vision of Islamic domination cannot coexist in any manner with Western civilization. Consequently, Ahmadinejad's statements were not negotiating stances. They were the direct consequence of the world view he propounds. As such, they are non-negotiable....
Read on.
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