She'd "Love To Kill" the President

Betty Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize thirty years ago for her work to end the violence in Northern Ireland. If they gave prizes for despicable speeches she might qualify for one of those, too.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."

She might also receive an award for high achievement in perpetrating logical atrocities. "It's our duty," she avers, "to become protectors of human life." She states this immediately after telling cheering school children that she would love to murder the president of the United States. What a marvelously inane human being this lady is.

Not If He Were President

"If I was president, this wouldn't have happened."
John Kerry on the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict.

We have no doubt that that's true. A President Kerry would doubtless have done everything he could to prevent Israel from defending itself so that there would be no war. Israel would just be "hunkered down", in Richard Cohen's infelicitous phrase, hoping that Hezbollah would be nice and return their kidnapped soldier and stop murdering Israeli civilians. How else could Senator Kerry be so sure that a conflict such as the one we're currently witnessing would not have broken out on his watch unless he knows he would have blocked Israel's attempt to defend itself?

Actually, were Mr. Kerry president, the problem would be perhaps even more serious. A President Kerry would have retreated from Iraq in January of 2005 right after his inauguration. If we were not in Iraq, however, Syria, Iran, and maybe a couple of other Middle Eastern Arab states, emboldened by our lack of will, would probably right now be amassing troops to confront the Israeli Defense Force because they would know that Kerry would do nothing to stop them except call for negotiations.

In other words, if the pompous Mr. Kerry were president, Israel would right now be forced to choose between risking annihilation and going nuclear to defend itself. That's where Kerry's strategy of appeasement and surrender in Iraq would take us. It's where appeasement and surrender always take those who adopt it as a policy.

A Little Humility Please

In an interview about his book Darwinian Conservatism, Larry Arnhart makes this statement:

In my book, I explain why the arguments of the intelligent design folks are weak. They assume unreasonable standards of proof in dismissing the evidence for Darwin's theory, and they don't offer any positive theory of their own as an alternative.

Note that he doesn't say that he explains "...why, in his opinion, the arguments of the ID folks are weak." Nosiree. No sissified qualifications or equivocations from this man. Arnhart is a political science professor, after all, and if such an exalted expert proclaims the ID arguments to be weak, then that settles that.

Professor Arnhart is evidently convinced that a professorship in political science is close enough to real science to give him sufficient standing to pontificate on controversies in the philosophy of science as though he had some authority in the field. This is almost as presumptuous as Ann Coulter's pronouncements on the short-comings of the theory of evolution in her book Godless.

To be sure, there's nothing wrong with a non-specialist venturing opinions on matters outside their field of expertise - at Viewpoint we do it all the time - but it would be wise of non-specialists to exercise a little intellectual humility and avoid presenting their opinions as if they commanded the assent of the rest of us.

The Coming Assault on Iran

James Lewis at The American Thinker makes a prediction: If the Iranians don't back off their nuclear program there will be military strikes against Tehran before George Bush leaves office. The Israelis may start it, but the Americans will finish it. And no Arab country will shed a tear.

He argues that all the indications are that the Israelis are currently preparing for just such an assault:

Even as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are battling to knock down Hezbollah, Iran's terror proxy in Lebanon, the Washington Times reports that the Israeli Air Force is now equpped to take on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even while he is busy channeling the Twelfth Imam in Tehran. The timing of this report may not be a coincidence.

According to Rowan Scarborough, Israel has purchased 25 $84 million F-15I (I for Israel) Ra'am, aspecial version of the U.S. F-15E long-range interdiction bomber. It also is buying 102 of another long-range tactical jet, the $45 million F-16I Sufa. About 60 have been delivered.

The Jewish state also is buying 500 U.S. BLU-109 "bunker buster" bombs that could penetrate the concrete protection around some of Iran's underground facilities, such as the uranium enrichment site at Natanz. The final piece of the enterprise is a fleet of B-707 air-to-air refuelers that could nurse strike aircraft as they made the 900-mile-plus trip inside Iran, dropped their bombs and returned to Israel.

More than 85 long-range bombers and tactical jets are enough to strike fixed nuclear targets in Iran. The Iranians can't very wel move their nuclear plant at Bushehr or their enrichment cascade at Natanz. They do have another estimated 30 nuclear-related sites that may survive a short-term air campaign.

So much for IAF capability. What about military objectives? The Israeli mindset is essentially defensive. Israel has a formidable military because for more than half a century it has had formidable enemies. It would be absurd in Israeli eyes to attack anyone who did not pose a threat.

But the Mullahs are repeating Saddam Hussein's model of building a nuclear industry while talking genocide. That adds the greatest possible incentive to actually use Israel's long-range bombers. Add capabiity to incentive, and you can get action.

It's clear that Iran cannot be permitted to develop nuclear capabilities. It's not that they could put one atop an ICBM and launch it at the U.S. but rather that they'd almost certainly supply them to terrorists who would smuggle them into Israel, Europe or the U.S. An attack on Iran would have terrible consequences for world stability, but nuclear weapons in the hands of those who preach genocide of the Jews and the destruction of Western civilization would be calamitous. There simply are no easy options if Iran persists in its quest to develop the ability to accomplish these aims.

Read the rest of Lewis' piece at the link.