We need to quit our nation building now, but we also need to act in self defense in preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons…

It looks as though Iran is getting some pressure to abandon its project to create nuclear weapons (Iran denies it is for weapons, claiming it is for electricity generation only — few if any believe that).

The Israeli defense minister let it be known that time is running short, in the Israeli’s opinion, to do something. The word is, come spring if Iran has not backed off, Israel will strike.

And it seems as if the Obama administration is in on the pressure game, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirming to a news reporter that the Israelis have said as much. The U.S. it is said tried unsuccessfully to get the Israelis to agree to give the economic sanctions more time — they replied there is little time left.

The U.S. will be blamed whether it is involved or directly involved or not.

You will note the Obama administration does not seem to be telling Israel no (even though we probably could not stop Israel from acting, certainly we have some fair amount of leverage over that nation).

I had begun to write a post about being against our nation-building efforts in the Middle East. But stopping Iran from getting the bomb, so to speak, has nothing to do with nation building and everything to do with self defense of the U.S. and the free world.

There had been a joint military exercise in Israel between their forces and ours planned but it was cancelled. Many speculate that is because Israel had more pressing matters to take care of and did not need the complication of American troops being in the way.

It is a difficult situation or problem, that is, telling another nation it cannot have nuclear weapons when we along with other nations have them. But we cannot let the proliferation of nuclear weapons continue. We survived the nuclear saber rattling of the Cold War, probably because our adversary the Soviet Union did not want a nuclear exchange any more than we did — an accident could have easily happened, though.

Iran is run by religious zealots and political mad men who might do anything. It must be stopped.

I have often written that I think the warnings ought to be done in secret to let Iran save face and allow it to abandon the nuclear weapons program on its own. But this public display of pressure may be needed too.

I would like to see the president of the United States make a speech and say that the U.S. will not allow the proliferation of nuclear weapons and leave it at that, no specific threat, you decide what we mean Iran.

Actions will eventually speak louder than words, and Iran needs to know action may come soon.

I changed my mind about how I would lead into this blog piece after hearing about the latest prediction on a strike on Iran, as I understand it, first reported by the Washington Post and picked up by other outlets, and used as the lead into the CBS Evening News, at least on the broadcast I heard on radio.

And now back to what I had originally intended to put forth:

Just began reading a story on the New York Times site about a Marine unit penetrating deep into the Afghan hinterlands where no NATO forces had ventured before, where the Taliban has had complete control. In the process, one Marine was seriously injured while trying to dismantle and IED and another injured as well. But bringing along some of the native government troops with them, they managed to plant the Afghan national flag.

Well, that’s all well and good, but I would call that “nation building”.

And that is one place where I am in entire agreement with Ron Paul. Under our constitution or at least under our constitution combined with the clear intentions of our founding fathers, we, the United States of America, have no business building nations other than our own. It is far too costly in blood and treasure and not our business anyway.

We feel compelled to hold on in Afghanistan, even though the Obama administration has made it known that it plans to essentially turn the brunt of the effort over to the Afghans come 2013 — but still have U.S. troops remain as backup, I guess –  because we feel we have to finish what we started, otherwise the effort, to include thousands dead and wounded, will have been in vain.

Before I go into 20/20 hindsight, I want to say it is my opinion that we should turn it all over to the Afghan government now and rid ourselves of the burden. If the Taliban take it all back, so be it. If the Taliban start threatening us somehow, we should go directly after them in what ever way feasible.

Now back to the 20/20 hindsight:

The 9/11 attack on the United States, the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, was essentially launched from Afghanistan where the late Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda force received aid and comfort from the Taliban who ran Afghanistan at the time. We made the decision to invade Afghanistan after it refused to turn over Bin Laden and continued to protect Al Qaeda.

We should have gone in full bore, rounded up Bin Laden and all the Al Qaeda we could, took over for a time and supervised the setting up of a new government — yes nation building to a degree — and then at the appropriate time left. And I would not have suggested too long of a time — probably far less time than we, along with allied forces, spent supervising things in Japan and Germany. The populations and cultures of those two nations seemed to take to the forming of democratic and non-belligerent governments. This is not the case in Afghanistan. It is hostile territory with a backwards, tribal culture. Some things are not worth the bother — Afghanistan is not.

I say keep the aircraft carriers and the troops ready to respond where need be for the defense of the United States and its true interests (the free flow of goods, to include oil, being among them), but let us not get bogged down in trying to recreate another people’s culture and government.

If the presidential campaign were a one-issue event I might well vote for Ron Paul.

Neither Democratic president Obama nor any of the Republicans likely to become president are apt to change the status quo, although to his credit, Obama does seem to ever-so-slowly be winding down the costly and for the most part futile efforts in the Middle East.

Like I say, if electing a president was composed of just one issue, I might vote for Ron Paul.

But life is complex, whether the Republicans understand that or not.

Letting outlaw states proceed with nuclear programs is suicide for civilization…

Dr. Bill Wattenburg, the late night know-it-all of KGO Radio, San Francisco, makes a good case that we should all be afraid — very afraid, if, no, that is to say “when“ Iran constructs a crude nuclear bomb and possibly lets it get into the hands of terrorists who might deliver it to the U.S. in a cargo container and set it off.

And it will not take “years” for them to build it, as some experts or spokesmen for the U.S. government maintain. Iran is already dangerously close to having the right amount or grade of enriched uranium to construct a bomb, Wattenburg maintains, and he insists with vigor, that the idea it would take years to build is hogwash because the info is so readily available and the process is relatively “easy”.

And then all hell would break loose. “Your life will not be the same” he warns. A blast, likely to go off in some U.S. coastal port, would not only kill and injure a lot of people, it would send the public and even the police and firemen and others on whom they depend into a panic. In short, civilization, as we know it, would cease to exist. You’d be lucky to be able to find your children at school in all the chaos that would ensue. There would be no stores to sell food open, no water, no electricity.

At the same time, there would be tremendous pressure from the panic-stricken public on our government for massive retaliation on anyone and everyone even suspected in such an attack. For that reason, it would be better to bomb or otherwise destroy or convince the Iranians to discontinue their work on a nuclear bomb (something they claim they are not building — nuclear for electrical power and peaceful purposes only, they insist — but their tone sounds kind of like a routine Ellen DeGeneres used to use in her stand-up comedy — yes I am — no I’m not, yes…).

Now keep in mind, Dr. Bill can sound a bit like a blow hard at times and he comes off as some kind of self-proclaimed or at least self-assured genius on subjects ranging from how to get a caterpillar tractor stuck in the mud unstuck to building a nuclear bomb. He claims to have been in on the design of various nuclear weapons, and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System or BART, as well as some freeway interchanges. He also offered a suggestion recently on how to at least partially plug BP Gulf of Mexico oil leak — something about stuffing giant steel golf balls down the hole.

According to the latest news reports, BP has finally stopped the flow of oil and hopefully for good. And, interestingly, I just read a blog that suggests the design for the containment cap that BP used and that seems to be working may have been designed by a plumber.

Wattenburg holds a doctorate in electrical engineering. To be fair, he often suggests on his radio talk show that everyday people often have great talent and knowledge (Potential callers beware, though, Wattenburg is not one to suffer fools.)

But back to the main point here — I have heard Wattenburg on the radio for years and I can attest or concede that he knows much, even if he abuses his knowledge and status at times in furtherance of his own fairly right-wing ideology.

When I think about his warning on Iran, I think about how unprepared our government has shown it is for disaster — 9/11, Katrina, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, need I write more?

Letting outlaw states proceed with nuclear programs is suicide for civilization.

Struggle continues in Iran and change may be in the air, but the U.S. has to keep an eye on what is really important — nuclear capability

After blogging so much yesterday about the tumult in Iran and questioning in my last post as to what would happen there today, I feel compelled to write a few words today.

With the stranglehold on the free flow of information by the government there, it is quite difficult to get a clear picture of what is taking place or took place today (Sunday). I’ve read reports that there was an eerie silence on the streets and even more of a police presence and I have also read that there have been continued protests and continued violence. We know people have been beat up and that people have been killed (no clear figures on how many). And there have been arrests, some of those arrested were even in hospital beds reportedly. And militias or whatever they call themselves have reportedly broken into homes to go after or intimidate anyone suspected of dissenting from the government view.

And there is a split in the ruling clergy in this theocracy, as well as in the elected portion of the government.

Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads up two powerful clerical institutions, the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, is being intimidated, or at least that must be the intent, with his daughter and other relatives arrested. I understand the relatives were released (not sure), but his daughter remains under arrest. She had participated in a rally for opposition figure Hossein Musavi.

Another former president has criticized the government too, I heard.

But I want to pull back and just say I wish the people there the best and hope that out of all of this that they get a better government and get rid of that nut case Amadinejad who glibly denies the Holocaust, even visiting the U.S. to do so. No matter what your religion is or whether you support or don’t support the Jewish nation, if you have any knowledge of the world at all you know that of course the Holocaust happened, and the eyewitness accounts plus the documentation and documentary film footage taken both by the perpetrators themselves and the allies when they liberated the camps prove the case (I know, some people say we never went to the moon – that footage was shot in Arizona or New Mexico).

However, even though what happens in Iran, thanks to modern rapid communication technology, does not stay in Iran, I still say the best we can do is offer moral support. The Iranian government knows the world is watching. I think it has lost what little credibility it ever had on the world stage, let alone domestically.

I would say the U.S. needs to keep its eye on the ball (or should I say bomb?). More important in all of this is making sure Iran or no other nation, that does not already have it, gets access to nuclear weapons or the ability to produce them. It’s just something we have to do for survival. The U.S. let the genie out of the bottle back in 1945. And although we can’t fully put it back in, we have to do what we can.

We lived for decades wondering whether between us, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, we would manage to destroy the world by some terrible mistake or miscalculation. But apparently the Soviets were not nut cases who would launch nukes with no concern whether it might end the world.

That does not seem to be the case for the nut cases out of the Middle East or over in North Korea.

While we always want to do what we can to support freedom everywhere, the overriding concern must be to save the world from nuclear annihilation.

We now have a government in Iran that we know for sure we cannot trust and has lost its legitimacy.

And we have a government in North Korea we cannot deal with.

Interestingly, even if the dissidents win out in Iran or get some type of accommodation, that does not resolve the nuke question. The dissidents want their freedom, but for all I know they might decide nukes would protect them.

Our message must be clear – no nukes. And we have to have the resolve to do what is necessary to back that up.

I applaud President Barack Obama’s diplomacy expertise – he’s amazingly won high praise in the Islamic world.

And while I am 100 percent for open or transparent government, as I have blogged before, on the nuclear issue, we would do better to say little, but let those who would do mischief know what our position is and then let action speak louder than words, if that becomes necessary.

But in the end, some things are not negotiable, unless we want to risk the end.