Many may want to pretend that Al Qaeda and Iran aren't at war with us, but they know better.

Iran hates us and they are killing US troops but we wouldn't want to do anything to make them really mad at us. How does that make sense to anyone?

I feel the same way about Iran as I do about global warming. I will do something about it when it happens. Wake me up when Iran has the ability to project its power, in a meaningful way, to North America.

It's a tad late when you see the flash.

So "Jardinero1" you're OK with Iran killing Americans, so long as those Americans being killed were dumb enough to sign up to wear the uniform?

Wake me up when Iran has the ability to project its power, in a meaningful way, to North America.

Wake up then. They're killing our soldiers, which projects power to North America because its our citizens that are being killed.

Sounds like a resurrection of the Domino Theory; except against a foe no less ruthless, but far less capable. AQ and Iran cannot achieve their strategic goals through force of arms. At some indeterminate point in the future, Iran may be able to inflict some real damage, but they simply cannnot prevail, militarily, against the West. Even the Soviets couldn't prevail; ultimately, the best they could have hoped for was a draw.

The threat to the West is not a military threat. The threat to the West lies in the incipient (and successful) Islamist effort to establish Islam as an "untouchable" subject in the cultural and political arena. Projection of [US] force isn't going to change, or fix that. Freedom of speech and the establishment clause do not apply when it comes to calling Islamism out for what it is, and what it is doing.

Never submit.

Iran has been at war with us since 1979. Even during Ronald Reagan's watch, Tehran backed cells killed Americans largely with impunity.

True.

That said, how we best wage war in return is not an easy question to answer.

But anyway, when that new Iraqi government signs power plant deals with Iran are they with us or against us?

I've been wondering for years why few people are concerned about the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons and deploying a dozen of them in a surprise attack not against cities, but as EMP weapons. From what I read, a single good-sized bomb detonated in space over the center of a continent can wipe out the electrical infrastructure and everything that depends on transistors, over the whole continent ... hence, no computers, phones, radio, TV, internet, cars, ATM's ... and no electricity.

Seems to me this could just about wipe out Western civilization in a single morning, tossing us back to the 19th century but with a 21st century population to feed. To think we would "just fix everything" and go back to normal seems naive -- how do you coordinate a repair effort when your whole communications and financial infrastructure is gone?

But instead of people running around waving their arms and screaming, "Stop them, stop them NOW!" -- which would be the cool-headed, rational response to the current crisis we face -- we never even hear about the danger posed by EMP weapons, and get people like Jardinero posting things like the above. Weird.

A corollary to Andy's post: the only weapon that the terrorists have to use against us is the ability to incite fear. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Iran pose no existential threat to the United States except in their ability to make us afraid and incite us to act stupidly. Our Iraq policy and the fear exhibited by various posters to this blog are examples of their success.

"Hezbollah and Iran pose no existential threat to the United States"

Ah, so they can't wipe us out but only kill a few hundred of thousand or maybe a million or two. That's a relief, here I was thinking they were dangerous!

And I'm still wondering precisely why they can't, by using an EMP attack as I've described, actually wipe us out. If someone knows of some expert who has said, no, that won't work because we now use X22 transistors that are impervious to EMP attacks, or because EMP attacks would require not just any old nuke but a Radon-68-Fortified Nuke with added Vitamin D1, which only the USA knows how to make -- why, I'd be delighted to hear about it.

But for years, whenever I've raised this question, all I get are insubstantial reassurances (see J. above) or the sound of crickets chirping. Hence, I simply don't get how people can act like the Islamofascists getting nukes is anything but the primary crisis of the day.

Mark,

It's not as easy as it sounds. It requires a high altitude air burst and that means you need a high quality delivery vehicle, a high quality guidance system, and a high quality weapon. There goes a great deal of economic development and R&D before you get to that. Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea, probably aren't there yet. So far, the Iranians are years away from assembly and test of a weapon which may just go thunk like the North Korean one. A potential agressor state also must consider the requirement that we not know such a weapon has been launched before we can retaliate in kind. Not likely.

Mount it on a SCUD, launch it from a barge in international waters. How would the victims know which nation launched it? Besides, they've demonstrated that they're perfectly sincere in their fanatical belief that God wants them to kill as many non-Muslims as possible and conquer the world for Islam; why would they worry about what the US might do after they've crippled us? God's on their side.