An Open Letter
Posted by Stephen Green · 3 January 2006
Dear Old Europe,
We'd like a little help with one tiny thing, please. In case you hadn't noticed, Iran is trying to get nukes. You remember Iran, don't you? But before we get to all that, let's clear the air about some things.
I understand you and I don't always see eye to eye – and not just on foreign policy. So let's forget Iraq for a few minutes, because that's an entirely different kettle of gefilte fish.
Look. I know you guys are post-Christian, and you sneer at us for our Six Flags Over Jesus mega-churches and all our public solemnity and stuff. And then we go and pick on you for turning your religious heritage into nothing more than tourists attractions, if not actual theme parks. So let's just call that one a draw, and agree to disagree.
You guys have your managed economies, and we have our free markets. But as long as we're all enjoying the good life, who cares how it comes about? You get your long vacations seventeen times a year, and we get our hyperdefinition fusion TVs. However you slice it, though, we're still the same – we each enjoy our leisure, and lots.
We'd like you guys to get a little more active in the world, and you'd like us to reign it in a little. But when push doesn't come to shove, we really want the same thing: to get about the business of enjoying our lives and our families. Now, you think you can get there by playing nice, while we think we have to play nasty from time to time. For all the friction of our different means, you and I still desire the same ends.
We're a lot alike, you and me. And that makes what I have to say all the more difficult.
I know you think we're all religious nuts over here, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the real deal. We're trying, however imperfectly, to bring a little freedom to the Islamic world. Ahmadinejad says he wants to wipe Israel off the map. How's that for nuts? He's not making any idle threat, either, like launching "a thousand-year Reich" or promising "liberty, equality, fraternity." Iran wants nukes. Iran has an advanced nuclear program. We'd like to stop them, without using military means.
And we'd sure like some help, fellas.
There's another Holocaust brewing, and I don't mean your parlor-room talk about how America is killing brown babies for oil. Besides, we aren't the ones who committed the first Holocaust – that was your doing. What we're trying to do is prevent another one, and we'd like to think that you guys might be a little sensitive to that sort of thing. "Go forth and sin no more," and all that.
Well, here's your chance to right a wrong.
Looking at your atrophied militaries, maybe that's too much to ask. So instead, how about if you could provide a little multinational moral support to the endeavor? Then again, we've all seen what counts as moral backbone in Brussels and Paris and Berlin – so let's set our sights a little lower. How about you guys just sit back and shut the hell up while the pros do what needs to be done?
You guys have failed. As of right now, Iran can produce yellowcake. As of shortly after right now, Iran will have nukes. As of yesterday – thanks in no small part to Old Europe – Iran already has missiles capable of reaching Israel.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some chickenhawk cowboy who wants to bomb the snuff out of Iran. I think there's still some slim chance that diplomacy might still work. But – and let's speak frankly here, as friends – your brand of diplomacy just won't cut it.
Your kind of diplomacy gave chemical weapons technology to Saddam Hussein. Your kind of diplomacy sells jet fighters and stealth-defeating radars to whoever has the cash to buy them. Your kind of diplomacy is the same kind of diplomacy you used to coddle a certain German tyrant 70 years ago.
Well. In the age of nukes, that kind of diplomacy just won't cut it.
We can muster "big stick" diplomacy, and Iran knows it. We have CENTCOM in Iraq. We have Special Forces in Afghanistan. We have Israel on a very loose leash.
Yours is the kind of diplomacy that pleads. Ours is the kind that threatens.
You've had your chance, and gotten nowhere. We'd like to see what we can do. All we ask is that you play to your strength and admit defeat already. We'll take it from here.
Yours,
America.
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