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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 6, 2009 / 12 Iyar 5769

Without Preparation, Explanation or Response

By Tony Blankley


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Does anyone take serious words seriously anymore here in Washington?


News item No. 1 concerns the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22. She said deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world."


News item No. 2 is this headline on the front page of the May 4 edition of The Washington Post: "U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited."


News item No. 3 is a quote in Jackson Diehl's May 4 column in The Washington Post from a senior Obama administration official: "It's not good when your national security interests are dependent on a country over which you have almost no influence."


In a matter of two weeks, we have gone from witnessing the U.S. secretary of state testify to Congress that a nuclear Pakistan run by Islamist radicals would be a "mortal threat" to America to hearing the administration admit that we have limited options to avoid such a threat.


What are we to make of such a development? I and many others had previously warned of the dangers of a nuclear "Talibanistan" (which have been obvious and talked about for years). Experts I have talked to in the past week do not believe Clinton is overstating the case. Nor do I. She is very careful with her words — and they fit the danger.


If Pakistan's nuclear weapons were to get into the hands of Taliban or al-Qaida, even unlaunched, they would provide the weapons-grade fissile materiel necessary to create a nuclear holocaust, here in the United States or elsewhere.


How did it come to be that the government of the most powerful nation in the history of humanity (with a population of 300 million-plus and a gross domestic product of about $14 trillion, which is larger than the second-, third- and fourth-largest economies — Japan, Germany and China — combined) has confessed that its options are limited regarding a "mortal threat" to it?


And what are we going to do about it? I don't blame the Obama administration — not yet. It inherited our current national military strength. But it has been obvious for years that we are not prepared to deal with a world that refuses to behave as we either predict or prefer. And we need to start catching up with the growing contingent threats.


It was in understanding the inevitability of contingent or unexpected events to emerge that led Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the great 19th-century Prussian field marshal and army chief of staff, famously to observe, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." Thus, he believed that "war is a matter of expedients." As has been observed, "He was suspicious of rigid, inflexible, and totalizing grand strategies and theories," arguing instead for a strategy and preparations that provided for a series of plug-in points that could be shaped to meet the military challenges of the moment — as a war unfolded.


So, too, should we be prepared for world political events — or be prepared to pay the consequences. That is why when, a year ago, I was writing my most recent book, "American Grit: What It Will Take To Survive and Win in the 21st Century," I argued that we must face the reality that, given the growing threats in a rapidly morphing world, we will need a bigger military than our current all-volunteer force: "The questions that any statesman or strategist has to confront are obvious: What if our armed forces are suddenly needed to take out Iran's nuclear program? What if Pakistan falls to the jihadists, and we need troops to secure that country's nuclear weapons? What if China invades Taiwan? What if North Korea, in a desperate gambit, launches an attack on South Korea? What if the vast resources of the North Pole spark a military rivalry between Russian, Canada, the United States, and other countries? What if the Saudi oil fields require protection? What if we have to secure our southern border from increasingly ambitious drug cartels or civil disturbances in Mexico?"


Well, in the mere year since I wrote those words, three of those seven contingencies (Iran, Pakistan and Mexico) have gone from speculation to the daily headlines. The blood is not yet on the ground regarding them, but prudent investors would start buying coffins. And yet we plan not at all.


Our troop strength is so limited that President Obama has to move troops out of Iraq — risking turning inherited near success into possible strategic failure — in order to slightly beef up Afghanistan. Now, while perhaps we may have some time, we should be putting on a crash program to increase troop and materiel strength. With the recession, we probably could induct more volunteers than seemed possible during prosperity. But that is only a half-measure. We eventually will need more Army and Marine combat troops than will volunteer (and increased Navy and Air Force sea and airlift and fighting capacity, which we could start building now).


It should be inadmissible for the U.S. government to identify a "mortal threat" without at least offering up a plan to defeat it. Where is the plan? Where is the public clamor for a plan?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

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Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. Comment by clicking here.

© 2009, Creators Syndicate

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