Theodor W. Adorno’s categorical imperative saying that everything should be organised in a way that Auschwitz cannot repeat itself has been turned into its opposite: especially since the beginning of the “Arab spring”, everything is increasingly being organised in a way that it is most probable for it to happen again soon.
In mid-December DEBKAfile wrote under the headline “US-Iranian nuclear talks fail. Iran has plutonium for 24 Nagasaki-type bombs”:
After more than 15 years of on-and-off, largely aimless, nuclear diplomacy with world powers and evasive tactics with the UN nuclear agency, Tehran is for the first time showing signs of impatience and not just is [sic] usual disdain. This is because two things have changed:
1. For all those years, Tehran availed itself of every diplomatic opening for protracted bargaining about its nuclear program for the sake of buying time, free of pressure, to push that program forward. Now, the Iranians are telling the US and Europe that they have arrived at their destination. For them, time is no longer of essence, as it may be for the West.
2. The second development was revealed on Dec. 5 by The Wall Street Journal in a short leader captioned “From Bushehr to the Bomb.” This revelation was not picked up by any other Western – or even Israeli – publication despite its sensational nature.
Drawing on US intelligence sources, the paper suggested that the withdrawal of 136 fuel rods from Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr in mid-October – on the pretext of wandering metal bolts – and the rods’ return in the last week of November “could have been a test run for the Iranians should they decide to reprocess those rods into weapons-grade plutonium.”
And things have not become better in the meantime.
But, oh, why panic?! Maybe this and other things are not even true, just rumours! And one can always go on begging the mullahs to please re-start talking, even while they may already have the bombs. For as long as they will talk with you, they might not “shoot” at you. And if they’d shoot at all, they would shoot only at Israel first, at those with whom they would not talk ever anyway.
Does reality really matter that much? Are France, the UK, the US, Turkey, Qatar and others not even trying to make sure right now that after Libya and Egypt, Syria, too, will be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, not caring for the consequences for Israel or even Europe in that case either? Peaceful EU-style outreach has already ruined so many lives and placed such a heavy mortgage on the future, why should we care any more at all? And if we should have to intervene militarily somewhere from time to time at all, why shouldn’t we continue to “play safe”, attacking always on behalf of jihadists (or of Croatian nazi admirers) only, as we have done decidedly from the nineties onwards?
The behaviour of the European – and increasingly the American – Chamberlains have always reminded me of a cartoon seen in a German leftist newspaper: an “intellectual”, walking in a rural area along a field, stops a farmer who is sowing something on that field, admonishing him: “He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind!” The farmer, surprised, incredulous, pauses shortly and replies: “But we have been sowing wind here for years!” And goes on sowing. What may not be, cannot be, as the sarcastic German saying goes.
As it cannot be, for the EUropeans, that a “black” leftist American president has now succeeded in nominating an anti-Semite as his new secretary of defence. For them, this will just be an “American” who, finally, has a more balanced view vis-a-vis the Muslims and the Jews.
What would really justify the “Samson option” in such a human, caring world as ours, the one with two Nobel peace prize winners, Obama and the EU, at its helm!
Nothing, really. This world is just “too good”. Too good at preparing a new Auschwitz.