From WOMD to American Idol

Global war appears to be imminent.

Here's why. During the decades of the 60s, through the end of the 90s the US went through several phases that were the result of fallout from post World War II policies. In the 60s, we and primarily the UK were polarized against the USSR and her client states in a struggle of ideology and influence that involved an incredible arms race. The wild card in that struggle was the Middle East, the Oil Emirates and their ideological/religious battle with Israel, a state created out of a post-war agreement that arguably unjustly displaced a nation of people. The huge struggle between the USSR and the US culminated in the late 1980s. Weakened by the arms race, and struggling under a social system in decay, the USSR crumbled, and their nuclear arsenal, and the technology involved became compromised and "available" to rogue Third World nations and terrorist factions that generally ally themselves with those that hate Israel. Throw in the "Mother of ALL Third World countries" China.and its client state North Korea, and you have a new emergence of threats replacing the "Iron Curtain" that fell thanks to Ronald Reagan.

Now we add a curious phenomenon.a "quirk" if you will caused by, of all people, a historically insignificant little man by the name of H. Ross Perot. Ross Perot's candidacy for president in 1992 allowed a little known Southern Governor, nominated by his party as a "sacrificial candidate" to run against an immensely popular "Gulf War" victor Republican named George H.W. Bush.and win. Bush ran a terrible campaign, and relying on popularity polls that in the face of a skillfully run campaign by Clinton, and the "X-factor" of Perot, proved inaccurate. Perot took almost 15% of Bush's base away in an election that gave Bill Clinton a back door key to the White House. Clinton proved to be far the better politician, and surprised even the Democrat Party in his narrow defeat of Bush in 1992. Hindsight reveals that had H Ross Perot not been the "spoiler" candidate that 15% of the fickle Republicans voted for, Clinton would have faded into oblivion, and perhaps fallen to the judicial system in one of his Arkansas fraud and sex scandals as did his cohorts who were convicted there.

Regardless of his path to the presidency, the key to the current global war danger now is revealed in the foreign policy blunders of the Clinton administration in the 1990s. In that decade, because of the US support for Israel, and our emergence as the world's only superpower after the collapse of the USSR, the United States became the target of Muslim extremist hatred. The money generated by the Oil Emirates helped fuel the development of organized and effective gangs of terrorists who allied themselves in a sub-culture united by a universal hatred of Israel and by association, the United States. Several Mid-East states (Iran, Syria, Iraq, and other even less stable countries with large Muslim populations) incubated a culture of strong opposition to the United States.and harbored terrorist attackers that struck against the US in increasingly effective and violent ways. Airplane hijackings evolved into bombings. Embassies were blown up. Military barracks were car bombed. US Navy Ships bombed, and in 1993, an attempt was made to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. Critical to the increasing effectiveness and violence against America was the response of the government under Bill Clinton. It consisted of mainly rhetoric.

Bill Clinton presided over a government that attempted to use our military as a "meals on wheels" organization. He sent troops into places like Haiti, to hand out MREs and Mogadishu, to try to overthrow cannibalistic medieval warlords. Instead of dealing with the governments that harbored the terrorists, and using the unmatched power of the US military to ensure Iraq's compliance to their cease fire agreements and to seek and destroy these festering and fragile terrorist alliances, Clinton became embroiled in legal issues and personal scandals. They involved headline grabbers about illicit sex and his fraudulent business associations. Foreign policy was left adrift to be handled by low-level wonks and bureaucrats hired through patronage appointments. Examples of his foreign policy blunders include the agreement with North Korea wherein the US would supply them with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil provided they "abandon" their nuclear power plant implementation that included facilities that would generate the nuclear materials basic to the construction of nuclear bombs. Additional economic and technical aid was to be provided if they signed a pledge NOT to make nuclear bombs. Another example of the Clinton foreign policy era was to ignore two direct offers from the country of Yemen to hand over a suspected anti-US terrorist named "Osama bin Ladin." Against the council of the NSA, Clinton also contracted to remove trade restrictions on Communist China. They kept the US from sharing computer technology with that nation that would allow them to skip decades of development in their own program of making guidance devices accurate enough and small enough to be used in ballistic missiles. A generous donation from China towards Clinton's re-election fund resulted from that presidential fiat. The nation of Iraq, after noting the ineffective resolve of the Clinton administration, to enforce the terms of surrender during the Gulf War, unilaterally booted out the UN weapons inspectors in 1998. This gave them a totally unrestrained avenue to proceed with their weapons programs in violation of that agreement. The Clinton response was to fire a few cruise missiles into tents in Iraq, and then effectively say."Oh well!"

That brings us to the United States today, and in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that included flying jumbo-jets into the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocent Americans, resulting from the work of one "Osama bin Ladin" we have the North Korean dilemma. The North Koreans announced that they used the treaty they signed as cover to build functional nuclear weapons. They said thanks for the fuel oil, and technology provided by Mr. Clinton, and because our president (appropriately) turned off the oil deliveries in the wake of the announcement the Communists violated their agreement, they announced they were cranking up their nuclear facility also. They are shipping ballistic missiles to any rogue nation willing to purchase them, and have revealed their hostile intent towards America in the process.

It's interesting that the liberal left in America is critical of our president in his contention that North Korea is a menace, presents a direct threat, and is part of an "Axis of Evil." But in fact, there is a connection between North Korea and the Mid-East, as was clearly demonstrated last week when a ship full of Scud missiles from North Korea, bound for the Mid-East, was intercepted. North Korea (like Iraq) has good reason to wish all kinds of "bad" for the United States. We represent the total and only significant obstacle to their territorial and economic expansion.

Iraq and North Korea were identified shortly after the murderous attacks on the US on 9-11 as partners in the Axis of Evil. The liberal left condemned those words as "saber rattling" and unnecessary. This was prior the revelation by the N. Koreans that they had violated the Clinton treaty, and had built nuclear weapons in total defiance of our agreement. According to the president, Iraq has continued to pursue development of weapons of mass destruction, aided by the lack of oversight by inspectors, and a general lack of any threat from the US to enforce the Gulf War Cease Fire agreement. There is no credible reason to doubt this, given the track record of Iraq, and our reluctance to even try to make them adhere to the cease fire accords.

Thanks to a general mishandling of foreign policy during the previous decade, it appears that the threat of attack on US interests as well as our cities and population (as in the 9-11 attacks) has never been greater. Terrorists and terrorist states have set about to make biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.and they are willing to use suicide bombers to deliver them into the heartland of the US. Additionally, they have taken advantage of our neglect at self-defense to bargain for our own technology to develop weapons and delivery systems capable of attacking us from their shores. These nations and terrorist organizations show a mentality devoid of any inclination of civility or restraint. Continued failure to meet them head on will obviously result in our falling victim to their advantage of unbridled barbarism, as evidenced in the suicide attacks of 9-11.

Critics of this broad account will undoubtedly claim that these issues as I explained them are oversimplified, and for the sake of space, I readily admit, there are more factors. But in a nutshell, we will likely be faced with a global war involving weapons of mass destruction due in the largest part to the issues I have related. As we Americans watch the daily headlines about some politician possibly obliquely inadvertently praising some ancient coot of a politician's half-century old opinions about segregation, we are in grave danger of a catastrophic attack. And as we wonder about the legitimacy of "American Idol".the world is swiftly heading towards a level of violence yet unseen in even the 20th century.

I wonder if I can find one of those old 1954 government pamphlets about how to build a fallout shelter.