Here we go again.
One of the recurring problems in humanity is that periodically someone (or multiple someones) shows up determined to run all of humanity, or at least all of humanity as understood in their day.
A mere sampling of these names over the centuries conveys the problem. From Julius Caesar, (he the dictator of the Roman Empire BC — Before Christ!) and on to, eventually, Britains’s King George III to France’s Napoleon, to World War I Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II to Russia’s Lenin and Stalin to World War II Germany’s Hitler and on to Italy’s Mussolini, Japan’s General Tojo, China’s Mao and an assortment of various others sprinkled around the globe with names like Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Kim Il-sung (North Korea), Fidel Castro (Cuba), Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (Chile), and oh so many more, humanity’s dictator problem never goes away.
The ideals of freedom and democracy championed so vigorously in the Western world and on occasion elsewhere have never yet eliminated the obsessive human urge to total power over others.
This time around, the world is in trouble again, potentially on the precipice of not just war but nuclear war, because of Iran’s self-titled “Supreme Leader,” Ali Khamenei.
Who is he?
Khamenei is described, as here at Fox, as “the modern day Hitler.” He runs Iran as a police state, his first target being the Iranian people themselves. (And to their credit, rebellion against their Supreme Leader stirs.) (RELATED: Exclusive: Anti-Regime Iranians Speak Out, Discuss Widespread Discontent With the Mullahs’ Rule)
And from his actions thus far, the description of the “Supreme Leader” seems apt. While Israel has made it its mission to target Iran’s nuclear program, Khameini has made it his business to do things like targeting an Israeli hospital with conventional bombs — this is but one step in his long-term goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
The inevitable question, of course, now arises. That would be: What the heck does the world do now?
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has at least one, if a decidedly defensive answer. Yet another Fox headline reads: “1,500 Jewish Americans evacuated from Israel as DeSantis sponsors rescue flights to Tampa,” with the subtitle, “Florida is said to have the U.S.’s 3rd-largest Jewish population behind New York and California.”
The obvious answer to what America and the world should do now is: Take out Khameini. Send one of those Israeli flying rockets to oh-so-precisely land on the roof of wherever Israeli or American intelligence says Khamenei is hanging his turban. (RELATED: Iran Miscalculated. The Ayatollahs Must be Removed.)
Which is where President Trump comes in. What does he — or, for that matter, any American president — do? And do now?
The DeSantis remedy of evacuating American Jews from Israel is good as far as it goes. But there is far more at stake here than that defensive move. Like — the world.
Without question, the last thing President Trump wants is to launch, either by design or by accident, a new world war. The president, it needs to be said, was elected in the first place by campaigning as an opponent of what he saw as the “forever wars” of the Bushes and, more generally, some in the American foreign policy establishment. This is something he clearly deeply believes.
Yet as this is written, the headline leading Fox News is: “Israel says Iran’s top leader ‘should not continue to exist’ after hospital strike.”
There is, one suspects, no panacea here. But it would seem that whatever the next step, that step should be organized and executed by more than President Trump and the American military. Just as the world dealt with those earlier dictators — and yes, Hitler comes to mind — the free world and a few others should unite as one to deal with Iran’s Khamenei. Recall, Hitler finally lost to a combination of American, British, French, and Russian militaries.
Writing in The New York Post, former U.S. Secretary of State (in the first Trump era) Mike Pompeo headlines: “Israel is doing the world a favor – now the US must give any help necessary to end Iran’s nuclear threat.”
Pompeo writes:
A nuclear Iran would pose a threat to peace everywhere.
It would enable the regime to effectively hold the world hostage, with the power to disrupt the global economy or coerce other powers into bending to its will.
It would insulate the dictatorship from popular pressure for change and allow the mullahs to continue their role as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
Exactly.
Without question, one suspects President Trump will be — and should be — in the lead on whatever comes next.
The real shame here is that after all the history of this world, human beings have not yet learned to live in peace.
But in the 21st century, all it takes is one determined evildoer to open the door to global disaster.
And without doubt, right this moment, there is that one human being in our time hard at work to do that job and join his name to the historical record of global tyrants.
That would be, of course, Iran’s Islamic Republic Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The question now is just how long the rest of the world — and President Trump — will stand for Khamenei’s quest for nuclear weapons and his ability to use them. One suspects it won’t be long.
Buckle in.
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