I like this saying by Shimon Peres, you can choose:
Either peace and pay the price or war and take the risk.
It’s very smart.
Peace isn’t free…there is a price (maybe a large one) to pay for it.
War is also not free…there is a risk of what you will win or lose.
These are very serious life calculations with consequences that are far reaching.
Peace or war and if you are wrong what will it cost and how will you achieve security? 😉
(Credit photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “Israel Must Leave No Stone Unturned.”
Over the last decades since 1973, Israel has taken strong actions again to beef up their defenses and leave no stone unturned including taking the bold steps in destroying the menacing nuclear reactors of Iraq in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in 2007. Now Israel is facing a similar decision on action with Iran and their weapons of mass destruction. Israel and the United States need to leave no stone unturned in trying to find a path towards a peaceful resolution with Iran, but if that stone threatens potential annihilation of Israel and other western allies, then there should be no doubt whatever that Israel and other civilized nations must act once more to remove the threat and turn that stone into harmless dust again.
Whether towards peace or G-d forbid to war, Israel must be courageous to act and leave no stone unturned to secure its peace and security, or the ultimate defeat of its unrelenting enemies. Israel must be like Joseph, and be able to interpret the dreams and events unfolding before them, and like Pharaoh to make the decision to act and restore the meticulous butler, hang the negligent and dangerous baker, and save the nation from otherwise assured destruction. May G-d give us the wisdom, courage, and strength to do what we must eventually do and let it be for the good.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “Countdown To Iran.”
For two decades the cat and mouse game with Iran’s development of nuclear weapons has gone on while Iran is leading State sponsor of terrorism and one of the worst human rights abusers. Iran has marched forward with its desire for a global caliphate and has gone on threatening death and destruction in the Middle East and beyond and murdering with impunity.
Now the end game is almost here…
The U.S. and Israel are committed to preventing Iran’s existential threat and may G-d help us.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel, “We Must Take Every Bark Seriously.”
Sometimes, when they bark, they don’t bite. But other times, the bark is the prelude to the bite. I don’t think you can judge intentions by the bark, and I am certain you need to always be ready for the bite. Dogs and people are not really that different. Over millennia of history, Jews have been threatened and persecuted–barked at and bitten, and they have not been mutually exclusive.
The Jewish people are few in number and with a small but miraculous and wonderful country–we know that rabid dogs that bark against us, also can bite ferociously, and we must take every threat seriously for our very survival.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called “Blowout of Iran’s Nukes.
As Iran continues to develop its nuclear weapons program and sponsor terrorism around the globe, as PM Netanyahu promised, Israel and the U.S. are on to them, and they will not let it happen! A little more than 70-years after the Holocaust that murdered 6,000,000 Jews, Iran will not be allowed to pose an existential threat to Israel and a danger to the entire world.”
Hopefully, the good people of Iran can change their tyrannical leadership, otherwise the blowout at the UN yesterday will be only the beginning. 🙂
Here is a link to my short video on national security thoughts that keep me up at night.
One well-placed nuclear suitcase bomb or nuclear ballistic missile strike on DC and say goodbye to virtually the entire hub of the Federal government.
As of 2014, there are over 4.2 million federal employees (2.7M in the civilian agencies and 1.5M in the military).
Over 500K are located in the DC, MD, VA tristate area.
But it’s not just the numbers, it’s that the headquarters of all the major government agencies are located here.
While, of course, there are backup sites, and emergency doomsday sites like Mount Weather (48 miles from DC), there is no telling how much advance notice, if any we would have, and who would escape and survive a deadly blow to our capital region.
And it could be a radiological, chemical, biological, or nuclear (RCBN) attack that does us in…whether from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or other diabolical enemy out there.
The point is that by concentrating all our federal headquarters and senior leadership and key resources here we are in fact, giving the enemy an easy shot to decapitate the entire country?
While others (like Paul Kupiec in the WSJ) have questioned whether some of the federal agencies can be moved out to other needy cities and communities across the country for economic reasons (to bring jobs and investment) especially those agencies that are actively looking to build new HQS buildings already (e.g. FBI and Department of Labor), to me the far more potent question is one of national security.
The main advantage of having the crux of the federal government in the DC area is surely one of coordination–the President wants his Cabinet near him and the Cabinet Secretaries want their senior staff near them, and so on and so on.
So, you get this mass concentration of a who’s who of the federal government in and around Washington, DC.
But what about the advances of technology?
Surely, through networks and telecommunications and teleworking, we can support a geographically diverse workforce and do no significant harm to our operating as one.
We’re talking a very big cultural change here!
It’s one thing to have nuclear missiles roaming the seas on attack submarines waiting for orders from Washington, DC and it’s quite another to move the actual government intelligentsia and leadership out from the central hub.
Let’s face it, in a real crisis situation, with the chaos and panic and transportation overflow and perhaps simultaneous cyberattacks, no one is really going to be going anywhere–especially in a surprise attack.
If Pearl Harbor (of which we just celebrated the 75th anniversary) and 9/11 teach us anything is that when the sh*t hits the fan, it hits hard and sticks solid.
Working in the Metro DC area, selfishly, I’d like to say keep the investment, jobs, and great opportunities here.
For the good of the nation and our survival against true existential threats, we’d be much smarter to spread the federal wealth as far and wide across this great nation that we can. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I read something so simple yet profound from theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking (The Guardian).
First, he enunciated many of the threats we face these days, including:
– Accelerating technological change [I would elaborate that these include more advanced weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them]
– Automation, [robotics,] and rise of artificial intelligence
– Economic inequality, mass migration, job destruction, [and divisiveness] augmented by immersive social media that accentuates “Instagram [and Facebook] Nirvana” versus the real poverty and struggling of the masses,
– “Environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, and acidification of the oceans.”
In one sentence then, Hawking says it all about the high level of risk we face:
“We now have the technology to destroy the planet, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it.”
His call to action:
“Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars. but right now we have only one planet. and we need to work together to protect it [and develop the means to eventually be able to escape it for the survival of humanity.]”
In short, we must get to and colonize other planets as quickly as possible, because it the realm of history, it’s only a matter of time and our collective lives are depending on it. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal Via National Geographic)
In response to the deluge of terrorist attacks across Europe, but also all around the world, culminating this week in the murder of an 85-year old Christian priest in France (his throat was slit in church by ISIS), the pope said the following:
The world is at war, because we have lost the peace.”
But at the same time, our leader is self-congratulating himself, declaring his next in line for the Pennsylvania Avenue throne, and mocking the daily terror threats we face, calling ISIS the “JV [junior varsity] team” declaring them “not an existential threat, and insisting “no boots on the ground.”
From the attacks on 9/11 to Orlando and Fort Hood, from the attacks on Charlie Hebdo to Paris and Nice, from the multiple attacks on Germany this past week to those in Belgium in March, from the Madrid train bombing in 2004 to the London bombing in 2005, to the daily terrorist attacks throughout the Holy Land of Israel, and the non-stop violent killing of millions around the Arab countries of the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and beyond, I ask:
Why is the Pope better informed than our leadership, and who will fight for us? 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We tried out a new large conservative synagogue in Rockville today.
And they had an interesting speech this Shabbat by scholar in residence, Tal Becker.
He spoke about how as a Jewish people traumatized post Holocaust, we tend to view threats to us as existential or the possibility of them escalating to that.
And of course, many of the threats out there are or could be–like the Iranian Ballistic Nukes or terrorism combined with WMD!
But in terms of overall Jewish security, normalcy, and exceptionalism–with two thriving Jewish communities in Israel and in America–we are probably doing better than at any time in recent history.
It’s a paradox, he mentioned, that in America, the Jews are a minority but amidst all the freedom, they may at times feel like a majority, while in Israel, the Jews are a majority, but amidst the dangerous neighborhood they live in, they can feel like a minority.
Unfortunately, there is still quite a lot of hatred and anti-Semitism out there whether in America or the Middle East.
Just this week, we saw numerous terror attacks in Israel and Turkey that left several Israelis dead or wounded again. And in America, not only did we have Palestinian protests on college campuses painting Jews as the occupiers and Apartheidists (rather than as the victims of daily Palestinians terror and intransigence toward a two-state solution living side-by-side with Israel in peace), but also Microsoft having to take down their AI Bot after users taught it to spew anti-Semitic remarks like “Jews deserve death” and holocaust-denial posts in social media.
So as wonderful as it is to be Jewish, there is typically not a day that goes by when we are not somehow reminded of those that reject us, hate us, and may want to kill Jews.
The truth is that Jews (as Mark Twain pointed out)–despite having a pretty large and impressive footprint–are a very small minority of the people out there, and they have endured unbelievably difficult times from slavery to the destruction of the temple and exile (twice), forced conversions, tortured inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms, and genocide…so it is hard not to be a little touchy about people saying or implying that they don’t like you and want to kill you…someone may take that as an existential threat and it wouldn’t even have to be a bad day at that. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
andyblumenthal