Podcast Saturday—Again
Wherein retribution is served for last week's (Three) Whiskey Rebellion, Eli Lake offers hope for Iran on the Ricochet podcast, and after course the Week in Headlines
It’s that day of the week again: two-fer podcast Saturday, back in full strength in which only my Burkean virtues (I am still in Ireland, after all—the birthplace of Burke) restrained me from full beatdown mode on John and Lucretia for their attempted coup in last week’s “unplugged” episode, where they took advantage of my absence to completely misbehave. I went full moog synthesizer instead. So listen here, or download the episode when the link goes live at Ricochet.
And on the Ricochet podcast, James Lileks is back from vacation, and Eli Like reviews the whole scene of the Israel-Iran War as it stands at the moment. As usual, listen right here, or download the episode from Ricochet:
Now for some headlines:
There were some truly feel-good headlines this week, too:
Those headlines. You can’t make them up if you tried
I have the benefit of knowing the Mullahs are definitely 'mullah overing' their response, if any. That said...
I am surprised that neither the 3WHH or other podcasts that debated this week if MAGA world doesn't believe in any military operations beyond 20 miles of our borders, the subject of N. Korea hasn't come up.
Clearly we only care about N.Korea because it possesses nuclear weapons. American memories are so short -- during the first two year of Trump 1.0 wasn't an immense amount of time spent trying to get N.Korea back into a box? While at first N.Korean nukes were only a threat to S.Korea and then Japa; they progressively improved their ballistic missile capabilities to bring Alaska, Hawaii, and potentially the west coast into range.
This is why it is absurd for any in the 'no more forever wars' camp to consider Iran is not a threat.
Secondary arguments that support the intervention include the ripple effect -- surely it would provoke one or more Gulf Arab states to initiate the quest for nuclear arms.
The only reason to proceed with extreme caution are the risks we face if Iranians directly retaliate with Americans as their target. And unfortunately due to Biden's extremely incompetent border security, we really have no clue how many sleeper cells the Quds Force was able to sneak in.
I also find it curious that there has been no mention of dirty bombs. In the months following Sept 11th attacks I recollect that also dominated the list of threats we faced that kept the terror threat scale at orange. (Fortunately on most days I'm upwind of DC. Delaware residents might not be so lucky.)
And finally, it's likely only on the 3WHH that the majority of hosts vividly remember Iran taking our diplomats hostage. Possibly the young precocious John Yoo also watched the nightly updates as the clock ticked from 5 days to 10 to 100 and eventually over 400. It would have blown mission security, but it would have been only fitting if one or more of the diplomats that were interred for 444 days had the chance to sign a MOB that was dropped last night.
The meal can never be too cold when served to an enemy that has been chanting 'death to America' for close to 50 years. As Steve will recollect, even before Khomeini returned to Iran we had the Beverly Hills Iranian Civil War where pro- and anti-Shah students from USC and UCLA clashed on the streets. That was a fixture on LA local nightly news programs for years.
We can only hope that the grandsons and granddaughters of the well educated pro-Shah elite will be willing to return to their home country soon to put together the pieces of a society that 45 years of Islamic extremist totalitarian rendered into one of Mr. Trump's proverbial 'hell holes'.