Clarity

Events are so simple, transparent, and easy to understand. But it seems most of the time I'm one of a very tiny group of people that understand. Right now may be a critical stage in history, and the future of the world could hang in the balance.

North Korea is throwing a gigantic tantrum. The nuclear test that maybe they thought would yield 4 kilotons actually might have been below 1 kiloton, but they did get an explosion. They continue to jump up and down to get the attention of the United States. Why? Extortion. They want us to pay them off in food, money, and technology. Sort of like a mob protection racket. We just have to keep them isolated and try to figure out how to keep them from selling nukes to Iran or Al Quaeda or Hezbollah. And hope Kim Jong Il isn't stupid enough to try tossing a nuke over the DMZ into South Korea.

Iran's a different problem. They are building nukes, and have a stated purpose which involves wiping Israel off the map and driving the United States completely out of the Middle East. As soon as they have nukes, it seems pretty certain that they will use them as soon as they think they can get away with it. They've infiltrated heavily into Iraq, and some who seem to know are saying they are orchestrating much of the current violence there. It's turning out to be a pretty good strategy for them, because here at home, people seem to be blaming Bush instead of Iran for that violence.

Ultimately, Iran wants to build their grand caliphate, making all of the middle east and northern Africa part of their own brand of Islam. When they have consolidated power, they will proceed to expand toward world domination. Very Hitleresque, don't you think?

In the meantime, we in the US are war weary. Not that any combat death should be shrugged off, but we lose more people to car accidents every month in California than we lose in a year in Iraq. People who don't really know, or perhaps don't care to know the stakes in Iraq and Iran and Syria and North Korea, just want to give them their wish. I hear them all the time, once they're done calling Bush some sort of profanity, saying we should just pull the troops home and turtle up. Just create some sort of big shell around the United States and hope we don't get another 9/11. Then the Democrats can take control of the government and try to get Iran and North Korea to like us, using Clinton diplomacy to give them that protection payoff for a promise to leave us alone.

So my crystal ball is clearer than it's ever been on this stuff. If Democrats take over Congress next month, they will start with myriad investigations of the Bush Administration, possibly including a bill of impeachment. They will move ahead with defunding of the war in Iraq and increasing demands we get out of there, plus of course a rollback of everything else that happened during the Bush years.

Then we'll get attacked again. I'm not sure when, or where, or even how. The Democrats will of course blame the Bush administration for not doing enough to stop the attack. Gas prices spike again, taxes go out of site, unemployment gets out of control, and terrorism increases steadily across the country. Iran takes control of Iraq, and with their Syrian alliance begins to threaten the rest of the middle east. Maybe they take over Kuwait first, then cast their evil eye on Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

North Korea will likely be allowed to develop their nukes, and will demand and receive their protection deal from the U.S. It might keep them at bay for a couple years, but pretty soon they will demand more protection money. They will continue to ratchet up their demands as time goes on: Give us what we want or we'll toss a nuke at South Korea or Japan. Maybe they'll give a nuke to somebody who can sneak it into a major US city.

What I'm not completely sure about is what the Democrats will do when things go south. I'm pretty sure they'll leave Iraq to the Iranians. There's precedent for that - Jimmy Carter is the one who gave Iran to the Ayatollahs to begin with. What I don't know is what they will do when terrorists once again begin to successfully blow things up here at home. Again, precedent and their rhetoric throughout the war on terror suggests that they will take no action beyond trying to find the individuals responsible for each attack, and if they find them, hauling them in for prosecution in US courts.

It is all so clear and simple. But so many don't understand. Perhaps they choose not to understand. Or maybe they just don't care. Either way, give it a year and then come back to this post to see if I was prophetic.