Real Dangers Await While Leaders Talk Global Warming

In Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus column this morning, he made this great point:

Every now and then, reality breaks through dreamland, as in this bit of news: “Iran on Wednesday test-fired an upgraded version of its most advanced missile, which is capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe, in a new show of strength aimed at preventing any military strike against it amid the nuclear standoff with the West.” Iranian missiles that can hit Europe: Will this development concentrate the European mind, no matter what that mind thinks of Israel?

I have quoted from this report. It goes on to quote Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown, who said that the Iranian test showed the need for tougher U.N. sanctions. Well, best of luck with that. Brown said, “This is a matter of serious concern to the international community,” blah, blah, blah. And he made his statement, according to the report, “after talks with U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon in Copenhagen.”

That is just perfect. The panjandrums of the world were in Copenhagen to talk about global warming, and the alleged giant threat that comes from the same. But there is a definite threat, an urgent one: the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the threat of rising, armed Islamofascism generally.

I remember being at a particular Davos meeting where everyone was gravely concerned about global warming, saying we had to act now now now. A nuclear Iran and its associated menaces seemed to be an afterthought, at best. In other words, the wolf was at the door — but the world’s elites were looking past the wolf to some gauzy threat out in the blue.

I made this observation, at the time: Confronting global warming is relatively easy, because it means confronting good Western capitalists and industrialists. Confronting Islamofascism is much harder, for some: because it means confronting Third World radicals, about whom good Westerners harbor all sorts of myths and hopes.

In August, Ban-ki Moon said, “We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.” What did he mean? He meant that there were four months until these climate talks in Copenhagen. If only the world’s elites felt half the urgency about a nuclear Iran. Our priorities, and sense of reality, seem terribly askew.

It is interesting to hear Iran’s defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, on television — on Iranian state TV. He said the following about his country’s new missile: “Given its high speed, it is impossible to destroy the missile with anti-missile systems because of its radar-evading ability.” True? I wonder what the state of U.S. missile defense is at the moment — and what it would have been if we had gone all-out after Reagan’s original call. I wonder, relatedly, how Israel is doing in this field.

One more thing, before I leave this subject. Iran’s new missile is called the Sajjil-2. And, according to the report I have linked to, “the name ‘Sajjil’ means ‘baked clay,’ a reference to a story in the Quran, Islam’s holy book, in which birds sent by God drive off an enemy army attacking the holy city of Mecca by pelting them with stones of baked clay.”

These are interesting times, ladies and gentlemen, and, of course, all too interesting. (Pardon the triteness.)

The emphasis is my own.