At the Geneva talks, Iran has achieved a diplomatic victory, and at the same time full legitimacy for its program of nuclear enrichment. Furthermore, it could be helped, probably by Russia, to attain a higher grade of enrichment, raised from the present 5% to 19.75% – just .25% under weapons-grade. This tiny margin would allow Iran and its apologists – including the US administration – to maintain the fiction that Iran wants nuclear power for ‘civilian uses only’.  In fact, this help with the enrichment process would make it easy for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb in a few weeks.

And the Obama administration is happy with this outcome.

From Investors.com:

Members of the U.N. Security Council, worried about nuclear proliferation, have signed a new agreement to end the spread of nukes. Unfortunately, their deal’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

News in recent weeks on the nuclear proliferation front has been alarming, to say the least…

• Brazil’s vice president, Jose Alencar, asserting on Saturday that his country needs to develop a nuclear weapon in order to be taken seriously in the world.

• Venezuela’s strongman, Hugo Chavez, seeking help from both Russia and Iran to develop Venezuela’s nuclear know-how and, possibly, to build a bomb.

• India testing new, improved nuclear missiles in a bid to deter potential aggression from its nuclear foe, Pakistan.

• A.Q. Khan, the black market nuclear proliferator released from house arrest earlier this year, admitting in a recently released letter from 2003 to having sold nuclear secrets to China, North Korea, Iran and Libya, according to the London Times. And a recent Congressional Research Service report noting that Khan has been contacted by al-Qaida.

• Iran, just days before meeting with the National Security Council, testing new Shahab-3 and Sajjil-2 long-range missiles that bring Tel Aviv, Moscow, Athens and Italy “within striking distance,” Reuters says. Meanwhile, the U.S. has disclosed a second high-level nuclear processing site in Iran, as the mullahs begin using newer, more efficient centrifuges in their nuclear program.

• China celebrating its 60th year as a Communist nation with a parade of 108 nuclear missile systems, possibly including its Julang-2 submarine-mounted missile, with a range of 5,000 miles, and the CSS-X-10, its solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile…

Not only is the world’s nuclear arsenal growing, but once a rogue nation gets a nuclear weapon — which now seems only a matter of time — we’ll face a changed world.  Suppose, for instance, Venezuela gets a nuke. How long will it take for the deranged dictator Chavez to use one, or to blackmail a democratic non-nuclear neighbor like Colombia or Chile?

Or the United States?

Obama, meanwhile, is lowering America’s defenses. He hopes to fend off America’s foes by speaking to them.

 ‘Conscience,’ Hamlet says, ‘does make cowards of us all.’

Or does cowardice claim the name of conscience – steal its identity – in order to excuse itself? 

Conscience should drive us, as individuals, to do what we believe to be morally right. But it may be a self-flattering word we use to explain why we do certain things that we actually do out of craven cowardice itself, or the sort of moral vanity that makes us want to appear virtuous rather than to act virtuously.

Governments, nations, and crowds also cover their actions with the same deceptive claim, attributing to conscience what they really do out of weakness, fear, stupidity,  hypocrisy and ideological romanticism.  

False conscience calls itself by many other names, among them these: political correctness; respect for multiculturalism or ‘diversity’; a striving for ‘social justice’ or economic equality or ‘fairness’;  remorse for (largely imaginary) historical sins. Under such names all kinds of idiotic, unjust, destructive and evil things are done.    

Exempli gratia from the real world: 

In the US millions of voters elect an unqualified candidate to political office because he is black.

Navies refrain from capturing pirates, or (even better) summarily killing them, because ‘they have human rights’.

Liberal democratic welfare states keep and protect alien Islamic preachers of terrorism and sedition, lavishly house, feed, educate and medically treat them (and their pluralities of wives and families) at the expense of their intended victims, the indigenous population, because if they’re returned to their own countries they may be tortured or executed – or even because some witness at their possible trials might be tortured.

Western governments abrogate freedom because citizens use it to criticize Muslims and their beliefs. 

European police refrain from enforcing the law against Muslim offenders.  

In Britain the rule of a single Law of the Land, the very thing that makes it possible for people of different provenance to live together in harmony, is arbitrarily abandoned by the acceptance of Sharia as a second system of law, although it is incompatible with and contradictory to the enchorial system. 

Western nations reduce their defensive power to the point of ineffectiveness while vicious tyrannical regimes, inimical to the West and motivated by a declared intention of aggression, acquire arsenals of nuclear weapons. 

Governments interfere in markets and impoverish the people.  

Jillian Becker  November 21, 2008