Debbie Wasserman Shultz demands that anyone who questions our Dictator-in-Chief about his so called "negotiations" with Iran be prepared to offer alternatives to solve the Iran nuclear weapon problem. Actually, considering the demand is put forward by the Democrat Party's Loon-in-Chief is really pretty reasonable.
Now, I'm not part of the Republican establishment, in fact, I'm not even a registered Republican. But I do tend to be very conservative when it comes to defending our country. So how about this as an alternative for Debbie (while admitting that it doesn't have a chance for her to accept it)?
First, walk away from the negotiations. Just walk away without "giving" anything to Iran. No lightening of sanctions, not easing of obstructions to them selling oil, no dealing with those companies/countries that continue to work in any way to help Iran's economy.
Next, you take the same tack that Reagan used in dealing with the old Soviet Union.
Reagan used his military build-up to bankrupt the Soviet Union by forcing them to compete in trying to keep up with his build-up. Russia just didn't have the economic strength to compete. As much as the Russian people might have loved their nation, they had to deal with the classic economists choice of "Guns or Butter" in determining what the nation's economic activity would fund. Unlike Progressives, they were realistic enough to understand that responding to any question that has only two mutually exclusive options means that selecting "Both" as a response is not a viable option.
Following Reagan's strategy
Following that same strategy will require the United States to ramp up both conventional as well as nuclear military capabilities, forcing the Mad Mullahs to invest larger and larger amounts of their national wealth to try to attain parity with America. They don't have parity now, so it makes it that much more difficult for them to reach such a goal line.
Responding to Moscow's gambit of selling anti-missile missiles to defend their threatening nuclear development sites, we should provide Tel Aviv with missiles (purely for defensive purposes of course, just like the Russians are selling to Iran). Can the Israelis build their own? Of course they can, but they would be strained at doing it at mass production rates or volumes.
During WWII, ships were built in massive numbers and in record time. Return to this mode and fill the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz with ships flying the Stars and Stripes. Not to threaten an immediate confrontation against Iran, but more to "show the flag". Just make sure that it's shown no matter what portion of the Gulf that the Iranians decide to look at. Would this make things more difficult for Iran to sell its oil? That would depend largely as to how the world's international oil carrying tankers might respond. Possibly they might find sailing into such an environment, even though shots had not been fired, as less than inviting. Iran might decide to economically commit suicide more quickly by offering their customers to provide their own ships to "guard" tankers as they sail past the American naval presence that already prowled the shipping lanes.
The willingness of tankers to pass through the Straits of Hormuz and sail blissfully into the Persian Gulf to fill their very large (and very expensive) tankers might also be subject to enormous and economically crippling insurance rates. These rates are the same kind of pressure that is shown a hundred times a day on television with every commercial for Allstate, Progressive or that company with the little British Gekko that is their spokesman. They all keep peddling the idea that the other guy's insurance rates are too expensive.
Now I'm the most peace loving man on earth, but when I find that my next door neighbor is found marching up the property line that separates our homes fully armed with a crazed look in his eyes, I think a certain concern is appropriate. Almost inevitably, the first response would be calling on the police and your friends and neighbors to try to discourage this sort of aggressive behavior.
If that results in a failure to rein in this open hostility, and worse, results in demands from this neighbor for changes in behavior on
my part follows that failure, a response that is clear that I view their actions are, to say the least, provocative must be communicated.
Of course you can always count on someone to say it's such a response is the thing that is really provocative, not the actions of the guy with the gun. Granting that not taking any countering action would not be called provocative, but it might be called idiotic, insane, feckless and a dozen other synonyms.
The United States needs to respond to Iran with something beyond promising them that we will do everything they ask without demur. That's what is needed. Unfortunately for the nation, we have Barack Obama, so the chance that Obama will see the wisdom of this suggestion is effectively zero.
Let's hope that some natural occurrence, like a truly massive earthquake, interrupts Iran's progress until January 2017, and Obama's replacement is not delusional.
