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US vows 'strongest sanctions in history' on Iran, will 'crush' terror proxies | Times of Israel |

'This is just the beginning': Laying out strategy after exiting nuke deal, Pompeo says Iran must come clean about nuclear program, stop threatening Israel, leave Syria, halt terror.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration is preparing to impose "the strongest sanctions in history" on Tehran after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this month, and laid out a laundry list of demands for a new treaty, in his first major speech outlining Washington's strategy for curtailing the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions and its 'malign' regional behavior.

"We will apply unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime," Pompeo told a crowd gathered at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in the nation's capital.

From EuroTrib archive ... 💪🏽

Bashing European "cowardice" | by das Monde - 22 Aug 2005 |

Promoted from the diaries ~ whataboutbob

Just recently, the Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner wrote an article Europe, Thy Name is Cowardice. It is an example of the US-reactionary-type of debasement rhetoric, where European Iraq policy is shamelessly irresponsible or welfare system evidently collapsing, whereas Bush's Iraq war or economy measures are always right regardless dismal consequences. There has to be European version of this drivel, and here it is.

The beginning of the article is historically sound, but extrapolations are voluntarily prejudiced.

The writer Henryk Broder recently issued a withering indictment: "Europe, your family name is Appeasement." That phrase resonates because it is so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they realized that Hitler needed to be fought and defeated, because he could not be bound by toothless agreements.

The author then typifies the appeasement with the examples of Cold War policies towards Eastern Europe, and Yugoslavia's violent collapse. Then he says ...

[...]

Let's stop here for a moment to consider historical perspective. The history did not start with 1930's. European states had followed primeval military instincts for centuries; that culminated in the total absurdity of the First World War.

Meanwhile, some countries (like Dutch/Flemish or Scandinavian) already knew experience that avoiding war generally works out most nicely, to put it simply.
We may agree that peace lessons were over-learned for the World War II. That appeasement was shameful indeed.  The only excuse is that Hitler and Stalin were quantitively new historical phenomena, which were not entirely easy to figure out in a decade.

But the old war lessons still remain. What kind of toothed opposition from Europe should have been expected against the USSR? What would have been the consequences? Was the post-war Soviet regime exceptionally immoral? That part of history is justified both for the USA and Western Europe by the actual power balance.

The "appeasement" regarding Bosnia and Kosovo is of different kind, I would say. First of all, it is inadequacy of European and diplomatic bureaucracies. This problem has to be solved as yet. In the meantime, the things in Rwanda and Darfur are no less terrible. But neither US nor UN can do anything.

"Protecting democracy in the Middle East" is a flimsy description of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Internally, both sides are comparably democratic. European position is vague. At it core, it opposes total repression of Palestinian goals. But Palestinians do not figure alternatives to suicide bombings. Europe's failure is not of Chamberlainian proportions.

When it comes to Iraq, European judgment is better than of the Bush administration. Aging Saddam Hussein was not a global threat. He was not emphatically connected to 9/11, if at all. The Iraq war did not solve the terrorism problem, but most probably worsened it. Now, it is not Europe responsible that Saddam's regime is replaced by terrorist mess, fundamentalist strivings and compromised women rights.

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This is pathetic. Facts support different views how coordinated or widely supported the Islamic terrorism is. But one clear source of excessive aggression is the current US administration. Just as appeasement, aggression has consequences, unintended as well. When the strongest player exercises its power without respect and regard of others, the disadvantaged may feel free to use whatever powers they have without any constraints. This is not justification of terrorism, just an observation of how moral standards may develop. Terrorists must be found and prosecuted or killed. But it is reasonable to be aware of people which disagree with us or even hate us, which nevertheless wish to live normally, yet may join the pool of potential terrorists under ignorant circumstances. Unjustified aggression feeds terrorism more than naive pacification.