Iran, the strongest link in the evil chain, is on the verge of centrifuging the necessary uranium for a nuclear bomb. Syria's Assad is the weakest link in the evil chain. Without Assad, Iran loses its indispensable Hezbollah link. Without Hezbollah's rockets, Iran is then exposed to an Israeli-solo attack on its nuclear facilities.
What is a greater current danger to humanity: A Syrian al Qaeda with Assad's chemical weapons, or an Iran-to-Mediterranean Sea Shiite-nuclear-umbrella-protected Caliphate?
-One million imprisoned or exiled from 1927 to 1929, falsely accused of being saboteurs or members of opposition parties.
-Six million to seven million killed in the punitive famine inflicted on peasants in 1932 and 1933.
- About one million executed in the ''great terror'' of 1937-38, and another four million to six million sent to forced labor camps from which most, including Mr. Medvedev's father, did not return.
These estimates add up to about 20 million who were murdered or died as a direct result of pre-1941 Soviet Stalinism.
Even Winston Churchill, the greatest enemy of Stalin and of the communist Soviet, stated in support of arming Stalin "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." While Churchill and Roosevelt always saw Stalin as a post-War existential danger, they nevertheless supplied him with virtually unlimited weaponry.
Was Stalin a Boy Scout? Was the Soviet Union the Red Cross? The Syrian rebels are doing the hard and very dirty work of defeating Iran and Hezbollah in Syria. The Syrian rebels are doing what the US should have done when Iran and Syria murdered our soldiers with IEDs in Iraq: fight them. Al Qaeda today is saving American lives by fighting the good fight against the greatest waxing evil the world has ever seen: a proto-nuclear Iran. But what are we doing? Carping that "al Qaeda are monsters" - which may be true, but is irrelevant.
Some "strategists" would have you believe "Ignore Assad, focus on Iran." But if we can't take down the-weakest-link Assad with 80% of his population against him, and with all his strategic assets within 150 miles of the Mediterranean coast where Tomahawks could be easily fired from untouchable submarines, how are we ever going to attack the-strongest-link Iran?
Iran's nuclear facilities are over 800 miles from the closest open sea launching point of the Arabian Sea. Tomahawks (or precious American pilots) would have to traverse those 800 miles and also the 4500 meter high Zagros Mountains which form an almost impenetrable natural defensive picket on Iran's south-western Assad's Syria is World War 2's Normandy Beach.
border. That's before we even talk about Iranian anti-air defenses.
Why would anybody advocate threatening or sending Americans to attack Iranian facilities in Iran, when al Qaeda is killing Iranian al Quds soldiers in Syria? Why "threaten" Iran, when al Qaeda is actually today coming close to annihilating the very heart of Iran's axis in Syria?
So, it's either enable an Israeli-solo attack on Iran by having al Qaeda eradicate Hezbollah after it hangs Assad, or say hello to a dozen Iranian nuclear bombs within two years, Iran wiping out Saudi Arabia, and total Iranian control of 60% of the world's oil reserves.
Is a post-Assad Syrian al Qaeda more dangerous than a post-World War 2 Stalin? No! So, it's either an al Qaeda Syria in an ethnically fractured Syria, or a fully nuclear-Iran spanning from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea.