Al Qaeda has Nothing on Stalin
Al Qaeda has Nothing on Stalin
In World War 2, Hitler's Axis occupied Europe, and was not remotely on the cusp of obtaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Today, the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah evil axis has occupied most of the Mesopotamian Middle East, and its vast oil reserves.  Only Saudi Arabia stands in the way of Iran's quest for a Shiite Caliphate.

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?

The New York Times reported that a recent historical study pegs the pre-World War 2 deaths as a result of Joseph Stalin and his evil Communist Soviet Union as the following list:

-One million imprisoned or exiled from 1927 to 1929, falsely accused of being saboteurs or members of opposition parties.

-Nine million to 11 million of the more prosperous peasants driven from their lands and another two million to three million arrested or exiled in the early 1930's campaign of forced farm collectivization. Many of these were believed to have been killed.

-Six million to seven million killed in the punitive famine inflicted on peasants in 1932 and 1933.

-One million exiled from Moscow and Leningrad in 1935 for belonging to families of former nobility, merchants, capitalists and officials.

- 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.

-Two million to three million sent to camps for violating absurdly strict labor laws imposed in 1940.

These estimates add up to about 20 million who were murdered or died as a direct result of pre-1941 Soviet Stalinism.

On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Army attacked the Soviet Union.  In many ways Soviet communism in 1941 was an existential threat to the freedom-loving Western European countries. Nevertheless, on June 22, 1941, President Roosevelt opened wide the unlimited spigots of all manner of military aid to the Soviets.

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.

After the Allies won, Stalin and his Soviet Union threatened Europe, caused countless wars, and murdered many more millions of people.  Putin is an unpleasant product of arming Stalin.  Regardless, no rational person has ever complained that we armed Stalin in his fight to contain Hitler.
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But today, people complain that, "We're arming al Qaeda!"  First there is a great question about what percentage of the Syrian rebels are even al Qaeda to begin with.  Syria is a cosmopolitan country of roughly 22 million ethnically, geographically, and topographically diverse people.  "Al Qaeda" is at most 20,000, mostly foreign, fighters. Are 20 or 30 thousand disorganized fighters going to rule a 22,000,000 population where the United States would empower locals to make life horrible for the Jihadists in a post-Assad Syria?

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.

Assad's Syria is World War 2's Normandy Beach.  The "Attack Iran first, without Attacking Syria First" 'strategists are, by analogy, inanely arguing that the Allies should first drop commandos into Berlin without first occupying France.

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?

The real "lesson learned" in the wake of Obama's and America's handling of the mass-murdering Assad is that no one, now,  could ever believe Obama in the next three years would ever or could ever attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

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.

Yes, al Qaeda is horrible.  But if the same myopic logic would have been  used on June 22, 1941 by Americans, Hitler would have won, and we all would be speaking German.  I mean all of us except for the Jews, blacks, gypsies, and whomever else the 3rd Reich thought was genetically undesirable.

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.

An al Qaeda Syria is a bad headache.  A nuclear Iran is the end of the world.