Talk vs. Action

Middleeastnews.com reports:

Occupied Jerusalem: After N.Y. Times report of Israel's DF drill to attack Iran, The Islamic Republic of Iran on Friday warned Israel that it would retaliate to any Israeli attack with a "strong blow" that will daze Israel's core.

Of course Israel's Defense Forces are drilling for an attack; that's what successful armies do. Preparing plans for possible scenarios is the primary job of a military's general staff. And as long as Ahmadinejad keeps talking about destrying Israel and acting as though he's going to develop nuclear weapons, Israel will keep planning and drilling. Iran, meanwhile, responds with vague threats, which leads me to suspect they don't have a general staff that's actually preparing plans for countering Israel and drilling their troops for that specific eventuality.

Fortunately, other Iranian officials are sending signals that Ahmadinejad doesn't quite have the full confidence of Iran's government. Hopefully there won't be any need for Israel to act, consequently no need for Iran to fail to back up it's feeble threat.

Coincidentally, I read in a Public Administration textbook this past weekend that when Woodrow Wilson became president--Wilson, a political scientist and expert in public administration--he didn't know what military general staff's do. When World War I began, he happened to learn that the general staff was developing plans for fighting Germany, and he thought they were actually preparing to do so. He called in the Secretary of War and demanded that everyone involved be fired, at which point the "founder" of public administration as a field of study got a most important lesson in public administration.

Heh, heh. I never do get tired of bashing on Wilson, a racist and staunch advocate of presidential government. If his grave wasn't in the National Cathedral in Washington, I'd be tempted to piss upon it.