The world leader who will likely define the careers of Penn State's ROTC cadets recently stood before the U.N. General Assembly and, again, refused to obey the August 31 deadline to halt his nuclear program.
Why the U.N. has yet to impose the sanctions it threatened against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, is simple. Lip-service is preferred to any form of action, legislative or military, in the UN.
When called to action, ROTC cadets risk their lives to defend freedom. When called to action, the U.N. feigns diplomacy and forgoes any type of commitment that endangers its reputation.
If the men and women of our military volunteer are to be our last resort, why isn't the U.N. using diplomacy as its first?
Ahmadinejad's insanity works exactly like his Zoloft: it's time-released. According to the Shiite faith, the 12th Imam will rule the earth for seven years and bring Armageddon at the end of his reign.
Ahmadinejad has referred to himself as the messenger of this harbinger of destruction. Funny, how homicidal maniacs forewarn us of their adventures in annihilation.
Remember how Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1925?
So far, Ahmadinejad has ruled for one year (wait for his bestseller).
In 2012, the year of the Imam's return, all freshman and sophomore cadets at Penn State will still be serving commitments to their respective branches.
If the UN continues to slack off, our cadets will be working overtime.
Who's to say when and where America's next war will be fought?
Although Ahmadinejad promises destruction in 2012, his unfulfilled deadline has shown he is anything but punctual. One certainty, though, is that in the past, dictators like Ahmadinejad have been tagged with a shelf-life once they blip on the UN's radar. After Saddam Hussein became violent in 1991 the U.N. imposed sanctions on Iraq.
However, it took Hussein's invasion of Kuwait to bring about these sanctions.
If the U.N. had imposed the Iraqi sanctions earlier, Hussein may have cooperated with the United States in exchange for lifting the embargoes.
Instead, sanctions came after war broke out, and not before. We supposedly live in a society in which life is valued and war is avoided at all costs. Then why, with the horror of the Iraq war shouting at us, is the U.N. not taking every action to prevent another war? Not only does the U.N. refuse to learn from its past, it refuses to learn from its present.
During the Cuban missile crisis, American and Soviet forces teetered on the brink of nuclear war for 13 days.
The reason that neither country fired was, according to political analysts, was the mutually assured destruction theory.
Both countries knew if they fired first, their opponent would counterattack, assuring the destruction of both countries.
Deterrence was the tool that prevented a clash of civilizations, U.S. and Soviet. Deterrence -- the tool that could prevent a clash of American and Arab civilizations -- is absent from the situation in Iran.
Although the U.N. threatened Ahmadinejad with sanctions, none were imposed. Although deadlines were set, none were enforced.
The UN is foregoing policy and negotiating with Ahmadinejad, the man who terrorized American hostages in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
Why? Because the aggressors of the world refuse to mistake leniency for authority.
In the past, the U.N. has done good for the world. If the U.N.'s actions were united with its words, it would still play a legitimate role in improving our planet.
But its role in international affairs has plummeted.
There is no miraculous solution to correcting these missteps, but there are methods of preventing them.
The only solution is that the U.N. supports its words instead of replacing them with more. Hopefully, the U.N. will enforce their deadline sometime this fall.
And, for the sake of our ROTC cadets, sometime before nuclear winter.
