Left I on the News

I've written recently about North Korea's right to self-defense "by any means necessary." Not everyone acknowledges that right, though, as two recent stories show.

The first is an article about Russian arms sales, where we read this:

Russia surpassed the United States in 2005 as the leader in weapons deals with the developing world, and its new agreements included selling $700 million in surface-to-air missiles to Iran and eight new aerial refueling tankers to China, according to a new Congressional study...the sales to improve Iran’s air-defense system are particularly troubling to the United States because they would complicate the task of Pentagon planners should the president order airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.

The poor unfortunate Pentagon (and those it represents), no longer able to attack a defenseless country. How sad.

Nor are they the only ones lamenting the fact that a previously defenseless country might actually be trying to do something about that. Here's a recent development in Israel:

IDF Intelligence Research Chief Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz disclosed Sunday that arms smuggling into Gaza by the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority includes even anti-aircraft weapons.

Baidatz's assessment is that Hamas plans to use the weapons against Israeli fighter planes in future armed conflicts...The intelligence chief said that Israel must come up with a solution to protect its planes from the new weapons.

Hey Yossi, here's an idea -- stop flying your damn fighter planes over Gaza and killing Palestinians.

Of course, obtaining anti-aircraft weapons isn't a guarantee against imperialist aggression, as a decade of U.S. bombing of Iraqi anti-aircraft installations in prepartion for the 2003 invasion showed. Bombing (and the associated killing) which, by the way, went virtually unreported in the American media.