Free Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders by Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin McCarthy Page B

can’t be negotiated away. There is always a time and a place for diplomacy, of course. But I subscribe to the fundamental soundness of what the author Primo Levi said when he was asked what he learned from the Holocaust.
    He said, “When a man with a gun says he’s going to kill you—believe him.”
    Today, the head of state with the most dangerous gun pointed at the head of the United States is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tyrant of Iran. Under Ahmadinejad and his cronies, in just the past year and a half Iran has stolen an election, brutally crushed a democracy movement, and, most seriously of all for the United States and our ally Israel, ramped up its effort to develop a nuclear program.
    The stakes are too high for us not to recognize thatthe policy of engagement with Tehran has failed. Ahmadinejad has simply used the time spent in further, futile negotiations to bring his nuclear program closer to fruition. In just the time we have spent “reaching out” to Ahmadinejad, secret Iranian nuclear enrichment sites have been discovered and Iranian officials have promised that there will soon be more. Even toothless United Nations nuclear inspectors have come around to believing that Iran’s nuclear program isn’t “peaceful,” as Iranian officials have laughably claimed. It’s not hard to see the writing on the wall. No matter how many times Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that the Obama administration views the Iranian development of nuclear weapons as “unacceptable,” the unacceptable keeps happening. It’s looking for all the world like this administration is preparing to accept the reality of a nuclear armed Iran.
    In fairness, administrations of both parties have done little to stop Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons, even as they have loudly complained about the “unacceptability” of it all. But the time for talk—even tough talk—is over. We would be lying to ourselves if we believed that a nuclear Iran could be deterred. A nuclear weapon in Ahmadinejad’s hands will allow the world’s most notorious state sponsor of terrorism to commit nuclear blackmail against whomever it pleases. It will pose an existential threat to the state of Israel, precipitate a full-fledged arms race in the Middle East, and gravely damage the national security of the United States.
    There is a better way to deal with the tyrant of Tehran. America has to treat Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime like the thugs and agents of terror that they are, not like the trustworthy and compromising leaders we all wish they were. That means real sanctions, with real teeth. It means sending the message to the world that if you deal with Iran, you are not welcome to deal with the United States. It means empowering the brave Iranians who oppose the regime instead of leaving them to be shot on the street. And it means making sure Tehran understands that the option of force is on the table. We cannot and should not delude ourselves into thinking that Ahmadinejad will change course unless threatened with anything less.
    As troubling as the Obama policy toward Iran is, it is of a piece with a larger double standard this administration has when dealing with the Middle East. The Obama administration’s way of showing it’s an honest broker in the Middle East peace process has been to overlook multiple offenses on the part of some in the Arab world while irresponsibly attacking Israel. This is a major policy shift, the ramifications of which will be very serious.
    Last March, Vice President Biden made a muchpublicized trip to Israel. While he was there, two separate incidents occurred that illustrate the administration’s shocking double standard toward the Middle East. You may have heard of the first incident, but I doubt you’ve heard of the second, as it received very little coverage in the media.
    In the first incident, a middle-level Israeli bureaucratannounced the approval of sixteen hundred homes in an existing Jewish