A nightmare that is real

This may be the scariest prognosis for the future of Western civilization and the world you have recently read. But what makes it so scary is that we know in our bones that it is true.

The possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea and Iran means nothing less than the virtual inevitability of their falling into the hands of terrorists. From now on, it's not airplanes flying into buildings or biological agents being released in subways we need to fear. It's nuclear attacks by the like of al Quaeda.

Nor, as the article points out, is the hatred which comes from a once-proud civilization having to confront its own current backwardness and poverty in the face of technological, cultural, political, and conventional military power of countries like the United States and Israel apt to abate any time soon. The Islamic world as a whole seems unlikely to catch up.

All in all, it's a bleak prospect for all of us. I wish there were some clear course of action which would reliably render it less so. Clearly, in any case, Iran has to be prevented at all costs from becoming a nuclear power- and something, somehow, has to be done about North Korea as well. Our cities, and those of every Western country, are hostage to that necessity. And so are the lives of our children.