Evil? Sure. Reason for War? No way.
Fareed Zakaria offers some rational thought on relations with Iran: “Stalin, Mao And â?¦ Ahmadinejad? Conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.”
A nuke in Iran is cause for concern, but not for preemptive war. Let us hope and pray that the drive to go to war with Iran fails. It’s definitely underway. The war drums are rumbling. Before it’s too late, it’s important for rational people to plot the non-end of the world.
Tom,
Are you OK with what happened last month in Syria, the bombing of the nuke plant over there?
Do you not believe that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, or do you not believe they’ll use it?
The people who run Iran are truly nuts, and truly evil. Their president believes that he was encircled by a holy islamic green mist when he spoke at the UN. They’ve declared for decades their desire to overrun the west, and they’ve all but said they’d use the bomb if they had it.
They’ve specificaly disavowed Mutual Assured Destruction. Didn’t Khatami claim that losing a few million muslims was, on balance, an acceptable cost of nuking Israel? Their client, Nasrallah, was similarly unmoved by all the Arab muslims his rockets killed in the recent war.
A huge tragedy of the Iraq misadventure is that it makes more difficult a truly compelling pre-emptive war. Iran is as compelling as it gets for pre-emptive action.
“A huge tragedy of the Iraq misadventure is that it makes more difficult a truly compelling pre-emptive war. Iran is as compelling as it gets for pre-emptive action.”
Please. Where is the evidence that Iran can’t be deterred. Zakaria: Iran/Persia hasn’t invaded a country since the 17th C.
Iran would understand that to use the bomb against the U.S. or Israel (or indeed, any of its neighbors) would mean its destruction.
“The people who run Iran are truly nuts, and truly evil.”
Man. Where is the evidence that they are nuts? Where is the evidence that the Iranian leadership is beyond weighing the costs and benefits of actions? I don’t like the Iranian regime. I don’t like their views on Israel or the Holocaust. I consider their policies, generally, horrible.
But, come on.
“Their president believes that he was encircled by a holy islamic green mist when he spoke at the UN.”
For crying out loud! Bush believes in Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, and prays and apparently receives guidance from god. We’ve got influential members of the right wing war coalition who believe the Left Behind series will come true.
“They’ve declared for decades their desire to overrun the west, and they’ve all but said they’d use the bomb if they had it.”
This coming from, I assume, a citizen of the USA, a country that has done more in the past 20 years to unsettle the nation-state system than any country since the 1940s.
These comments are just the sort of neocon nonsense to which Zakaria is referring.
It isn’t a serious argument to suggest that Bush’s rather ordinary Christian beliefs are on par with Ahmadinejad’s mystical visions. When Bush claims a vision of Jesus inspires him to nuke other countries, that line of argument might become more persuasive.
Meanwhile, in the realm of reality, Hashemi Rafsanjani has stated:
“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce minor damages in the Muslim world.”
Sure doesn’t sound like Mutual Assured Destruction.
Suicidal terrorists will use whatever firepower is at their disposal because they don’t care about, or indeed, because they WELCOME the consequences. Iran is run by people who advocate the coming of the apocalypse so they can usher in the new mahdi.
Accepting that Bush is evil, that America is always wrong, etc. etc., doesn’t change the fact that Iran is nuts and hell-bent on nuking people. And that particular problem can only be solved not by happy talk and b.s., not by “oil for food” type programs, not by ignorance, but by bombing the crap out of their nuclear facilities, the sooner, the harder, the better.
If the issue is a Middle Eastern one, perhaps the neighbors should be more involved than the US in restraining the ambitions of the Iranian state leadership. As it is, the US managed to knock out two of Iran’s most serious regional competitors, to the west and to the east. Both were evil regimes, but the net beneficiary, it seems, has been the regime in Tehran.
“It isn’t a serious argument to suggest that Bush’s rather ordinary Christian beliefs are on par with Ahmadinejad’s mystical visions. When Bush claims a vision of Jesus inspires him to nuke other countries, that line of argument might become more persuasive.”
It isn’t a serious argument to cite mystical visions as evidence that someone lacks rationality. Bush has mystical visions, yet, they say, he can be reasoned with. Ahmedinejad’s may be completely ordinary in for a deeply religious Muslim.
As far as MAD goes, I completely disagree with your interpretation of Rafsanjani’s statement, which precisely seems to be a statement about MAD. “Colonialism” would be “stalemated” because the effect of a bomb would be the destruction of Israel. And what would follow I wonder? Well Rafsanjani is not a stupid man.
But whatever man. Neocons like you can’t be reasoned with.
I wonder how many potential pre-emptive wars might be waged against the United States?
I hope when people exercise their right to bear arms or arm bears or whatever that they don’t launch pre-emptive strikes on their similarly armed neighbors who might happen to engage in hostile rhetoric or worship strange gods.
I don’t want to be caught in the crossfire.
Alan Gura writes as though the Iranian rulers are a monolithic entity with a single set of values and plans. But they aren’t, and a policy that ignores this crucial fact will be a bad policy.
An unprovoked American attack on Iran would fail to stop the Iranian nuclear development, and would simply convince pro-western and moderate Iranians that the hardliners had been right all along. And Iran will then build nukes, probably with Russian assistance, and be far more belligerent than it is now. An American attack would be plainly idiotic.
Unfortunately, with the current American administration, such Custeresque policies seem in vogue. But it’s high time the U.S. stop acting like a crazy rogue nation.
Israel needs to do it. That’s why we have proxies. Then we can make disapproving noises and reinstate that Israel has a right to exist.