Mark Steyn on Iran:
Posted by Sarah at April 18, 2006 08:43 AM | TrackBackYou know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew."
When I'm on a plane, I play President Bush. I look for someone assembling a bomb. When I find one, I am going to attack the guy in the seat next to him, on the theory that someday down the road he might try to get a bomb, too.
Posted by: Pericles at April 18, 2006 10:14 PMIran is trying to get nukes and WMDs in order to directly attack us now because they hate our freedoms. Is that right?
Can you guess why I'm skeptical. (Fool me once, anyone?)
Posted by: Will at April 19, 2006 05:01 AMCould you guys take it easy on the poor little thing? Since you mugged her with reality she has retreated to nothing but puppies and knitting.
Posted by: question at April 21, 2006 04:54 PMHere is an "honest" question, one that I don't know the answer to and would like to hear the thoughts of others on. Suppose that Saddam HAD had an active nuclear program, or a WMD program of some time. Could we really fault him for this, giving the very active program in Iran? He fought a long war with them, with our active support and enciuragement. Now they are getting nukes? Wouldn't this do as much to legitimize Iraq's pursuit of a WMD program as it does Israel's possession of one?
Posted by: Pericles at April 22, 2006 06:25 PMGood question Pericles. Personally, I am very against Iran actually acquring a usable stockpile of nukes and (more importantly) the means to shoot those nukes across a wide distance. (Interestingly, nobody ever thinks about the fact that a nuclear country without satellites and ICBMs is actually quite harmless.)
I understand why the Iranian government has become more fundamentalist and warlike in the last few years - just look at the two countries on either side of it and think about it - but I do happen to think the Ahmadinejad might, in fact, be crazy, and I don't want him nuking Israel, for sure. I'm not a big fan religious fanatics anywhere.
However, Iran doesn't and won't have the ability to use nukes against its neighbours, much less us, for decades. Right now, the appropriate path is diplomacy, not war. And I think in light of Iraq, we can see that this administration would rather go to war than not, and that's pretty damn scary, especially when it might involve a pre-emptive NUCLEAR strike against a country that hasn't attacked anyone, that has made guarantees that it only wants a nuclear power program, and is a signed member of the nuclear non-proliferation pact.
Bush is no longer an alcoholic, and I congratulate him for that, but I can only imagine that everytime he's dying for a drink, he gets down and prays for the strength to stay clean, because he NEEDS to stay clean, because he has some great task at hand. And a man like that will do anything to create that great task. It's like he's saying to the world - "I'm strong because I'm going to face armageddon with my head clear and my eyes open. Everyone be strong like me."
But I've never been a screwed up alcoholic, born-again-christian like Bush, and I really don't care if he drinks or not because he's going to continue to be spoiled little brat no matter what, so I wish he would just chill OUT already. Someone's got to tell him that he doesn't have to bring on armageddon.
Anyway, more to the point of the question, I think that Israel should have nukes and Iran and the rest shouldn't because anyone who's read a history book of the 20th century can see that Israel is in constant danger of being attacked by every single one of its incredibly strong-willed and fundamentalist neighbours, and because since 1980, Iran has become an increasingly unstable, fundamentalist state. However, that is not an advocation of war with Iran. It's just a complex issue that right-wingers will never be able to understand because they're brains have been fried by Fox News.