If we’re using “cruelty to their own people” as a litmus test for evil threat level, though, China doesn’t score all that well either.
I agree that Iran looks in many respects a lot less “trustworthy” as a member of the nuclear club than India or China. However, I’m not at all convinced that the potential threat they pose in the future is worth the definite drawbacks to attacking them now.
Some of the parallels seen here with the rhetoric of the buildup to the Iraq invasion are making me rather uneasy. Back in 2002, we were being assured that Saddam Hussein was well on the path to having nuclear capability, that he was a crazy megalomaniac with a thirst for the destruction of Israel, that he was a tyrannical despot who gassed his own people, and that he was a huge threat to the safety of the world. A typical worst-case scenario in early 2003 looked like this:
Not all of the claims about Saddam were exaggerated, and not all of the concerns about the threat he posed were unrealistic, but I think there’s now a general consensus that the fear was much worse than the reality. Under the stimulus of that fear, we invaded Iraq, and now confront a difficult and expensive situation there which has stimulated Muslim resentment and fears that we’re waging some kind of crusade or imperial conquest against Muslim nations.
I don’t want us to close our eyes to genuine threats, but I don’t want us to jump out of the frying pan into the fire again. When I hear the familiar themes of “nuclear threat—hatred of Israel—power-mad despots—implacable animosity towards the West—inhuman monsters who abuse their own people—ideological fanatics”, I start to worry that we’re whipping our emotions up for another under-planned, ill-advised adventure.
This isn’t really accurate. Opinion on the left is still very solidly pro-non-proliferation, and liberals are genuinely concerned about the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran. Nobody’s lolling around going, “aw hey, cats, let’s not be so uptight about that nuclear danger thing anymore.” But that doesn’t mean that we automatically agree that launching bombing raids or worse is ultimately going to be a helpful course of action in deterring nuclear proliferation.
Would it be okay for Iranians to use nukes, you’re asking, if it were against non-human targets? No, I’m against all use of nukes where it can possibly be avoided.
Technically, that doesn’t break the Great Convention.
Or, at least, you can argue that (successfully) once you’ve captured the Imperial household and declared yourself ruler of the galaxy.
Damn… I wanted to be the first to make that joke. I hate you all
(No, not really.)
(About the hating you thing, not about wanting to make the joke first.)
(I really wanted to make the joke first, but I don’t really hate you.)
(Tacos are crunchy and good.)
Funny. We’re “forced” to cozy up to resource possessing strategically placed Pakistan because of nukes, and also “forced” to remain mortal enemies with relatively barren strategically null North Korea because of nukes. The truth is we support Pakistan and it’s nukes because it keeps potential superpower India too busy to cause trouble. Using your “logic” you could justify any foreign policy based on some country somewhere having nukes.
And if Israel decides to go to war based on that, then we will have to make decisions about how much we want to support that. Blindly following alliances is what got everyone into WWI, which is retrospect wasn’t humanity’s brightest move. Blindly following alliances based on mere threats is…well, so dumb nobody has ever done it before.
Hey, I never said anything about stopping anyone.
The practicality is that Iran has no motivation to develop ICBMs. Right now only China and the former Soviet Republics have ICBM technology. It’s just not worth developing them when you have no ability to follow up on a strike. There is now way Iran could occupy the US. There is simply nothing they could do with them that would put their country in a better position. Iran may talk the talk about the US, but in reality their concerns and sphere of power is much closer to home.
Oh yeah. I’ve never heard that before. Like, uh, a couple years ago about a country right next door. Let me guess…we’ll be there for a week and they’ll greet us with flowers and the opposition will collapse like a house of cards as the liberators roll in to Teheran. We’ll win, they’ll vote, and we’ll be out of their lickity split mission accomplished, right?
Then send your own damn troops and stop betting my friends and family.
If you’d like to read up on ICBMs, this is a good start. By the time Iran could develop ICBMs (much less ones that can carry nuclear warheads) in all likelihood they will have gone through at least a couple new governments. And the reality is that right now they have pressing security concerns that affect their country in a very real way today. They have a lot of military holes to plug before they can start thinking about major long term projects- especially major long term projects that they have no way to follow up on.
Highly implausible. When was the last time a country that supported terrorism let, say, poison gas or bioweapons fall into terrorist hands ? When was the last time terrorists where given so much as a fighter jet or tank ? I think this idea that Iran is going to hand out nukes to anyone is sheer paranoid ( or politically motivated ) fantasy. Any nukes they have, they’ll keep - with a deathgrip.
IIRC that was Iraq, not Iran; I once heard our support for Iraq referred to as “The Kill-a-Boy Fund”. Besides, when was the last time Americans cared about the lives of foreign children ?
Because they don’t need to; they have an Air Force.
I’d d also like to say that whatever else they may be, the Iranian leadership is pefectly justified in fearing an American attack. In this thread alone, several people have demonstrated he attitude of “Iran might be a danger, so we must attack !”. Thing is, any country might decide to harm us, so that’s basically an implicit declaration of war on humanity.
strictly speaking, we will be jusified in attacking Iran when the General in the Blue Helmet at the head of the Armies of the United Nations blows “boots and saddles”. Prior to that, it’s just another war crime (unprovoked wars of aggression, a crime against humanity-nb.we are already one-time losers, but I don’t think that there’s a three-strike rule)
You probably didn’t get this bit of news, but in the Arab press, there’s a statement from some Iranian government official that Gulf states do not need to worry about Iran using nuclear weapons against them. Reassuring, eh?
I was using “the die is cast” in the Cambridge Dictionary sense: “The die is cast is something that you say when a decision has been made or something has happened which will cause a situation to develop in a particular way… [e.g.] From the moment the first shot was fired, the die was cast and war became inevitable.”
Actually, Lonesome Polecat is correct that Iranian kids did sweep mine fields the hard way. I believe that the characterization of the event is wrong. My memory is that the militias recruited by the Imams to fight off Iraq included a lot of kids and old people who were encouraged to join up to resist the invasion and sent out with few weapons and little training (there being no weapons available and no time to set up training camps). In the course of several battles, they engaged in mass charges in the hopes (sometimes successful) of overwhelming the better armed and trained but less numerous Iraqi invaders. Several of those charges were acrossed mined fields. This is a bit different than a claim that children were “marched across minefields” for the purpose of clearing the mines–although it is horrible enough.
I’m not even sven, but ground troops - American ones - are pretty much implied. Bombing them will at most set them back ( not to mention encourage them to try harder ); it would take ground troops to actually stop them. I doubt that any European nation is willing to support the military effort to do that, so that leaves America.
Troops would be needed to seize the oil fields (conveniently adjacent to the Iraq border) if they decided to screw the world economy in retaliation. Not to mention put down the uprisings in Iraq and prop up our friendly dictators in Saudi.
They have a hostile superpower parked next to their oil fields, making belligerent noises. Of course they want a Bomb. They’d be insane not to. That’s why the Israeli’s have nukes - and you can’t blame them either.
