The US launching a pre-emptive strike is is the last thing we should do. Now, I’m still hashing all of this out in my mind, so forgive me if it’s a bit rough in spots, but this has been rumbling about in my head since a friend recently advocated us blowing things up in Iran to keep them from getting nukes.
Now, I’m going to follow the Administration line on all of this, I’m not going pull any cites out which say that the government was wrong/lying about anything in regards to Iraq, 9/11, or Afghanistan. I am simply going to take them at their word and argue because of what they’ve said and done (as described by them), that we’d be doing something incredibly foolish by launching a pre-emptive strike against Iran to prevent them from getting nukes and then bombing Israel/US/whomever they happened to dislike.
According to our government, the plan is for Iran to get a nuke and then blow the crap out of Israel and/or the US (via either a missile or smuggled weapon). Let’s look at how this would have to work:[ul]
[li]Israel is a nation of drooling slackjaws incapable of defending itself.[/li][li]The Iranians would have to do something no other nation in history has ever done: Build a nuclear weapon and use it, without ever testing the design first.[/ul][/li]Let me go on record as saying that I don’t think that the Israelis are a nation of drooling slackjaws, so I don’t see how this could be a possibility at all. After all, they’ve had no problem bombing the crap out of things in other countries which they saw as a threat to themselves, so it seems to me that if they felt that the Iranians were close to building a nuke, they’d have no problem in handling the matter themselves. If someone cares to take this tangent and run with it, feel free to, because I can’t go any farther with it.
With the second possibility, we’re claiming that the Iranians are technologically savvy enough to do what we couldn’t do during WW II, and that, while no other nation on Earth has ever used nukes in war, all the nuclear powers on Earth have tested at least one (with the sole exception of North Korea who’s nuke test may, in fact, be the only “fizzle” on record) weapon to verify that they do, indeed, work. (The Israeli’s are thought to have tested theirs with the help of South Africa back in the 1980s.) This is a risky idea, to say the least. I mean, you’re planning on terrifying the world and instead of there being this earth shattering kaboom, all you get is the clanking sound of your dud warhead bouncing around on the ground. Gotta figure it does a number on the ol’ flagpole, if you know what I mean.
But, let’s say that the plan, indeed, is to develop a nuke and have it’s first test be in operational use. So, in order for it to be a surprise, this means that the same US intelligence sources which are able to tell us that this is what the plan is, are unable to tell us in advance that the Iranians are getting ready to lauch a nuke within a couple of days (or so) in order that we might be able to publicly humiliate them, either ala the Kennedy Administration at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or launch an airstrike on the launch site which obiliterates it militarily, but leaves enough radioactive traces on site that a neutral party could come in and say, “Yup. There was definately a nuke being readied here.” Mind you, the analysis techniques out there are good enough that a neutral party could conclusively prove that the radioactive traces didn’t come from the US, and thus it’s not a “plant” on our part to justify the bombing. I can’t really buy this scenerio, either, but it seems to be the more plausible of the two, so we’ll go with that.
Okay, then, let’s look at what happened with Iraq. The US government (and remember for the purpose of this thread I am not doubting them at their word) stated that the Iraqis were working on WMDs and were very close to using them, which is why we had to invade. This is the same Iraq which had some kind of connection with 9/11, but the exact details of which have to remain classified for reasons of national security. We launched a massive invasion of Iraq and some years later, no WMDs have been found. So, what happened? Well, either the intelligence services got it wrong (In which case we have to ask how do we know they’re getting it right, now?) or the WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq for parts unknown (possibly Syria). A third possibility, and one that I think we all would consider unlikely is that they did find WMDs, but have had to keep it quiet for one reason or another.
Before I tackle the first possibility, I’m going to dispense with the second one. What steps has the US government taken to ensure that Iran doesn’t become a repeat of Iraq, with WMDs being smuggled out of the country (And why haven’t those smuggled WMDs been used in the years since? Did Osama max out his Mastercard or something?) once we attack? Shouldn’t that be our first priority? If it is, I haven’t heard anything about it. We can’t just assume that a bombing raid will do it, after all, we put a helluvalot of effort into stopping the Nazis from getting their hands on heavy water
My understanding is that at least some of those missions were of the “suicide” type. The guys knew going into them that there wasn’t much hope of them being able to pull it off, much less coming back alive. Where are the accounts of our suicide missions in Iraq? Seems like every time we screw up a mission/covert op, it becomes front page news all over the world. Surely we launched some in our efforts to get the WMDs in Iraq before they were smuggled out, right? Rumsfeld did say at one point we knew where the WMDs were, so if we knew where they were, we would have been incredibly incompetent to not send the various special forces into the areas to get them. If we were so imcompetent, then what evidence do we have that the administration’s taken pains to correct this?
As to the third possibility, that there were weapons found, but we’ve had to conceal it, couldn’t we have gotten some of our allies who opposed the war, like say, the French, to look at the WMDs and come out publicly saying, “Yup. They found them. We can’t give you any more details than that, but we’ve seen them, and we know that they’re real.”? Okay, so it wouldn’t convince the muslim world and people who hate the US just on general principles, but, it’d make those nations which are our allies more inclined to help us out than they’re presently doing. After all, it wouldn’t be just another mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, they would know that there was, indeed, a good reason for us going in there. Again, what evidence is the administration willing to offer to our allies to bolster our claims? I’m not talking about evidence in public, but in private, since you can’t expect governments to around publicly waving documents which would give away classified information.
Back the first possibility and that the intel services screwed up and there were no WMDs in Iraq to begin with. Okay, what efforts has the Administration made to correct this? And how are they prepared to demonstrate them in a manner which will prove to most of those opposed to the Administration that they have, indeed, fixed the problems? Again, I’m not asking for them to publicly show photos of a camel with a nuclear weapon on it’s back, but they could show such photos (or similar evidence) to the Dems in Congress, the French, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Swedes, and the Russians. All of whom are allied with us when it comes to opposing terror (and the use of nuclear weapons) and at least some of them were opposed to us going into Iraq. One would think that the government would have enough PR-savvy people to realise that if you’ve got evidence which is convincing to the leaders of countries that dislike us, the bulk of the population will be convinced, even if they never see the evidence themselves.
Adding all this stuff up, just makes me think that if Bush is right, and we’ve got to bomb the Iranians, then he’s the wrong man for the job. He’ll screw it up, either by letting the weapons falling into the wrong hands, or mishandling the arguments for the bombing that any good done by it will be more than cancelled out by the global ill-will we’ve generated.
Now, I know that there are some who’ll argue that while the above might be true, we can’t wait, since if we do, millions of people will die when the nuke is set off. To those that would say such a thing, I’d submit that were it to happen, it would be the best thing to happen, given the various possibilities I’ve laid out in this thread. Iran, and nutjob extremists would be seen in the worst possible light, with the entire planet going, “Oh crap! We’ll be lucky if the Yanks don’t nuke all of us!” No one is going to offer much in the way of vigorous opposition to us blowing the crap out of Iran. Heck, I’d be willing to be that at least a few countries offered to do it for us as a way to see that justice was delivered and not have us just deciding to trash the whole neighborhood while we’re at it.