[lit-ideas] Re: Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 23:36:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
-----Original Message-----
>From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Mar 6, 2007 3:29 PM
>To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
>
> >>In other words, you're saying that during the Cold War there was some
>mechanism other than MAD that kept countries with equal nuclear weaponry
>from nuclear war?
>
>Indeed there was, whether Lawrence was implying that or not. As I
>pointed out months ago in a reply to Simon, Truman bluffed Stalin about
>our nuclear capacity early on. We had two bombs and Stalin thought we
>had many. Truman moved our nuke-capable bombers to England postwar and
>it stopped Stalin from pushing over Europe and turning the whole
>Continent Communist. Check the history. That other mechanism was called
>uncertainty.
>
>
If superiority were the ticket, and we were so superior, if there was no
parity, what were we so afraid of? No matter how you slice it, we didn't go to
war because of MAD. Today we're terrified of Iran. We could take them out in
minutes and we're quaking in our boots that they're going to (gasp) get a
nuclear weapon.
> >>Put a different way, if Iraq had had nuclear weapons, would we have
>invaded them? Put yet a different way, if Iran had nuclear weapons,
>would we be threatening to invade them?
>
>That has nothing to do with your original question! You are just trying
>to muddy the waters because Lawrence responded effectively to your
>question. So now you change your question to something else.
>
So what's the answer? If Iraq had had nuclear weapons, would we have invaded
them? Of course not. MAD works. Whether you want to admit it or not, if Iraq
had nuclear weapons, we would not have invaded them. Likewise we would not be
so hot and bothered about Iran either.
>Irene, you seem to like psychological thought. What you are doing is
>called "lumping." You are aggregating unrelated issues. While the way
>you perceive individual issues may be highly accurate, the way you link
>them together is sloppy. Acute individual perceptions combined with
>invalid interpretations. What the USA would or wouldn't do to a
>perceived national threat has nothing to do with the question of whether
>Iran should or shouldn't have nuclear weapons.
Eric, for somebody who supported the invasion of Iraq based on Annie Myelroie's
say so, who was clueless about Cheney's power, who bought the democracy was on
the march thing hook line and sinker, who thinks the military is the answer
when the military itself says it's not the answer, and on and on and on, your
analysis about Iran is just not extremely impressive. Iran didn't bring down
the Trade Center. You do know that by now, don't you? Iran is another
obsession, the way Iraq was. It has nothing to do with national security
except to the extent that we keep turning them into a foe and they have no
choice but to be a foe. Dropping bombs on somebody's country is invasive, if
not technically an invasion. But then, you're ready to nuke a billion people
who had and have nothing to do with 9/11, so dropping a few bombs on a country
must feel downright like an act of friendship. Ironically, Iran has profited
immensely, as we have lost immensely, from all the paranoid machismo this
country runs on. From everything I've read, bombing Iran will make today's
situation in Iraq look like the walk in the park Iraq started out to be. I
guess we need to repeatedly learn the hard way. There have been some diplomatic
overtures, so maybe it was just saber rattling. Maybe they have learned, and
maybe they haven't. We just have to wait and see.
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