Iran Nuke Post at TPM Cafe

Signed up with this one to Matthew Yglesias who asks someone to save him from his inclination to oppose Iran getting Nukes:


[new] Re: Save Me (3.00 / 0) (#31) by chinshihtang on Dec 11, 2005 -- 12:03:55 AM EST
A nuclear Iran is no worse a problem than a nuclear Pakistan, and we're getting through that (though there were some scary moments with India). Pakistan, indeed, would have made more sense as a place to conduct strategic opertaions than Iraq.

That's history, now, and Pakistan will be a rogue power with nuclear weapons for the next few years, or a subcontinental partner with India in a Predator-vs.-Alien kind of symbiosis.

I digress. The only advice I got is that I just don't want anything to blow up with either Iran or with North Korea until we get this Bushite down the road in 2009. We can't trust him. Or the Rove/Cheney axis (jettison Rumsfeld, the unlikely victim of Plamegate) which rules his world. And, somehow. through some crazy electoral college logic, he rules ours.

Sure, we should advocate that Iran stay within the NPT. But we're hypocritical at best to insist that they do so when we so cavalierly toss aside our commitments to international law.



I got this response:

Re: Save Me (3.00 / 0) (#37) by BruceMoomaw on Dec 11, 2005 -- 12:53:35 AM EST
Chinshihtang: "A nuclear Iran is no worse a problem than a nuclear Pakistan, and we're getting through that (though there were some scary moments with India)."
Really? What evidence do you have that we're "getting through it"? Do you see any sign that the Pakistani government is more stable than it was, or that the degre of public sympathy for al-Qaida has diminished? (I believe Pew Research Center pegged it earlier this year at 50% of the populace.)

"Pakistan, indeed, would have made more sense as a place to conduct strategic operations than Iraq."

Not, of course, when it already had the Bomb, and we had no way of knowing where all the Bombs it had were. Which is also why we don't dare attack North Korea now. The only thing we can do to resolve the Korean situation at this point is to make it clear that (1) we won't pay one cent to keep Kim's government propped up in power; but (2) we WILL do absolutely anything necessary to allow it to give up power peaceafully without being massacred by its own people. To do that credibly, however, we have to be capable of occupying and stabilizing the place -- which, of course, is something else we're totally incapable of doing as long as we stay entangled in Iraq.

"That's history, now, and Pakistan will be a rogue power with nuclear weapons for the next few years, or a subcontinental partner with India in a Predator-vs.-Alien kind of symbiosis."

Thou sayest it. How likely is it that it WILL turn into a "rogue power with nuclear weapons" in the near future? Enough to scare the hell out of me -- but it's too late for us to do anything about it. It is not, however, too late for us to prevent Iran from becoming still another deadly theat of the same kind. (Or, rather, it wasn't too late for us to do so before we got entangled in Iraq because of the cretinous overoptimism and duplicity of the Bushites.)

Thanks for paying attention, Bruce. Here are two responses I made (the second being the afterthought that's the main point):

Re: Save Me (3.00 / 0) (#87) by chinshihtang on Dec 13, 2005 -- 03:03:53 PM EST

True, North Korea was also a better focus for our energies than Iraq. Alas.

I was advocating operations in cooperation with Pakistan, helping to secure its western borders. And, no, I don't think that the regime is stable (more reason to work with it now), but I do think they have plans to protect their nukes within their military no matter what craziness might happen with their political regime.

Re: Save Me (3.00 / 0) (#88) by chinshihtang on Dec 13, 2005 -- 03:07:59 PM EST
We've lost control of nuclear proliferation (if we ever had it). There are more holes in the dyke than we've got digits.

The answer, though, is not stepping on the ambitions of the wannabes, but something more fundamental in our approach to nuclear weapons as a global society. And we, of course, are doing the opposite of providing sound leadership in this area.