EDITORIAL: Iran Punishes Its People, New York Times, November 25, 2009
I couldn't disagree more with the subtitle here: "Washington must work to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions with the same zeal used to condemn Tehran's assault on reform-minded opposition."
The exact opposite makes more sense: keep ratcheting up on the human rights and forget about trying to influence the nuke question.
This BS about Iran being able to "threaten the world" with a nuclear weapon is very unhelpful. Nobody's ever successfully gotten anybody to do anything by threatening a nuke attack. It simply does not work. The only thing that such threats have ever achieved is a moratorium on attacks against the threatening party--that's it.
So why, after 64 years where nukes and their alleged "threats" have achieved nothing--except killing great-power war, do we suddenly hypothesize about the immense and immediate power Iran will magically wield with a nuke or two. See any great power accruing to North Korea on this subject? Have several hundred warheads made Israel the undisputed boss of the Persian Gulf?
This is complete nonsense, and all part of our fetishizing of nuclear weapons that has no basis in reality, no basis in rationality and no basis in history.
How the NYT can print such hyperbolic crap is beyond me.
I see no reason to cancel the future of the world over Iran's nukes. If they want to play for real, the Iranian leadership and everybody in that country can be immolated tomorrow. It's easily arranged and there will be few tears.
Beyond recognizing that responsibility to global stability, the rest of this hypothesizing and fear-mongering is pure bunk.
Let's ask the freak-out artists to step to the back and let the adults hold the conversation.
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