No One Is That Crazy. Right? Ummm…right?

I’m reminded of a german word which I learned last year – ‘Amoklaufer’; ‘one who runs amok’. The usage was in a german newspaper in Summer, 1939; the country being described that way was Poland.

I’m sure some of the liberals now advocating deterrance railed against MAD at the time as an armageddon-hastening nightmare.

[raises hand]

I’m a little weirded out to find myself advocating a nuclear standoff…

Note that that story is NOT Vodkapundit’s work, but the work of Dan Simmons (author of HYPERION, among other things). Which is the saddest thing about it.

lemuel pitkin,
Except for the provocation to inevitably be felt by them meat lovin’ “Texans”….

Our ninth-grade social studies teacher was a veteran of the Korean war. Our class had units for each major area of the world, one of which was the Soviet Union. That unit lasted most of the year

One day, after using a yardstick to show us how one disembowels an enemy with a bayonet, he gave us a spittle-flecked speech about the nature of Communists. Communists, he insisted, were not motivated by any human feelings . . . they were all irrationally and totally dedicated to advancing their mad cause, and ONLY FORCE could succeed in stopping them, because they were robotically determined to conquer the world and would rather see the world destroyed in a nuclear holocaust than to give up one inch of ground . . . .

And we are now ruled by people who are nostalgic for the Cold War.

Or people who figure that the USSR collapsing was not the best end; that it’d have been better if the West (i.e., USA) had thrown a few nukes in, to teach people who is the boss.

That vodkapundit thread is the scariest stretch of blog I’ve read in a long while (but maybe I just don’t get out much). I fear that VDH’s use & abuse of Greek history + Sid Meier’s Civilization + our ever-present Jingoistic Dipshitism have combined to form a virus that would be ridiculous if not so potentially lethal.

For all that, I think the recent Hersch article in The New Yorker was just an early shot across the bow of the wankers in power on the part of the Pentagon. Sane flag officers and their battalion commanders know that the worst thing we could do right now is strike Iran (though, sadly, the Iranians probably “know” the same thing).

Did Victor Davis Hanson write something again? I can’t wait for the next War Nerd’s column to read about it.

What the nuke-waving racist bedwetters keep ignoring is that the crazy-talkin’ President Wossizname is a figurehead. Real power in Iran lies with Ayatollah Khameinei, who has gone on record as stating that the use of nuclear weapons is contrary to Islam.

On the other hand, it’s near impossible to find good barbecue here in NYC, so, much as it pains me to admit it, Texans may love real meat a little more than we do.

Part of me thinks I shouldn’t post this, since the definition of “good barbecue” is highly subjective and regionally determined, but what the hell.

Dinosaur BBQ up in Harlem. Give it a whirl (if you haven’t already and decided that it was crap). Personally, since they use an honest-to-goodness hardwood-fired smoker and decent cuts of meat, it’s about the best you’re going to get. It’s also the culmination of 25 years of a traveling BBQ experiment, so it’s less regionally distinct, so if you just have to have KC or Carolina, it might fall a bit short.

PS: Please, excuse the threadjack.

As for Iran, part of me thinks that the idea of invading and opening with tactical nukes, is just so surreal as to be implausible. Then again.

Will the French army be doing that or is this yet another thing that the world relies on the US for? I don’t mind being relied on, just would love a little less bitching.

What’s with the french? I’m just surprised you didn’t work Teddy Kennedy and Jane Fonda in there, as well. Israel, IIRC, has a few nukes of their own. Nor had I known you had enlisted Sebastian, good job.

Kelly (19): Israel was established in 1948 – at least that’s when the Israelis date it. But, then, you are probably confused by the bizarre way we Jews have of dating things, so that our holidays move around from year to year, and the current year is 5766, rather than 2006. This allows us to tell you goyim things like, “My year is bigger than your year, nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!” You seem to be confusing the establishment of the state with the 6 day war.

Israel will be annihilated in one storm, says Iran leader. Then of course is this. Iran looks like it will have nuclear weapons soon, and Iran’s leaders aren’t coy on saying what they would do with those weapons. At least the USSR and USA leaders never expressed the open desire to destroy their enemy simply for the sake of destroying them. But what do the people of CrookedTimber care as it will only be Israel that is destroyed.

But no, go back to mocking those who take Iran seriously.

At least the USSR and USA leaders never expressed the open desire to destroy their enemy simply for the sake of destroying them.

I seem to remember one of the leaders banging his shoe on the podium threatening to “bury you”. And another one saying “I’ve signed legislation that has outlawed the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.” And, of course, one leader actually nuked a couple of cities in Japan killing about 200,000 civilians in an instant.

Other than that (and probably a few hundered other examples), comparing Israel with a “rotten, dried tree” that would be annihilated by “one storm” is, of course, rhetoric of the highest level.

For those of you reading the dan simmons piece for the first time I recommend heading over to sadly No! where it was first discussed and taken apart rather thoroughly.

aimai

Jet,

I’ve yet to see one person “mocking those who take Iran seriously” (on CT, at least). No, we’re mocking those who think nuking it is a good idea, as, apparently, there are some such people in the Bush Administration/Pentagon. Lucky for us, there are obviously people in the Pentagon who think this is bat-shit crazy, too.

The on-the-ground leaders in Iraq are worried enough about how they’re going to solve the problems in that country, without getting Iran involved (and–they’re not really that involved right now: if the insurgents are doing some damange now using C-4 and old artillery shells, wait until they get their hands on shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles). The few people I’ve talked to in the Marine Corps think striking Iran and bringing them into the war given our current disposition in Iraq would be stupid in the extreme.

The plain fact of the matter is that we cannot, without an all-out national mobilization and several significant allies, wage a War for Civilization by invading Iran, Syria, et.al.–as a lot of the dipshit armchair strategists on the right would have us do. And even if we could, why the hell would we want to? What would be the point of this? What would count as “winning?”

‘At least the USSR and USA leaders never expressed the open desire to destroy their enemy simply for the sake of destroying them. But what do the people of CrookedTimber care as it will only be Israel that is destroyed.’

And remember if memory serves that China was also allegedly part of the cold war, and Mao’s own views on nuclear warfare are well known.

The fact is that

a: this fantastic idea that we all seem to have that we should look back at the ‘golden age’ when the world was governed by sane rational men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others is just beyond belief and

b: I hate to break it to you guys but Iran does not in actual fact have any nuclear weapons. Nor is there any particular reason to think it will acquire any at any point in the future. To believe otherwise is to believe Iranian propaganda (something the allegedly cynical pro-war posse seem quite happy to do) who have a vested interest in ‘bigging up’ their meager achievments.

(It’s not EVEN clear that Iran actually WANTS nuclear weapons. We seem to be losing sight of the fact that Iran’s defence at the moment (and there is no particular reason to doubt them) is that they want nuclear technology for peaceful reasons at the moment).

The sanctions which should have been started then can start now. Of course a year from now I fully expect to see huge complaints about the sanctions causing problems for poor people in Iran.

And I fully expect you’ll be here at CT, reminding all of us that those poor Iranians are only getting what they deserve.

I am a liberal, I was in high school at the height of the “nuclear freeze” movement, and I accepted idea of mutually assured destruction at the time and still do. For that matter, I rejected and reject those who framed it as “MAD theory”. It wasn’t theory but fact: each side really did have the assured ability to destroy the other. I didn’t particularly like that fact (liberals tend to dislike the idea of incinerating hundreds of millions of people), but facts are facts whether you like them or not.

I also recognized the fact that a state will change its behavior when it’s faced with an adversary that can destroy it, and I thought that unilateral disarmament would be a bad thing.

I believe that in that respect I was and am in the mainstream of American liberal thought. In the 80s and 90s there were a nontrivial number of liberals in Congress, and I don’t remember a single one of them advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament. Many liberals believed that the US could adequately deter the Soviet Union without escalating the arms race, but that’s hardly a rejection of MAD.

Tom posted while I was copying that. Note that not only is Rafsanjani talking about deterrance, not preemption, he’s also not unambiguously in favor of acquiring that deterrance, because of the American threat.

There’s only one country in this faceoff where any prominent people have even come close to suggesting the launch of an aggressive nuclear war. It’s not Iran.

“Second, with what army would the US invade Iran with?”

I’m sorry are you arguing with Donald Johnson who proposes the detterence by invasion idea? I argue that employing detterence only after Iran has nuclear weapons puts us in much uglier situations than trying to stop them from having nuclear weapons. Are you with the counter-genocide is a brilliant option camp? It helps to be clear.

“And I fully expect you’ll be here at CT, reminding all of us that those poor Iranians are only getting what they deserve.”

They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve to live under the mullahs either. That doesn’t make it unnecessary. I’m pointing out that no options lead to zero casualties. We aren’t living in the EU3 chit-chat diplomacy will talk the government of Iran out of it world. There are some on this blog who argue against certain types of action by pretending that they support other types of action–until that type of action is actually under serious consideration. I just want to be clear because it is a serious waste of time to have an argument about whether bombing or sanctions will work better with someone who will be opposing the sanctions as soon as they come up. If you believe that chit-chat diplomacy will work I would like to have that discussion, not a discussion about sanctions you wouldn’t support anyway. If you believe that we can’t stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons no matter what we do, I would much rather discuss what you think we should do if they use them rather than discuss which method (bombing, sanctions, or other) we should use to try to stop them since you believe stopping them is impossible.

“On the other hand, considering the historical facts on the ground (and certainly compared to, say, the US’s reaction after September 11), the Iranians do come over as veritable models of restraint.”

Really? What has Israel done to Iran to suggest a need for nuclear warfare? Hell what has Israel done to anyone to suggest a need for nuclear warfare? No one is suggesting that nuking the Sudan would be acceptable ‘detterance’ right?

Really? What has Israel done to Iran to suggest a need for nuclear warfare?

No idea. What did Iran do to the US to spark the debate we are having right now?

I find Iran’s preoccupation with Israel unreasonable and have no intention of defending it, but unreasonable as that may be you’re doing an even worse job of defending US bellicosity in the Middle East.

The soundest policy would be to let the U.N. blabber on with Mr Ahmadinejad, see if it can take a stand on his nuclear proliferation, then get all the major allies on board and in full participation in a military activity; then, and only then!, make an ultimatum — which must not include the use of nuclear weapons by the West.

But if Iran wants to be a nuclear power, then it will be one someday no matter what happens. So I think the West should avoid bombing Iran pre-emptively in case diplomacy fails. Bombing won’t change anything for the better, and it will kill tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents, create an humanitarian disaster that will rival several of the worse ones, and hasten a unified jihad where none, thank goodness, has yet arisen.

So if diplomacy fails — if Iran proceeds on its nuclear path — the West should not attack, but move immediately to a comprehensive Cold-War-type containment and deterrence of Iran, and plan for a long-term MANAGEMENT of the situation. The region will then have a Shiite Iran-and-Iraq in contention with their Sunni neighbors, and plenty of opportunities for diplomacy and learning by everyone. Indeed, if the Iranians gain a little pride by becoming a nuclear power, they may start to turn-around their psychology on more important matters, as all other nuclear publics in the world have done, and begin to think about how to get to a world in which everybody can survive, and begin that reformation of political Islam which we all hope for.

The idea that Iran is a bunch of crazies is itself crazy. Ahmadinejad is yanking our chains much as Mr Chavez is, down in Venezuela banging on the table in front of a television camera, and we shouldn’t fall for it. We should strongly resist those in the United States who suggest that Iran is some type of new “total suicide” country that will risk it all, by firing a rocket at Israel. The evidence of recent history is the reverse — they are very practical.

And it is unlikely they are expansionist. Going much beyond southern Iraq, if they make it that far, will put them into conflict with Sunni Arab states, causing an Islamic-internecine conflict that may redound to Western advantage. Some threatened Sunni states may acquiesce to basing Western troops and/or granting airspace.

Present U.S. policy is, however, asking the Iranians to act like cowards, from their point of view. We cannot suppose that much good will issue from this. Nor will it relieve our management of the situation. Their most rational response would then be to lie, and try to get the nukes anyway.

If Iran gets the bomb, we need strong deterrence and containment after that, promising to ensure their annihilation if they lob a rocket at anyone, while making overtures of peace. And then if the Mullahs do not modify their exertions, I think all those Iranians dissatisfied with their government, seeing that they have become pariahs in the eyes of outsiders who would prefer peace, will have a much stronger impetus to change that government. It may be the crisis which begins to change Islam. But there can be no concurrent exterior agitation, if you are to show your leaders the door. The Bush Administration in fact made it harder for Mr Khatami as well as the NGO reform groups by its rhetorical posturings. Certainly the Iranians will have a much greater opportunity to change their government, than if the West follows through on its threat to bomb them beforehand, kills lots of people, and makes the place unliveable.

Sebastian, if you’d care to clean up your post addressed to me, I’ll reply. You can start by eliminating your rhetorical questions, and TINA-style assertions.

That should trim it down to a dozen or so words.

Perhaps I’ve forgotten it, but which post is addressed to you?

If you believe that we can’t stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons no matter what we do, I would much rather discuss what you think we should do if they use them rather than discuss which method (bombing, sanctions, or other) we should use to try to stop them since you believe stopping them is impossible.

What do I think “we” should do if they use nuclear bombs? The same thing “we” would do if any of the other countries that have nuclear bombs uses them, I suppose. What would we do if North Korea* launched a nuke? Or Pakistan? And why should our position vis-a-vis a nuclear Iran be any different?

*I don’t really expect your response to be “But Kim Jong-Il isn’t like the mullahs…he’s rational, we can deal with him!” But it wouldn’t totally shock me; the debate over “the Iranain threat” can only grow more surreal and otherworldly between now and the commencement of hostilities.

A wingnut claiming that Kruschev was talking about economics when he said, “We will bury you.”

AHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!

Just to think, a mere twenty years ago and any liberal/leftist who claimed that would have been shouted down by a wingnut chorus of “Your insane! Of course he meant militarily!”

“Perhaps I’ve forgotten it, but which post is addressed to you?”
Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian, it’s call ‘scrolling’.
Post #42. And, not trying to be mean here, but when you can’t keep track of things like this, it’s probably time for supper.

While disagreeing with anything Sebastian or jet said which suggests that the use of military force against Iran in response to their desire (and initial steps) to become a nuclear power would be acceptable a) I don’t know why anyone thinks it’s ok to use chickenhawk agruments against someone unless they falsely identify themselves with the U.S. military in their argument (which a very uncharitable reading of Sebastian’s use of “relied on” in 19 might find) and b) jet is right about what Khruschev said, he was suggesting that the USSR (and communism generally) would outlast the United States, and therefore see us in our grave, not that he would cause us to be in our grave.

All right! A Thucydides reference. I have been reading bits and chunks of a History of the Peloponnesian war lately. This is perfect. A chance to show off useless knowledge and appear intellectual.

It is amazing, he has it almost completely backwards.

If I remember right year 16 Melos gets sacked.

In year 17 Sicily is invaded by the suddenly soft Athenians. :). Like ice cream the Anthenians went soft fast.

Year 19 the Athenian army is destroyed. Why didn’t Nicias retreat earlier?

Well at least in part because –

‘Those who would vote upon their conduct, instead of judging the facts as eye-witnesses like
themselves and not from what they might hear from hostile critics, would simply be guided by the calumnies of the first clever speaker;
while many, indeed most, of the soldiers on the spot, who now so loudly proclaimed the danger of their position, when they reached Athens would proclaim just as loudly the opposite, and would say that their generals had been bribed to betray them and return. For himself, therefore, who knew the Athenian temper, sooner than perish under a dishonourable charge and by an unjust sentence at the hands of the Athenians, he would rather take his chance and die, if die he must, a soldier’s death at the hand of the enemy.’

In other words he is afraid that the mob will punish him for retreating from a failing, unwise, granidose, and unjust venture.

Dan seems to Thucydides lesson is never back down from a risky enterprise.

Dan, Thucydides was a real conservative (he really, really was),

‘The same winter the Athenians resolved to sail again to Sicily, with a greater armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and, if
possible, to conquer the island; most of them being ignorant of its size and of the number of its inhabitants, Hellenic and barbarian, and
of the fact that they were undertaking a war not much inferior to that against the Peloponnesians.’

Substitute Iran for Sicily and Iraq for the Peloponnesians. It is kinda comical. Contrast and compare Thucydides praise of the genuis of Brasidas’s leinency with Dan’s calls for greater brutality.

To sum it up – Dan sounds like Cleon. Pretty funny from someone citing Thucydides.

In his defense, I guess the history is good enough you can take almost any lesson you want from it. But he the lesson he takes from Thucydides history is almost the opposite of what Thucydides intended.

‘Brenden, if you think Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, why is the only reactor they are building an experimental one? You’re so far out there I won’t bother going into more detail. But suffice it to say, only you, India-media, and the Scientologists believe Iran’s program is peaceful. Everyone else knows what experimental reactors (especially coupled with lots of “let’s nuke’m” rhetoric) are for.’

Oh I just love that phrase ‘Everyone’ as used by peoples of…shall we say…a certain political persuasion. ‘Everyone’ seems to run the whole gamut of public opinion, from A to B, as the joke has it. Or seems to be short for ‘Everyone in the Bush administration’ or ‘everyone at Fox news’.

Since we are on the subject of Iran’s rhetoric, here’s some quotes that might not have found their way onto Instapundit.

‘Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on 01 July 1968 and ratified the treaty on 02 February 1970. [3] On 18 December 2003 Iran signed an additional protocol which allows IAEA inspectors access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military owned workshops and research and development locations.[4] The country’s political leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , has publicly stated Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. On August 9, 2005 Iran’s religious leader and Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_weapons

‘After three years of continued controversy, international pressure, and a great deal of attention from the Western media, as of March 2006 , the IAEA has not found any evidence to support the charges that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and neither the US nor any other country has provided conclusive evidence to support such claims.’

This page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran's_nuclear_program) is also worth looking at for a long time.

The fact is (and this is in the dictionary definition of the word ‘fact’ as opposed to the rather specialised use of that word generally used by Vodkapundit or Instapundit meaning ‘something I just thought up’)Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Iran is many years (some say five, some say longer) from developing such weapons. There is no guarantee that, even if Iran wished to procure or develop such weapons that it would be able to. And (and this is the killer, pardon the pun) there is no particular reason to think Iran does, in fact, wish to develop such weapons.

Sebastian, I merely asked you to clean up your rhetorical questions, and stop with the whackjob alternatives. Nothing serious. To be honest and rigorous with you, I should ask you to clean up your last war before arguing for the next one. Obviously your parents didn’t teach you to clean up your messes.

Oh, and as far as fatwas against the use of nuclear weapons are concerned we should always remember that Islam is not a monolithic religion with one leader or even comes close to something like having large segments of itself with a central authority like the Catholic Church has the Pope. Conflicting fatwas are common. Follow this link.

beany with propellor,
What’s hilarious is back when Krushchev said “We will bury you”, it was the liberals saying he didn’t mean he would kill us, only outlast us. But now that it is convienient, it is the liberals saying he meant it to kill us (because Ahmadinejad has to have a historical parrallel).

Unfortunately, you’re an idiot.

Compounding Simmons misreading of Thucydides, the Melian incident was not meant to highlight how ‘successful’ Athenian ruthlessness was; it was a foreshadowing of how their arrogance and brutality would multiply their enemies lead them to ruin.

Melians: ” … Is it not certain that you will make enemies of all states who are at present neutral when they see what is happening here and naturally conclude that in course of time you will attack them too? Does not this mean that you are strengthening the enemies you have already and are forcing others to become your enemies even against their intentions and inclinations?”

I recently attended a lecture at Berkeley given by VDH. He made two claims regarding Athens defeat at Syracuse which I found strange. First, he repeated his claim that the fact Syracuse was a democracy was the pivitol factor in their succesful defense, but failed to elaborate as to how that might have worked. Second, he later claimed that the Sicilian calvalry was the deciding factor, seemingly forgetting for an instant his previous claim.

I’m no expert here, but neither of these explanations seemed to jive with what I’ve read.

Next, VDH went into his schpeel about how the West can be more barbaric than the East, and if they strike again, we might retaliate in a brutal and devestating manner. When he said this, most of the young ROTC in the room became viscerally engaged (many had been dozing/spacing out through the previous sub-Sparkpark notes level rehash of the Peloponnesian war.) VDH also perked up for a moment (usually he’s boring and demure when speaking), his eyes seemed to gleam with pleasure.

VDH likes to say that he’s a Democrat but that “his party really died with Truman,” but to me nothing became more clear that night than the thought, singularly clear in my head, that VDH would not have supported Truman if he had been around for his term of office. No, VDH would have been an escalation-agitator, a red-baiter, one of the many leg-humping degenerates that hounded good men like Dean Acheson out of public life.

If we are ever attacked again, on a scale similiar to 9.11, it will be the moral imperative of the responsible citizens of this country to make sure we don’t do something stupid and murderous. We’re going to have to take down people like this Hack of Fresno to make sure that happens.

What exactly would a nuclear Iran deter Israel from doing?

is this asked seriously?

perhaps an example may help: would a nuclear iran have deterred israel from invading lebanon in 1982? maybe, maybe not, but it’s pretty obvious that if iran possesses nuclear weapons, the unthinkable becomes a matter for israel to consider in deciding, e.g., to invade a neighbour [a decision which, when made previously, has not been particularly difficult for israel, given its massive military superiority*].

*which is of course the other point of rafsanjani’s comments: that a nuclear iran would slightly tilt the mid-east balance of power by eliminating a pretty major israeli advantage, being the possession of nuclear weapons.**

**for that matter, surely a bigger mystery is what a nuclear israel is supposed to be deterring iran from doing. deterring iran is frequently cited [although not officially] as the rationale for israel’s nuclear capabilities, and israel has even gone so far as to deploy some of its nuclear arsenal in submarines, in order to better target iran. but if israel’s nukes are supposed to deter iran from supporting terrorism, they’ve plainly failed, and if they’re supposed to deter iran from pursuing its own nuclear ambitions, well, it’s hard to think of a policy tending more towards its own defeat.

‘Remember that in their belief system to die in the name of Islam is not a bad thing and in fact is truly glorious and earns you a place in Paradise.’

Last time I checked, this was also in ‘the belief system’ of Christianity. Or has everyone forgotten the martyrs?

Actually Jet, I’m probably more akin to a fool…

FOOL, n.
A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war — founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting — such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man’s evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.

But I am really a cynic at heart

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.

While you… are definitely an idiot

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

But not just any idiot, a useful idiot

In political jargon, the term “useful idiot” was used during the Cold War by certain anti-communists to describe communists and apparent communist sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States). The implication of the insult was that the person in question was naïve, foolish, or in willful denial, and that he or she was being cynically used by the Soviet Union or another Communist state, thus unwittingly being a traitor to his or her home country. The term is purported to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin to describe those western reporters and travellers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West. However, no reference to a communist sympathizer or political leftist as a “useful idiot” was made in the United States until 1948, and not until decades later would the attempts to attribute the phrase to Lenin be made (after 1948, when the phrase was used in a New York Times article in relation to Italian politics, it was not mentioned again in print until 1961 [1]). Lenin never wrote it in any published document, no one has claimed to have heard him say it first hand, and it contradicts the opinions expressed in Lenin’s published documents in reference to the Comintern.

Which is to say, an unwitting tool… or a patriot.

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

You’re a useful idiot

Well, I’m very late to this discussion, but to those who are sanguine about Iranian nukes, let me ask about the limits to this approach. Certainly there are other countries who might enjoy the power and prestige of being a member of the nuclear club–what happens when the next case arises and the one after that? Don’t worry and rely on MAD each time?

Libya made one decision regarding nukes, Iran is making a different one. Whether or not we prevent Iran from acquiring nukes, how do we make it clear that Libya’s decision was smart and Iran’s foolish? Or are events going to make Libya look weak and stupid for having capitulated?

Once Iran has both nukes and nuclear expertise, it will have a lot of valuable items that it might sell to other aspiring nuclear nations. How would we prevent this? Or wouldn’t we bother?

I think my post 12 was clearer than post 85. In an attempt to be clear, here’s my position–

1. Deterrence should be part of our Iran policy, but not the “nuke them till they glow” type.

2. Sanctions come in two varieties–smart ones aimed at the leaders (or specific weapons-related industries) and the wholesale murderous variety that we imposed on Iraq. In real life there might be a continuum. We should consider imposing the smart sort of sanctions (or something at that end of the spectrum)on any leader who seems to seriously contemplate launching an unprovoked nuclear attack, whether that leader is Iranian or American. The latter won’t happen, of course, but we should still consider doing it against the Iranians.

As for Bush and other crazed American leaders past and future, I’m open to suggestions on what policy should be employed, taking into account that what would be fair will never happen.

Actually, wouldn’t an Iranian ability to demolish Israel put them in the same position as North Korea?

So far, the Bush administration’s treatment of Iraq and North Korea (two of the three members of the original “Axis of Evil”) should have made it very, very clear to Iran that their main hope of avoiding an eventual US invasion is having the ability to devastate a US ally. North Korea has that ability, Iraq did not. If I were Iran, I’d want to be North Korea too.

As for a policy, I’d say sanctions as well. They clearly worked well enough in Iraq to keep their weapons programs dead in the water. (To forestall a tedious and pointless exchange: Liberals aren’t all on the same page. That’s nearly our defining trait. I was for sanctions in Iraq, despite the human costs inflicted by Hussein’s response. I’m aware that there were liberals that were not. That’s evidence of liberal disorganization, not hypocrisy.)

I’ve never memorized Bible verses, but I know where to find them on the web before I quote them. (Try here.) The fact that you can’t be bothered to get the citation right makes me wonder whether you are right in alleging that fundamentalists believe that Israel was in some sense founded in 1967, and that it’s forty years are almost up. A link would be nice.

Even if you can show that, is there any evidence whatsoever that Bush believes it? Last I heard he was a Methodist, like Hillary Clinton. Perhaps you don’t know the difference between born-again, evangelical, and fundamentalist? I’m not all that clear on the differences myself, but I do at least know that they’re different. You have no right to attribute specific “fundamentalist doctrines” to Bush just because he’s a conservative and a Christian.

Of course, my main point remains unanswered: There is far more evidence that Ahmadinejad is a religious fanatic trying to bring about Armageddon (or some Muslim equivalent) than there is for Bush. Yet somehow most people on this thread seem to think that Bush may be crazy enough to try a nuclear first strike, but Ahmadinejad (or his clerical puppetmasters, if you like) couldn’t possibly be. Looks like displacement to me.

“I stated that very clearly and it makes me wonder (for about the ten millionth time) why anyone should ever bother to state a position clearly, since it is going to be distorted anyway.”

Welcome to Obsidian Wings.

I understand that Ahmadinejad consistently denies that he wants any nuclear weapons, let alone wiping out another country with nuclear weapons.

‘By the way, why is it all Iran and no North Korea? You know, the Axis partner that actually has the Bomb.’

Christ! It just goes to show how brainwashed I am that I didn’t actually realise that North Korea had the bomb. I thought that was a joke till i checked it up.