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.

“The White Man’s Persian Burden
Hear the card-carrying imperialist who cheered on the jolly Philippine adventure long ago, the Janus-faced Rudyard Kipling:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire… ”

And so is Bush, if Hersh is right about what is on his mind. But Bush has the sort of low animal cunning that distinguishes Western leaders from the barbarians of the east—when he wants to kill people in large numbers he doesn’t brag about it too frankly.

Welcome to Obsidian Wings.

Doesn’t look like a religious fanatic or crazy fella at all. More like a populist and very smart guy. Smart enough to have a phd in civil engineering, getting elected a mayor of Tehran, editing a newspaper and being nominated for ‘World Mayor’ in 2005 – before becoming elected president of Iran last year.

Being elected is a sacred thing for you, guys, isn’t it? Or it depends?

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.

Actually, Dr Weevil (29), I merely said I wondered if it was the case (with clear hope that it wasn’t), since they do seem to parrot an awful lot of the fundamentalist rhetoric, and the bits about Israel and the Middle East are central to fundamentalist doctrines around Armageddon. And it very well could have been Luke 21:20 – like I said, all my books on the subject have been packed/sealed/sent away for my upcoming move, and I have no way of quickly accessing which passage refers to what. And I personally haven’t had Biblical verses memorized in 20 years, easily.

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.)

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.

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.

As for sanctions, you’re right—if we impose the kind of sanctions we imposed on Iraq then I for one will be protesting the killing of large numbers of Iranian children. But what I’ve seen under discussion are “smart sanctions”, which are the kind we didn’t impose on Iraq, but should have. The ones aimed specifically at the leadership class. There was a NYT article on this some weeks back and this point was stressed—the last thing we want is to alienate the supposedly pro-Western majority in Iran with sanctions that hurt everyone. I would be willing to support smart sanctions against leaders who talk casually about using nuclear weapons on Israel (assuming this has been reported accurately.)

For that matter, I’d be willing to support smart sanctions against leaders who toy with the idea of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against other countries, but we’d have to have proof before imposing them.

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?

1. Economic sanctions
2. Inspections (headed by a Scandinavian possibly named Blix)

Rinse and repeat. It worked the last time. Due to American overambition, we know that for a fact. By the way, why is it all Iran and no North Korea? You know, the Axis partner that actually has the Bomb.