Apropos the post below about the (in)ability of debate to do anything to alter our nation’s course towards or away from war with Iran, I’m still going to post about it. If you want some good background, listen to this bit from Sy Hersh on Fresh Air. Chock full of facts.

Out here on the internets, some think it’s hip to compare the president of Iran to Hitler. The impetus is that a few neo-nazis in Germany are rallying in support of Iran, but really I think it is about ginning up support for a war. I think that’s stupid.

Granted, it’s not quite as moronic as comparing Howard Dean to Der Feurer, which happened last December after he put forward the view (now conventional wisdom) that we can no longer “win” in Iraq. No, it’s smarter than that. Unfortunately, it is also more dangerous.

Let’s nip this shit in the bud. Let’s keep it real. What real fucking significance is there to a few asshole skinheads in Germany doing their usual crap? Zero. That doesn’t make invoking WWII and the Holocaust apt, it makes it crass.

Wot-wot? Goodmin’s Law, sucka. We gots to stop the hating.

Given the total worldwide costs and consequences of an aggressive attack on Iran — which would be massive, just think about it — the idea seems like a loosing proposition even through the most steely realpolitik, especially considering that there is not even any immediacy to the threat.

There are plenty of players who have skin in the game. Perhaps when we have a head of state capable of, you know, conducting diplomacy, progress might be made. There’s still plenty of time.

Do people really think that Iran would give up it’s existence in order to nuke Israel? Ahmadinejad may be many things, but he’s not crazy. He’s not even Kim-Jong-cooky. He’s a populist head of state who’s well connected and has no desire to kill himself or cause his nation and people to be annihilated.

But suppose diplomacy really is useless. If nothing changes, in 5 to 10 years, Iran may have a nuclear weapon, which they’d be pretty unlikely to use offensively. The far more likely logic for acquiring nuclear arms for these smaller nations is deterrence against conventional attack from a superior external force.

Let’s not feed that paranoia any more, eh?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 9:51 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.