There are a whole lot of reasons to worry about nuclear proliferation. Nobody wants any more dangerous weapons around, particularly when a country is run by religious zealots. I was speaking about Iran, but any religious leaders who feel they have a higher calling make me nervous, and having President Bush in charge of our massive nuclear arsenal makes me way more nervous than those crazies in Iran. If you think about it, Iran hasn't threatened its neighbors since the 80's; the US on the other hand has had quite a few wars in the last few decades. And while the ayatollahs may be sponsoring some terrorist groups, think about the last couple of decades in US history and you can probably come up with a few organizations that we have backed financially who were questionable. Think death squads in El Salvador, Pinochet in Chile, that horrible guy in Indonesia (can't think of his name at the moment), Marcos in the Philipines, Saddam Hussein, and at one time Osama Bin Laden. Even today, we are sending terrorists into Iran to stir things up a bit.
So when you talk about state sponsored terrorism, I think we've got the game down pat, and the ayatollahs are small potatoes. (Don't tell them I said that, they'll probably put some kind of fatwa on my ass.)
So what about 9/11? Should we be worried that the mullahs are going to sneak some kind of crude nuclear device into the New York harbor? If we take that first pre-emptive punch, then I would say that we have every reason to worry. If we wait, and let the DOD actually concentrate on defense instead of aggravating the clusterfuck in the middle east, we might actually be safer. Iran has nothing to lose, they have been put on the Axis of Evil hit list, and they are following North Korea's lead, once you get a crazy guy to get up at the podium and brag about nukes and kick out those inspectors, then everyone else wonders if you've actually got that big missile in your pocket but they never know for sure. In North Korea, that guy was really f-ing crazy, so we went the diplomatic route.
See how that works?
In the hood, the guys with guns get to call the shots, while us law abiding citizens try to stay below the radar, but eventually the guys with guns find something that they want to steal from you, so in order to get them to leave you alone, you also have to get a gun. Once you have that piece in your pocket, they are a little more wary about trying to steal your car, but bullies are the same everywhere, they only leave you alone if you're crazy enough to use your weapon. The bullies in Washington want to steal oil, and as long as Iran has no gun, they'll do it.
The DOD is trying to sell another pack of lies to the American people, and I'm not buying because they've lied before about the very same thing. Our own intelligence estimates have Iran producing a nuke in ten years, and ten years is plenty of time for us to get the crazies out of Washington, and plenty of time to get back to the diplomacy that we used to have during the 90's. But before we get there, there will probably be some tragic event that will propel us into a crazy war that these incompetant folks in Washington will fuck up again.
Me, I'm not buying it. I've been there, and the war we were sold became a moral blemish on our nation, made America look like a bunch of idiots, and so will the next one. There is more reason to fear a new pre-emptive war, and less reason to fear a country that has not ever used weapons of mass destruction against another country.
Put you wallet back in your pocket, and don't let these guys sell you any more stupid wars that will kill more Americans and drag on until Lockheed-Martin depletes its inventory of stealth bombers.
