Its a facinated essay in academic speculation. I hope the NeoCons don't take it and run with it as part of their typical scare tactics that they use to rouse support for their wacky ideas. The essay ignores several points, including that we are now working once again with our allies and through the United Nations instead of alone to deal with the Iranian crisis. It also assumes that both Israel and Iran are irrational and will just hurl nukes at eachother, ignoring the fact that with Israel's small size, to nuke almost anywhere would require a huge number of Muslim deaths as well. Scary and interesting speculation, but there are many problems in his little scenario, including China jumping in with Tehran and (presumably) countering the US, an important economic ally. Of course oil is a powerful motivator...
* I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
oWinston Churchill, Speech broadcast on (1 October 1939)
I think one could subsitute the Chinese of the 21st Century for the Russians of the 20th, and that quote would be highly accurate. However, that does not make it any easier to determine what Chinese national interest is.
Iran worries me. A lot. Iran and Chine are undoubtedly going to be the two big stories on the national scene in 2006, with Iraq continuing to be in the news. I think it would be a foolish move to assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs will act rationally, especially when dealing with Israel.
True enough - I would have thought otherwise until I read into some of his apocolyptic beliefs - scary stuff. I thought when we went into Iraq that we should have been focusing more on the other two. By taking care of the "easy" country first (a silly notion in retrospect) we've only complicated things for ourselves. I don't know the solution, but I applaud your efforts to at least try to get people talking about this. Scary stuff indeed.
I don't know what makes you think that working with the United Nations is going to be helpful. I pray you are right because the links between Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are indeed real and therefore cannot be (nor should be) thought of as "neocon scare tactics." That's just plain stupid and dangerous.
Muslims are totally fine with killing themselves in order to hurt us. Hello? Suicide bombers? Why would you think the death of "huge numbers" of muslims makes any kind of difference to them? Obviously they don't think like you and I so stop trying to use our way of thinking and logic to presume what they would do. It won't work.
To just lump all Muslims, even those hostile to the United States, together with those who attacked us on Sept. 11th and even those who kill their fellow Muslims in Iraq displays a certain ignorance towards the religion of Islam (of which I do not claim to be an expert either). Of course there are those who pervert it, but a vast majority recognize, at the very least, that killing fellow Muslims who are innocents is strictly forbidden.
Quite frankly, I don't need scare tactics to be scared of this situation - its dangerous and freightening. However, after all that happened with Iraq, Bush has serious credibility issues with both the American people, Congress, and the rest of the world. For us to be in the lead on this, he must overcome those problems.
This is an issue too big for us to tackle alone - what would you have us do? We can't fight a war with Iran right now, at least not on our own; besides the fact that they are stronger than Iraq was militarily and the country is much larger, we are otherwise occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as the Korean border). They also control a larger portion of the world's oil supply, which links them strongly to China, as Ryan stated. China wouldn't even have to be involved militarily - they could just stop investing in our economy and financing our debt and it would cause some serious problems.
The crux of my argument is that we need to have a serious debate about this, unlike the way we rushed into Iraq on Bush's whim.
Why is it that Democrats are always calling for 'serious debates' on the issues of the day? Sometimes, I really think public discourse seriously hinders policy decsisions. It is like that poster that hung one of my middle school or high school classroms:
"What's right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right."
Political applications of the word right aside, I feel that while generally the public at large has a sense of what is right for this country, sometimes policy is better served by going against the wishes of the people. (Note you all ye liberals, I am not 'justifying' Iraq with this, as popular support was with the President when we went in.)
Take for example, gas prices. Low gas prices sound great to any American with a car they need to drive or a home they need to heat. However, in the long run, higher gas prices will create a market for alternative energy, eventually (though we should speed the process alomg) reducing or elimintating our dependence on oil and other 'fossil' fuels.
I am also concerned as to how/where these 'serious debates' would be held. Is this blog (or any blog) not a public forum? Or is it just that those making the policy decisions are not the ones who read. I don't think most people in power are ready to listen to practical common sense solutions to the government's ills.
To my knowlege, Congress has not even seriously tackled the issue. As the ones elected to represent us most directly, they should be leading the public discussion. The Sunday talk shows haven't really focused on it all that much that I've seen, though it has received more attention now than in 2002 when it should have.
"Sometimes, I really think public discourse seriously hinders policy decsisions."
--I thought you were for small government...this esentially makes it all-powerful. At the very least, in our form of government, the people have a right to know what the government is doing to make us more secure against a nation that hates us and is seeking nuclear weapons.
I am for small government. You may not be entirely sure what that means, but I have never claimed to be a populist. I do believe that people have sovereignty over the government, and most of the time, such power will be used in a reactive, not proactive, fashion.
The people do have the right to know what the government is doing. I never said they didn't. However, I think we need to err on the side of republic. I don't think we need to start having national referrendums on every piece of legislation. We need to elect better representatives.
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