astralis

parihaka,

i didn't author the article, fareed zakaria did. however, if you insist, find out who said this:

"We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past."

March 16, 2003.

but let us remember, both him, and myself, were and remain pro-intervention when it came to the iraq war. now we're talking about iran.

to begin with, to use another example, presently north korea is suspected to have nuclear weapons. right now we've been stuck in the six-party talks, and there seems to be no direction to it- certainly not the way iran seems to be headed.

but we use the much the same words against kim jong-il that we do against a-jad. in fact, a case can be made that kim jong-il's actions- while still by and large explainable via rational actor theory- have been more irrational than that of a-jad. (and even then, this is not a good comparison: in the end, the mullahs in iran are THE power in iran, and not a-jad; whereas kim jong-il is the big daddy over in korea.)

in kim's case, he has been talking about not just the destruction of an US ally (south korea, where re-unification is HIS first objective), not just vague "america is the great satan", but threatening war on the US.

and from another angle, as i've said before, what about domestic restrictions? if a-jad is so nutty crazy about religion, to the point where he will do a highly irrational act (aka give nuclear weapons away to terrorists to strike at the US), then why is he opposing the mullahs on something as non-extremist-islamic as actually allowing women to view soccer games?

the latter demonstrates that a-jad panders to the public. why pander to the public if you're the head honcho in a totalitarian system? kim does precious little of that, for example. and also, why pander if, being the religious nut that he is, he is merely trying to get weapons to somehow cleanse the world of the US and the jews? since when does popularity have anything to do with what is "right", as pres bush reminds us?

and a-jad before has given out the historical example of america using nuclear weapons on japan, i believe. in that case, he is also well aware that the japanese are still alive. he would then also know that it would take more than a few nuclear weapons to somehow obliterate either america or israel, yet he knows that america's capacity to inflict damage on iran, nuclear or otherwise, far exceeds what iran could do to the US (or why bother to negotiate via the EU, US, UN?).

in short, what iran has demonstrated thus far is:

- the people below are part of the iranian political calculus when the people below make political decisions;
- the iranian political leadership has shown a remarkable "flexibility" when it comes to religion and politics, with presumably "unislamic" political acts by the leadership being explained away;
- a-jad, as well as the mullahs, have not made any concrete moves in their stated foreign policy aim at obliterating israel, and in fact, the mullahs have forced a-jad to explain himself and pull back.

this, to me, does not seem to be the actions of someone who has been portrayed as a people-be-damned-apocalypse-now-in-the-name-of-allah guy. given his socialist domestic agenda and given his loudmouth foreign policy talking, huey long does seem to be a good fit.