Quote:
Originally Posted by gunnut
Are you willing to wait 20 years to find out if they are a serious threat? Or would you like to "connect the dots" and stop them from becoming the threat? We don't buy oil from Iran. And we have dissuaded even some of our allies to give up the nuke ambition. Taiwan was pursuing nuclear weapons in the 80s. We stopped them despite them being our ally. And you're sure A-jad is not a madman? You're sure he wouldn't use it even if he had it? How about someone else? The next leader of Iran? The one after that? You want us to sell Iran weapons that they can use to bring down our planes flying in Iraq? Destroy our vehicles in Iraq? Kill our soldiers in Iraq? Are you willing to risk that all on a hunch? We have done all that you've said in the 70s. We sold the Shah our most sophisticated weapon systems in return for oil. Look what happend. And that was to a "friendly" government.
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Thank you for the response to my meanderings. In reply to gunnut, I'll say first that waiting for "the threat" to materialise suits me very well, considering that I believe there is no threat, militarilly speaking. As to the US(?) not buying oil from Iran, this isnt relevant to my point. What I was pointing out was that oil trades effected in any currency other than US dollars could pose a serious threat to American economic interests, and is/has been threatened by both Iran and Iraq (prior to our latest invasion). Here is a link to one journalistic story regarding this:
Project Censored Media Democracy in Action
(The website you may find in some question compared to, say, the NYT or something, but there are sources and further reading presented. I believe I first read of this a couple years ago, but it was another article.)
Is Ahm..... (cant rememver the spelling offhand) a madman or will the next leader be? Well, who can say. Is Kim Il Jong a madman? Or Vladimir Putin. Or the next popular leader of Pakistan? Or the leader of Israel? I am not a fortune-teller. All we know is that no one has used these weapons except America, when they were initially developed. Does that make Truman a madman?
Or does the fact that Truman did use them on the Japanese mean that they were justified in making the pre-emptive strike against Pearl Harbor? This seems to be the usual justification for invading Iran that people make... At any rate, I feel assured in saying that causing terrible destruction now in order to guard against the mere chance of terrible destruction in future is basically irrational.
Finally, you say that we sold our tech to Iran in the seventies and "look what happened". Well, what happened, please? Seems to me they got in a big fight with our big enemy, Iraq. I do see your point here, but it seems a poor example. I would rather use our support of Iraq and Afghanistan for this, but then we sell weaponry to so many countries.
I do not mean to advocate the selling of technologies to Iran (or anyone else for that matter). It was only a wayward and radical thought. I do not think it possible to stop them from eventually obtaining these things in question, without basically destroying their country, which action I do not now support.