Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Axis of Evil, No. 2

I just finished reading a chilling Foreing Policy piece written by Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He writes convincingly that "senior officials" in Washington have already made up their minds to act militarily against Iran in the face of intransigent mullahs and impotent diplomacy.

Even though the planned military strike would likely only involve bombing nuclear facilities and not overthrowing the government a la Iraq, Cirincione says the results will be disastrous:
It would rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq. And it would accelerate, not delay, the Iranian nuclear program. Hard-liners in Tehran would be proven right in their claim that the only thing that can deter the United States is a nuclear bomb.
I think the Iraq invasion was a war of choice we could have done without, but that it did have important merits. A military strike on Iran now has very few merits compared to the described consequences.

Cirincione says defeating such scheming amongst "senior officials" *ahem* rumsfelcheney *ahem* would require sticking to current intelligence assessments that say Iran is a decade away from creating a nuclear weapon.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good grief. Leave it to the Bush administration to firmly and thoroughly cause enmity and hatred among the arab world.

Anonymous said...

...Hey! How come I'm under "Other" blogs, and not "Christian" ones? JK. I figure it's cuz I cover a wide variety of themes.

Tyson said...

you guessed it about your blog categorization, saur. if you read the other blogs in my christian blogroll, they're all pretty well consumed with ... well, christian stuff. bipen sen is also christian, but i also put him under "other" blogs because of the same reason. it's just so the categories have real meaning for people, otherwise, what good would the categories do?

i am still incredulous about the foreign policy article, but we've already eastablished that there are some dangerous, wingbat-crazy "senior officials" in the administration that seem to have an appetite for destruction. like i said, i supported the iraq invasion, but they should have known better about the immediate aftermath. i think rumsfeld should have been sacked long ago.

Anonymous said...

Ditto!!!