Mossad terrorists keep killing civilians.

[Elok]

There are only so many Iranian nuclear physicists; as an increasing number go blooey, people like DaShi feel compelled to accelerate their rate of scientist-murder, leading to a vicious positive-feedback loop culminating in the inevitable extinction of the noble Iranian Atom-Poker. I suggest we establish some sort of endangered scientist sanctuary.

[Al B. Sure!]

I bet it was actually Dale, not China.

[C0ckney]

Some might suggest you man up and take ownership of your own opinions.

i've expressed those opinions plenty of times on here. the point i'm making is that many people don't agree with your premises. i certainly don't.

Your case here sucks. Observably "Iran" (ignoring, for the moment, the distinction between the people and the political establishment) gets upset at things not involving them at all - Israeli behavior in Palestine and Lebanon most prominently. Observably they respond to this by supplying money and arms to anti-Israeli terrorists. In addition, they supplied money and arms to anti-American Iraqi insurgents. The world would be a better place if it stopped doing any of those things. Simply leaving Iran alone clearly won't do that.

no it's your perspective that's the problem. you are making an argument about iran getting involved in things not involving them while saying preventing them doing things to israel as a 'good' thing which will make the world the a better place. what does israel have to do with america? what does iraq have to do with america?

from another perspective (say an iranian one), israel not oppressing the palestinians or bombing lebanon, and america not occuping iraq would make the world a better place. so their actions are justified, from their perspective.

Yes, which is why we should aim for the next-best option, where we minimize the number of nuclear weapons and the number of states that have them!

And it would be super awesome if we could change either of those things, but we can't, so we should settle for what we can do - prevent Iran from getting them.

Yes, but since we can't stop Pakistan from having nukes we might as well settle for stopping Iran.

And it's worth a modest price to reduce an already-small chance of a horrifying outcome.

this is another problem with your premise. why do you think that iran wants nuclear weapons? it might have something to do with the fact that america has invaded two neighbouring countries in the last decade and american politicians have for years been making threatening noises towards iran.

now consider this:

number of people killed as a result of nuclear weapons since 1945: zero

number of people killed as a result of american military adventures since 1945: it must be in the millions, let's say a couple of million for the sake of argument.

the benefit from preventing iran obtaining nuclear weapons is clearly considerably less than the benefit to preventing another american military adventure.

The best way to deal with a problem is usually to delay it as long as we can and enjoy our brief moments of peace and prosperity before everything we know and love disappears and we die friendless and alone.

[molly bloom]

First of all, holy crap. I can't believe you brought the "omg only USA has nuked people" horse out of the stable.

What, because only rigidly moralistic and scrupulous states like the U.S. can be trusted to use nuclear weapons wisely ? I see. Also, you might like to investigate the meaning and uses of irony and sarcasm.

Right, while Iran operates terrorist puppet states in Gaza and southern Lebanon, funds people who send their kids into Israel to blow themselves up, stones women to death for the crime of having been raped, marched children across Iraqi minefields...

Ah. The United States would never condone funding or subsidizing terrorists or dictatorships, would it ? It would never of course seek to subvert democratically elected governments in the interests of U.S. based corporations, for instance.

really I could do this forever.

I've no doubt. But so what ?

This is the standard-fair leftist "we are the bad guys" schtick that everyone makes fun of.

Uh huh. What date would you set for the United States having adopted a clean hands, morally scrupulous foreign policy then ?

In the Eisenhower era ? Kennedy ? Nixon ? Carter ? Reagan ?

I hope it's a troll, I really do.

Part troll, part serious...

[molly bloom]

I suppose it's easier to understand why Europeans would have this "blame the good guys first" thing when they have such a rotten history of genocide and enslavement of other cultures. We stopped that nonsense by the 1870s.

That's so inadvertently funny.

Only someone entirely ignorant of American conduct in the Philippines after their supposed liberation from the Spanish could come out with rubbish like that.

[molly bloom]

Not entirely serious. I do contend that the Europeans have done far worse stuff, though.

It was a European, Sir Roger Casement, who exposed the horrors of the Congo under Leopold's regime.

The United States may have killed fewer Native Americans than Europeans killed Africans or Asians, but thanks to introduced diseases, there were rather fewer Native Americans to kill after a few centuries of colonization. Africa and Asia proved harder to colonize thanks to yellow fever, malaria, bilharzia, dysentery, cholera, smallpox and large native populations.

It's quite interesting to read accounts of conflicts with Native Americans in American history- in Maya Jasanoff's 'Liberty's Exiles' there's a mention of the slaughter of Moravian pacifist Native Americans by the home side. Later accounts reveal a disturbingly high number of unarmed women and children killed by U.S. forces- almost as if they were employing a deliberate policy of genocide....

Perhaps you might profit from reading this:

Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America by Peter Silver.

[molly bloom]

My point is that Europe has a larger history of really horrible atrocities.

As does Asia. Oddly enough, the recorded history of Asian states and European states seems to go further back than that of states in North America.

Can't think why....


By the way, if you want atrocities, look up Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk.

A pyramid of skulls ?

The river flowing by Baghdad choked with corpseflesh and coagulated blood ?

Asians, tcha, who'd trust 'em.

[molly bloom]

If you weren't one of those daft Belgians I would explain to you the history of the American Civil War and antebellum period.

If you were able to. I trust your knowledge of American history as much as I trust Bush Jr.s' knowledge of quantum mechanics or the poetry of Anna Akhmatova.

[molly bloom]

...but we can thank the virtual elimination of the native Americans to our wonderful friends the British.

As you say:

Incorrect.

See my earlier comment on your trustworthiness with regards American history.

[Lorizael]

Do you have any sense of proportion at all, Lori? Even if a bad thing is inevitable we get plenty of value from putting it off. Say Iranian nukes were only delayed by one month because of this attack. That would imply Israel is getting a bargain deal of an entire year for only 12 people.

You aren't going to come up with plausible estimates of the delay that justify your case; especially since it seems you consider full-scale invasion a valid option.

(Sorry for responding to this late. Yesterday kind of got out of hand for me.)

I, uh, have a lot of problems with what you're suggesting here. But to begin, given that there is an organ shortage in the United States, is it acceptable for young people who would die without organ transplants to murder old people and take their organs?

I say this because it seems you are valuing the extra month of life the Israeli population would get over the few decades of life the Iranian scientist would get if allowed to live. I suppose the math works out. This scientist only had another ~36 years left to live, whereas Israel is losing ~652,000 years of life if it's nuked one month earlier.

But this is, really, an abominable calculation to make. And I think the reason it repulses people so much is because it ignores the idea that there may be other solutions. Relations with Iran don't exist on a scale between nuked now and nuked later (or never). There are other axes. But because we're so mired in the **** of past decisions when it comes to foreign policy, it seems very hard to see another way to operate. We look at awful situations around the world, realize we only have so many resources and so much time, and do what little we can to mitigate the negative effects of one situation or another.

And sometimes this works. And sometimes it doesn't. Often it doesn't work because if you're attempting to act precisely in a complex situation, hidden variables are going to **** you over. It's why we're very bad at predicting weather precisely more than a week or two out, or why there's been almost no effort made to control weather.

Yet climate science exists, and we know (with some confidence) that global warming is happening. The reason for this is that, despite the complexity of weather, it's relatively easily to see and predict broad patterns and changes. And it's also relatively easy to make big, loosely defined things happen. We can't control the weather precisely, but all we have to do to raise temperatures worldwide is pump green house gases into the atmosphere.

This is a hell of a tangent, but there's a point. The point is that it may well be impossible to know what value we get out of killing one Iranian scientist, because the variables are so many and so hard to disentangle that we might actually hasten the effect we're attempting to delay. (We kill Iranian scientists; Iran decides to buy or steal nukes instead and doesn't wait to complete their nuke projects before giving a bomb to a terrorist.)

Yet it could very well be possible for us to make big, broad decisions that make everything more or less better. A full scale invasion of Iran is one such solution, but I don't personally support that because I'm pretty much universally opposed to war. But a solution such as completely reworking our foreign policy so that we no longer give other countries reasons to be pissed at us might be possible, too. We might suffer casualties along the way, but that might be worth it if in the end we can achieve some sort of lasting peace.

[BeBMan]

I'm not really scared about an Iranian nuke in the "OMG, OMG" way, but I regard it certainly as desirable that they don't get the bomb, and while it may not lead directly to WWIII I can see a number of consequences I'd rather want to avoid.

Some thoughts to this:

First, didn't they sign that whole NPT thing? Okay, intl. treatites may not mean much for some, however, if intl law, conventions, and whatnot is worth nothing at all I can see a number of bad consequnces as well. Yes, we could also talk about others here, but that doesn't make further violations any better. But that just as an aside.

Second, what I read about Ahmawhatever (return of the Mahdi etc) makes me rather think he is one of the more insane types. Of course it is difficult to say whether he believes this whole stuff at the core or uses such rhetorics to generate domestic support, or takes the best of both worlds. Yes, I do know that there are already rifts in the Iranian leadership so there may be parts who are more moderate. But still, my impression is that these days Iran is the state which uses the most aggressive rhetorics towards other countries in its region and beyond, maybe except North Korea. What if those guys are serious?

And even if they are not, the problem with the constant use of this kind of rhetorics is that friends and foes alike can't always be sure about the intentions behind it. It also may a generate certain domestic pressure at some point to act according to this type of rhetorics.

Third, do we really want to see a nuclear arms race in the ME, one of the most unstable regions on earth? Because that could easily be the consequence.

All that doesn't mean I'm suggesting to start an invasion tomorrow 0800, but I have no prob with putting pressure on Iran about this. As for killing scientists: *if* it's been done by Israel, I understand they're already in some kind of a proxy war with Iran via the Hezbollah. That makes it kind of hard for me to see Iran here purely as victim. The killing is another consequence of the hostile climate between the two countries, which is far from being comparable to "normal/peaceful relations". That's no excuse, but such situations are hardly black/white.

[Arrian]

Of course we should be outraged; violent Iranian retaliation would make the world unambiguously worse. And it seems unlikely that the cost of any Iranian retaliation would seriously affect the original equation.

See #133.

So we (or a client state of ours) can assassinate Iranians at will, but if they retaliate, that's bad. Bunk.

I have seen #133. I find it unconvincing.

-Arrian

p.s. Bebro's point about Hezbollah is more interesting. Has Hezbollah been active of late, firing rockets and whatnot? I admit I tired of the play-by-play in the Israeli/Palestinian mess a while back and so I don't know. If they have, then this act, as a form of retaliation for the activities of Iran's proxies, makes some sense and, for me, has some validity.

I still don't think delaying Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is worth acts of war, though. Nukes would indeed make them less susceptible to Western pressure. That I buy. Sure. Ok, but that's not so bad as to warrant assassinations, bombing or invasion. There's a point at which the cure is worse than the disease.

[Wezil]

I get my kicks blowing up Iranian scientists. Actually, its the only way I can feel anything anymore. And with each Iranian scientist I blow up, the feeling of euphoria dims a little. Thus, each explosion is somberly colored with the knowledge that it is one more explosion to my last.

Just don't put any of these scientists on your Dead Pool list or you will really be in trouble.

[Al B. Sure!]

It was a European, Sir Roger Casement, who exposed the horrors of the Congo under Leopold's regime.

The United States may have killed fewer Native Americans than Europeans killed Africans or Asians, but thanks to introduced diseases, there were rather fewer Native Americans to kill after a few centuries of colonization. Africa and Asia proved harder to colonize thanks to yellow fever, malaria, bilharzia, dysentery, cholera, smallpox and large native populations.

Not just from diseases. The (non-Mesoamerican North) American Indians were less advanced, obviously, so couldn't sustain as large populations.

[Az]

I must say that this white guilt thing is boring and annoying as ****...

Maybe if the Europeans and Americans would stop crying about who of their granddaddys killed more darkies, and feeling bad about it, you guys would stop having your countries failing lately. Just saying. Who cares about the conquest of America and the other dead?