Mary Hess in her blog Tensegrities (http://www.religious…) points to a piece by George Lakoff entitled “The Words None Dare Say” at Common Dreams (http://www.commondre…), where Lakoff argues that the US is actively contemplating a pre-emptive nuclear first strike again Iran.
Keeping “all options on the table” are of course Bush and co, but also Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive insanity, even a nuclear one, has crossed the aisle to the “liberals?”
I usually hold that a state political party shouldn’t dabble itself too much in international politics, and BMG perhaps shouldn’t be an international political forum for many of the same reasons. However, a nuclear first strike is beyond the pale and to have Democrats running for President ,not ruling it out (first strike or otherwise) and not calling the Bush administration deficient in the reason department for doing so is disturbing.
St. K
I can imagine circumstances where it might be justified, can’t you?
The reports of Sy Hersh and the White House’s own documents are not talking about retaliation for detonating a nuclear bomb in Poughkeepsie. They specifically discuss a “preventive” strike on Iran–an unprovoked nuclear attack.
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No, I cannot imagine any circumstance where this might be justified. Nor will the war crimes tribunals. Nor our allies, or our Chinese bankers.
We’re trying to have a discussion here, not a game of talking Potato Heads my friend. My point was that ultra-extremist rule-it-out arguments like this aren’t going to convince anyone. They’ll just dismiss them because most people can imagine some scenarios under which use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be justified. As I said, we have the weapons because we might want to use them. KBusch below, however, is exactly right: the point is not that we should “rule out” nuclear weapons, the point is that the Bush administration has demonstrated that it is not to be trusted, and that a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran under present circumstances is a very bad idea.
You scoff at me when I say “liberals this”, “conservatives that”, but you are telling us that ruling out a pre-emptive nuclear strike is “ultra-extremist”?
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Steverino’s argument, viz., that it is illegal under international law, is as solid as a potato. It is illegal under international law for good reasons.
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— KBusch, Proud Ultra-Extremist
I can imagine such circumstances, too, but Bush is unlikely to discover them.
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The trouble is that the Bush Administration has shown callous incompetence so very often that it really should not be trusted on this at all and not a little. Further, if Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, that’s not going to happen within a six hour time frame requiring us to rush in.
I had a prof from the Naval War College last year who drove up from Newport once a week to teach a class called The Future of War. He was right of center, but the class was excellent. I do think a non-nuclear preemptive strike may, under the right conditions, be justified, but a preventative strike never could be.
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The prof distinguished the two thus: Say you are sitting at the bar and the big guy next to you is getting angrier as he gets drunker. You are worried that with a couple more tequilas he is going to slug you, so you slug him first as a preventative measure. Knock him out cold and then he won’t be able to hurt you.
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If, after a couple more shots he cocks his arm back and he is clearly going to punch you, but you get in there quicker and are able to punch him first then that is a preemptive attack. Theres no sense in waiting till you are missing a tooth before you punch back.
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If Iran was to train a nuke on the east coast, or on our troops in Iraq, and were clearly preparing to launch it, then that would be an acceptable time for a preemptive strike. However, as the Iranian’s technology is years away from getting to that point any attack on Iran under this administration would almost surely by preventative, and thus unjustified.
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Of course, if we walk into the bar with a chip on our shoulder, thats a whole other story.
As a person who has taught ethics, I find moral dilemmas inadequate teaching tools. The dilemmas hardly ever surface in actual lived experience and the parameters set by the dilemma set false boundaries for decision making.
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For example, you say it yourself, what about not being the type of person who not only doesn’t walk into bars with a chip on one’s should, but what about not being the type of person who frequents bars, period?
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What about moving your seat before the person gets unruly drunk?
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What about running away after you get hit the first time?
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What about not hitting back? This may sound strange, but look where the hitting back in Iraq has taken us.
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The scenario also points out the childishness of nations whose best answer to solving their problems is killing each other and the limited thinking of those who refuse to acknowledge that if we don’t learn how to develop and maintain positive peace (presence of goodwill and understanding), the uneasy truce of negative peace (absence of violence and killing) will always collapse back into war.
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St. K
but they go beyond the scope of my original comment. We are already in the bar. To completely stay out of all bars (including, say, the one in Darfur) would be to adopt a completely isolationist stance.
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My comment was in response to Bob’s who asked if there were any conditions under which an attack would be justified. Obviously preventing the guy from getting too drunk, or trying to resolve whatever problem he was drinking away, is a much better solution. However, if, despite our best efforts, the guy still cocks back his arm, I’d want to hit first.
I read the original post as trying to define the difference between “pre-emptive” and “preventative”. The bar story was useful as far as it went.
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However, you are completely right about Moral Dilemnas. The worst offender is the “bomb about to go off that only your prisoner knows where it is” dilemna. Do we torture the guy or let the bomb go off?
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The problem with that one is that it hardly ever happens anywhere. In fact, it may have never happened. Nonetheless, it is used everywhere torture is sold. It is a moral dilemna with decidedly immoral consequences.
…Or at least it would be if we had a rational malAdministration in the US. The reason is pretty clear. A nuclear attack on Iran would spill fallout to the east (Afghanistan) and north (god-knows-what-the-name-of- the-stan-there-now-is) both of which are important for oil delivery.
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Remember Chernobyl, in 1986? That was not a nuclear blast, but, because of the direction of the prevailing winds, it spread contamination east and north of the plant there.
Remember, if you would, that the Bush Administration thought appeals to “freedom”, a term with a lot of resonance in our culture would have the same effect in Iraq — as if Iraq were a very eastern county of Georgia or Maryland.
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They just do not think as you or I might. We might have required post-invasion planning or hired competent folks for the reconstruction.
Raj, you are talking fallout patterns and assuming rationality. This is an administration that lied about the reasons for invading a country, lied again for the reasons for continuing a war when the first reasons were a proven fraud, etc.
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Also, and this shouldn’t be taken too lightly/too seriously (are they one and the same?), the commander in chief is a born again Christian who believes Jesus will return again at the end of time following a final battle between good and evil that will start in the Middle East – even, I guess, if he has to start it himself? His vice president has said we don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it. Reason doesn’t play into this equation, fallout patterns or no. That’s what worries me. If other (cooler) heads were making decisions, then it may be another ballgame.
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Why do I feel less worried about Iran having nuclear weapons than about Bush having nuclear weapons?
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St. K
…I acknowledge your comments and really don’t disagree with them. I’ve said the same thing about the current occupants of the pResidency and vice pResidency myself.
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But I’ve been drawn to the conviction that neither are running the government–business interests are–and business interests are more interested in making money than otherwise. And it’s unlikely that nuking Iran would further their business interests, for the reasons I’ve stated.
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As far as I can tell, the Appocalyptic rhetoric of the Bush malAdmninistration is not really an expression of policy. It is merely a matter of mollifying their rabble.