Tuesday, March 6, 2012

In Black and White

Trey Smith


This weekend President Obama made it crystal clear why Iran is in our crosshairs. As reported by the Associated Press, "President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States will not hesitate to attack Iran with military force to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon."

And why are we so against the notion of Iran acquiring as little as one nuclear missile or bomb? Because both the US and Israel have numerous nuclear warheads and we don't want Iran to get into the game. For all the talk of the efficacy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), we truly don't like that arrangement. We want to be in the position to dictate terms and allowing Iran to mitigate that, even to a miniscule degree, is unacceptable.

When it comes to the world of geopolitics, US leaders view themselves as gods. We alone get to set the rules and, if another nation chooses not to play by them, we have the divine right to wipe them off the map. In a nutshell, that's what Obama means.

As I've written before, I would like nothing better than to see all nations forsake nuclear weapons (as well as nuclear power). While nuclear energy can and has been utilized for beneficial purposes, the potential for cataclysmic events -- both unintentional and intentional -- is too great. The fallout and byproducts of nuclear energy pose a genuine threat to life as we know it.

But as long as some nations embrace this technology to their bosoms, what right do they have to tell other nations that they must eschew them? In the particular case of Iran, with both the US and Israel pointing nukes at them, it just makes sense that they would want to develop them solely as a DEFENSIVE measure.

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