President Obama made his first visit to Canada today, a one-day, hyper-security visit to Parliament. Needless to say, I'm mortified that Stephen Harper is the chief representative of Canada. If Obama had given a speech I might have slogged my way downtown, but I didn't have much interest in watching his bulletproof limo speed down the Airport Parkway, so I stayed home. All in all, he got a very warm welcome from Canadians.I'm pleased with many of Obama's policies, although it's far too early to judge their success. He seems to take climate change seriously. But his cabinet appointments and especially his foreign policy are very worrisome to me. First, Obama intends to expand the US military, a $700 billion/year Leviathan whose 800 bases outside US territory house 600 000 soldiers, spies, mercenaries, and miscellaneous contractors. Although he intends to reduce the troops in Iraq by about half by mid-2010, he will redirect those forces to expand the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, a politically unstable nuclear state. He unconditionally supports Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. Worst of all, he keeps repeating Bush's completely unfounded claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program which must be dismantled. (Israel, a nuclear state, has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran for its alleged nuclear ambitions.)
Before the election, you could say that he needed to look tough to attract Republican voters. But now he's the commander-in-chief, inheritor of all of Bush's extraordinary executive powers. Why is he taking steps towards even more war?
4 comments:
Iran has admitted to having a nuclear program. And their president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, has made open threats against the US. Do you really feel they should be allowed to continue nuclear research and work?
You seem to have an elastic definition of "nuclear program". Iran definitely has a program for nuclear power plants to replace their dwindling oil reserves, and in the long term they know that they need nuclear weapons to deter invasion. (As demonstrated by North Korea, the US will not invade you no matter how puny your army is once you have nuclear weapons.) However, the 16 American intelligence agencies unanimously stated in the 2007 NIE that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd suggest you give the CIA a call, but otherwise you're just being paranoid.
Yes, Ahmadinejad made threats against the US--it's good for his political career to appear strong. (Ahmadinejad's predecessor, Mohammed Khatami, offered a nuclear compromise to the US in 2003 and was publicly humiliated by the State Department. He lost the next election to Ahmadinejad.) Bush made open threats against Iran for the same reason. Iran would never invade the US because the US has 5x larger population, 100x larger military and thousands of nuclear weapons. The Iranian leadership is corrupt and undemocratic, but they aren't stupid.
Yes, I think they should be allowed to continue nuclear research. This whole game of a nuclear blockade is doomed to fail--as long as some states have nuclear stockpiles, every one will need one to protect their sovereignty. We can delay the development of new nuclear states by withholding assistance and imposing trade sanctions, but given that nuclear expertise is widely available, we can never stop them entirely. Slowly or quickly, nukes will keep proliferating until a technical glitch causes one of them to go off, likely leading to the destruction of human civilization. The only lasting solution is multilateral disarmament and transparency.
I see no reason why the US is "allowed" to stockpile thousands of nuclear weapons and invade other countries at will while others aren't. Unlike existing nuclear states like Israel, Pakistan, or the US, Iran hasn't invaded anyone for centuries. America is more democratic then Iran, but that's not much consolation to the millions killed by American bombs and bullets in the past few decades. We need real international law to rein in predatory states, no matter what their skin colour is.
I know nothing of the CIA reports or what the U.S. government is telling us. I do, however, know plenty about what Iran is telling it's people. The Iranian newspapers report that they are planning to create nuclear weapons, and that they are working on this already. The nuclear reports show that the nuclear materials that Iran is working with are weapons-grade. They also have lower grade materials, that could be genuinely used for energy purposes, but they do have weapons-grade uranium. Iran is quite content for now about boasting to their own people about their budding capabilities and their plans to destroy America and Israel. How long do you think they will wait before making good on these promises?
I already answered that question. Yes, they have the technical capability to build nuclear weapons, and it is in their interest to do so in order to deter invasion. However, it would be suicide for them to attack Israel or the US, both of which have much more conventional and nuclear forces than Iran.
Why are you so worried about Iran when Pakistan, India, China, the US, Israel, and North Korea already have nuclear weapons and have a history of invading their neighbours?
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