I always appreciate discourse with you, because it is evident that there are things we disagree on, but...as your post illustrates, there are things that we do have in common, so I don’t have to resort to insults such as questioning your conservatism or principles.
We have disagreements.
I understand the points you make, but in my opinion, because we are dealing with nuclear weaponry I have to stick to my guns on this.
Sure, Iran has a lot of bark, more than it has bite right now, and I am not worried about Iran lobbing a nuclear tipped ballistic missile at us. But I am worried about them thinking they are clever enough to escape scrutiny if they use a proxy to deliver a nuclear weapon via a containership.
For me it boils down to this: Iran may indeed be all bark.
But it is like having a guy on your street who murdered a neighbor, but got off on a technicality. Before he murdered his neighbor, he would shout at the guy that he was dead meat, he was going to kill him, so on and so forth. And that went on for years until the police cars showed up in front of the guy’s house to arrest him after the discovery of the neighbor’s body in his house.
So, you watch all this going down, the guy threatening him, the neighbor ending up dead, and then the guy who murdered him ending up back living in his house due to some legal loophole.
And then the guy takes a dislike to you. He begins glaring at you as you drive by, thinking you are the one who ratted him out or something like that. Your dog ends up carved up in the woods near your house, and the guy makes comments to you indicating he took pleasure in hearing your dog had been butchered. And he yells up the street at you things like “You better watch your back or you’re going to end up like your filthy dog...”
I tend to take those kinds of people seriously the same way I take the Islamic Republic of Iran seriously.
So I understand you might not see it the same way I do. But I have learned that there are people in this world who make threats, and aren’t deterred by being caught and punished.
And I see Iran the same way.
Thank you for the reply, and the analogy. It’s very helpful.
And, again, I have zero love for Iran’s leaders. The good people of Iran, my heart goes out to them. I know a few who immigrated to America; good people, and no love lost for their former leaders.
I tend to be an absolutist in terms of “just war” and self-defense. Saint Thomas Aquinas laid it out very nicely. A big reason why I like Aquinas (aside from him being right….!….) is that it keeps me (or, if we followed him, the USA) from getting enmeshed in forever wars and foreign entanglements.
Following Aquinas, however, restricts my desire for vengeance. Do I want to annihilate Iran for 444 days and Beirut? Yup. But just as I don’t support reparations for the sins of yesteryear, I can’t turn around and say after 47 years let’s wipe out Iran finally.
I recognize fully that I’m usually in the minority, in part because My Tribe doesn’t really subscribe to Aquinas’ approach and views. And, again, that’s ok. We agree on 95% of everything else.
Using your analogy, I liken it to living in Pennsylvania and a cottage I owned in Mississippi getting taken over by a cult with some relatives in the cottage. After 444 days the relatives come back to PA. The cult take over the government of Mississippi. They then bombs a second home of mine in Illinois and kills hundreds of relatives. For whatever reason, I never retaliated. But as far as I’m concerned, the cult is a mortal enemy. They’re dead meat if they cross into PA.
Over the ensuing 45ish years, the cult running Mississippi has never come to PA and actually their ordnance they can’t even make it past Tennessee. The cult takes credit for sundry murders and deaths of Pennsylvanians over the years, outside of the borders of PA. They keep doing bad things in Tupelo and go on Shortwave radio threatening The Great Satan that is the Keystone State. For some reason, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama don’t do anything about the cult leaders in Mississippi, although Florida started launching tomahawks from the panhandle recently. That makes me smile.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania things are going well. We re-elected governor Tonald Drump, who was a governor before. We have stopped citizens of New Jersey from illegally entering PA. Prices have stabilized. Normalcy has returned. We may actually get some domestic policy changes that we’ve needed for decades, especially if we can hold the Republican majority in Harrisburg.
I heard Florida wants to bomb Mississippi but good. Go for it. But PA won’t send ordnance or men to Tupelo. And I’ll be peeved at Gov Drump if he risks losing all that we have to support Florida.
Again, I appreciate this discussion and remain open to dialogue, I get your points and will continue to ponder them. Thank you.