Posted on 12/11/2005 7:26:53 AM PST by LSUfan
"You cannot use force to prevent a country from obtaining nuclear weapons. By bombing them half to death, you can only delay the plans," he was quoted as saying by the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten. "But they will come back, and they will demand revenge."
But I'd argue that your exception proves the point. Nuclear weapons ~were~ in development by both, but were denied to both by the use of force. When imperial Japan and nazi Germany were conquered they in large part ceased to exist and wholly new countries replaced them, and those new countries 'chose' not to pursue them.
ElBaradei argues that they would have done so later, and they didn't.
Is THIS what this rocket scientist plans to say to the Israelis when Tel Aviv goes up in a mushroom cloud???????
The galactic stupidity of this staement defies my ability to comprehend it.
This guy's on crack.
His statement is stupid and uninformed to the extent that he is making that case that a rogue nation such as Iran (and North Korea etc) should not have its nuclear ambitions thwarted by application of force because such measures will only delay those ambitions and make the rogue nation more vengeful.
Imagine if Giuliani had refused to prosecute the Mafia because "It will only serve to delay the Mafia's criminal activities and make its surviving members more angry with the police."
Under current leadership Iran and North Korea are criminal outlaw countries. Force is the only thing that will derail their nuclear ambitions.
It worked on Japan...
There is some truth to this. It is much better to use an explosive impulse than an archaic force. And since the impulse is so short-lived it can be said to have hardly occurred at all. That ought to make the Nobel award recipient happy.
Alfred Nobel - inventor of dynamite, founded the British Dynamite Company, christened The Alfred Nobel, first steamship for carrying dynamite around the world. Known in France as "Le marchand de la mort" ("The merchant of death.").
ElB is, I think correctly, pointing out that merely attacking the facilities needed to make bombs will not indefinitely prevent a country from acquiring them.
Conquering, occupying and remaking a country may precipitate changes that indeed eliminate a country's desire to get The Bomb. Or it may not, depending on the effectiveness of that remaking. The remaking of Germany and Japan worked primarily because the racist and militaristic ideologies of those regimes were so utterly discredited by their total defeat. Our modern "kinder, gentler" precision warfare is much less destructive to civilians and even to the enemy's military and political infrastructure, which in Iraq was largely broken up rather than destroyed.
This less-lethal approach to war may paradoxically prove in the long run to be less kind and gentle. Leaving people the illusion they can defeat those they can't defeat does them no favors. Hitler rose to power largely by claiming that Germany wasn't "really" defeated. Nobody could conceivably claim the same after WWII. And nobody has.
In the wake of the Iraqi mess, it seems unlikely that American will, at least in the foreseeable future, attempt a conquest of another close-to-nuclear power, such as Iran or perhaps North Korea.
We are thus faced with three highly unpalatable choices:
Attempt ongoing missile or bombing strikes on facilities to interrupt the program, assuming we can locate them, which the accuracy of our intel on Iraqi WMDs makes unlikely. This is the approach ElB says, I believe accurately, is not likely to be effective in the long run.
Allow Iran to acquire nukes, which we can reasonably expect willsoon be used against either the US, probably through terrorist surrogates, or Israel.
Nuke Iran and thus destroy it as a society without invading.
Agreed. How do you propose to apply that force effectively?
Invade, conquer and occupy?
Destroy facilities that we may not even be able to locate?
Blockades and sanctions?
It's all fine and dandy to strut around with your invincible military, but a large American force in Iraq does not by itself seem to be deterring the mullahs. Specifically how would you recommend applying the military option?
Stop or we will taunt you again.
Nah, force won't do it.
We'll just have to use a love potion.
Best response, bar none.
The Iranians want revenge for the last nuke bombed by Israel. so why not hit them again? They continue to incite islamofacism and cowardly attacks on unsuspecting non muslims, and rattle the saber of war against their enemy.
Since we know they have proclaimed America and Israel their enemy, shouldn't we just go ahead and hit them before they develop the nuclear means to blackmail the world and add to the arsenal of terrorism?
They are already initiating and inciting attacks on us. So if we hit them nothing will change except we can delay their nukes for another 25 years.
ElAbardi is typical of UN policy. Give them what they want and they will not harm us.......yeah right.
The words coming from Iran are exactly the opposite. And like Saddam's threats......they are indeed credible and will come to pass if the strength of the world don't stop them now.
What y'all are forgetting is that war is politics using other means. Force is ineffective unless it is applied in such a way as to produce the desired result.
Hit them where?
Given the accuracy of our intel on Iraqi weapons programs, what makes you think we CAN take out the Iranian programs?
Half measures never work, but it's no surprise that is the way El Baradei thinks. How about bombing them ALL the way to death and not just half the way?
And we are supposed to respect the machinations of this turdbrain--sheesh.
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