Giving Up: Let’s Just Bomb Things Cause We Ain’t So Good At Stopping Violence
David Wood over at Politics Daily presents an argument today for why allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon would be bad idea. Like many of the arguments that I hear, it comes couched in misleading information intent on creating a scary environment. In his piece he compares the feud between Israel and Iran to the actual wars that Pakistan and India have had.
This analogy makes little sense. Israel and Iran have never actually gone to war with each other. Iran has had ample opportunity, with the recent incursion between Lebanon and Israel in 2006 providing the last chance. While it’s true that both sides have engaged in a low scale style of warfare with the years using quasi-terrorist third parties to disrupt the other, neither has out-and-out declared war on the other. Even before Israel had nuclear weapons Iran resisted the urge to go to war. This has shown a level of constraint that India and Pakistan have failed to demonstrate, and if anything, goes to prove just how devastating both nations leaders believe a full on war would be.
By far though, the best part of the argument is that we should use preemptive violence because our ability to accomplish our objectives through non-violent means just aren’t as good as they used to be. To wit:
…the trick with nuclear-armed opponents, as former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger pointed out last year, is to stop a potential aggressor before the trouble starts, not to retaliate afterward. That requires a constant and patient engagement with allies and foes, not just making sporadic threats. Unfortunately, Schlesinger said last year, that skill has eroded badly.
What this basically boils down to is that we’ve slacked off on our ability to create meaningful negotiations has been downplayed, so rather then trying to beef that skill back up we should just go out and start kicking ass!
Forget the fact this would create far more problems then it would solve, forget the fact that massive force projection would almost certainly create retaliatory attacks on our own forces, the simple fact is that we just don’t have the power use military force in such a way. With two wars already going on in the region, and with troop deployments in over eighty different other nations, the U.S. simply does not have the capacity to enter into any sort of meaningful military engagement with Iran. This would require more then just a simple air strike. If we attack Iran, then it would be guaranteed that they would try to strike back, not through some sort of terrorist or quasi-terrorist group like Hamas, but through their State. And with our troops in Iraq exposed, they could certainly cause some damage as well as destroy what little sort of progress we’ve made in Iraq. It would make it essentially impossible to stabilize the region on any sort of meaningful timeframe.
I think that it’s a bad idea for nuclear weapons to be put into new nation’s hands. But I also think that sometimes you have to understand the limit of what you can conceivably accomplish. If the United States wants to try to enter into talks with Iran and convince them that having a nuclear weapon is a bad idea, I say go for it. But giving up while there’s still time to negotiate and entering into another needless war is senseless and foolish. Let’s at least wait until Iran is set to complete the bomb before we cut off our options.
-Phillip
