What Evidence, Mr. President? (updated)
Richard, over at American Leftist, highlighted an article (Thanks, Jack Crow) advertising Obama’s assertion that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons. Forgive me for being skeptical of a US president claiming evidence of WMD in a country in the Middle East, but the world has seen no such evidence and too many have died over similar assertions. Unless you have some ultra-secret new evidence – you’re lying to us. Every agency tasked with finding such evidence has been unable to do so.
President Obama goes on to say in the article, “all the evidence indicates” that Tehran is trying to get the “capacity to develop nuclear weapons.” Again, this begs the question posed in my title. We have seen no evidence and what you have is hearsay and conjecture. In fact, “all the evidence” has shown that they intend to do exactly what they have stated and use enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. As Richard so eloquently pointed out, Mr. Obama is increasingly sounding more and more like Mr. Bush. As a country that still is suffering the wound of our Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, how can we allow what is increasingly looking like a campaign to increase approval for expanding our anti-human war campaign into a new territory.
Now, let’s further undermine the President’s message here by assuming that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. It has been the US’ intention that, through the “War on Terror”, countries that support terrorism and produce WMD will be attacked and punished. However, this policy has been undermined by the way countries that actually pose a threat have been treated. Noam Chomsky, in his book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, writes:
As the year 2002 drew to a close, Washington was teaching an ugly lesson to the world: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat … We will enthusiastically march on to attack Iraq, because we know that it is devastated and defenseless; but North Korea, though and even worse tyranny and vastly more dangerous, is not an appropriate target as long as it can cause plenty of harm. The lesson could hardly be more vivid.
So what happens is that by empowering actual threats we encourage nuclear proliferation. Obviously no rational person wants to live in a world with nuclear weapons, but does Iran have any less of a right to them than any country that is currently “allowed” to stockpile them? The answer is plainly no. Another important question is, who is deciding which countries are allowed to have them? That is the United States, but as the only country that has proven insane enough to use them against people should it have any legitimate authority on this? Again, the answer is no. With regard to national sovereignty the policy should be binary. Either any country should be allowed to possess them or none should. But Obama defends the US’ strategy of “some can, some can’t” by saying that a nuclear Iran could “destabilize” life in the Middle East and cause an arms race in the region. But it’s obvious that by limiting nuclear weapons to a “some can, some can’t” solution you diminish a country’s sovereignty and therefore cause the very destabilization you are working against. Allowing Israel to possess nukes while it continuously invades and attacks its neighbors, but then to prohibit Iran – a country who hasn’t invaded anyone in modern history – from getting them, creating a “balance of power”, and a stabilization to occur, you have therefore encouraged arms races.
Mr. President, your statements are untrue, nonsensical, and counterintuitive.