Nuclear Iran is now the world's #1 problem

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by tw

Meanwhile Iran is doing just that - building WMDs because George Jr all but said we will invade Iran. And yet George Jr calls the Iranian leader evil for only doing what he must do for his country.

This is what happens when you sleep under a rock for 25 years.

Iran has been attempting to join the nuclear community since the early 70s. And one can hardly blame them since it was common knowlege in privileged circles that the US had long since quietly ushered Isreal into the nuclear age by then.

By 1977, The Shah of Iran had grown weary of waiting for the US to usher Iran into the nuclear community so the Shah, fiercely loyal to the US up to that point, had no choice but to turn to our cold-war adversary, the USSR for help in building a nuclear arsenal. And the dominos were set into motion.

Enter the CIA (who all but issued the blindfolds).

Exit the Shah.

Enter the now-empowered Ayatollah.

Fast forward to 2005.

"Iran's and Korea's nuclear self-sufficiency is W's fault."

Now, if you want to assign the blame for instability in the middle east on the United States then we have a basis for healthy and interesting discussion and debate. But if you want to lay Iran's and NK's nuclear ambitions and current capability at the feet of George Bush, then I'm inclined to recommend that you augment your basis for forming an opinion of world politics on something other than NPR's Morning Edition.

If you want to blame a US president for both Iran's nuclear power grab cloaked under the guise of a self-deterministic Islamic jihad against the west and North Korea's unapologetic, self-empowering nuclear ambitions then blame Jimmy Carter - a key player in both - long before conservative power brokers even considered a perpetually drunk W as an easily manipulatable figurehead for the advancement of neoCon policy.

George W. Bush, while perhaps the most incompetent president in U. S. history, inherited a world where both Iran and NK are nuclear capable. Notwithstanding his role as a conduit for a reconstituted Pope Urban II model of world politics, putting the blame on W for NK and Iran's current nuclear capability is at best laughable and at worst doomed to repeat by propogating the idea that those who oppose it are responsible for it while issuing get-out-of-being-responsible cards to the weak-minded enablers who were either too naieve or too gutless to nip it in the bud when they had the chance. Bill Clinton, while hardly responible either, does not get a pass from the history books for looking the other way for eight long years while Iran and NK were unmistakebly taking giant steps towards arming themselves with atomic weapons.

So, let's all blame George. How is this position materially different from George's embarassingly simplistic view and and equally simplistic prescription for a solution?

W isn't the source of the problem, he's a sympton of the problem. The voters who elected the administrations who allowed this situation to fester and develop with their placating policies of carrot-but-no-stick are as much to blame for the current state of affairs as the voters who elected W in a desperate attempt to do something about it.

I'll take my share of the blame. Will you?