Monday, February 20, 2012

Is "prudence" REALLY worth the cost of a nuclear armed Iran?

US, Britain urge Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear program

The age-old question comes to mind; "if not now, when? If not us, who?". While an attack on Iran for the purpose of destroying their nuclear capabilities is most certainly risky, to say the least, is it ant more risky that allowing an unstable and apocalyptic minded regime like Iran acquire the most destructive weapon known to man?

There was a time when the West had the courage of its convictions and could distinguish between good and evil. Granted, during the years leading up to World War II, the West was slow to act upon the blatant evil that was the Third Reich. I'll not defend the foot-dragging that resulted in the murders of untold numbers of Eastern Jews and other targets of the Holocaust, but once roused, the evil of Nazi Germany was revealed for all to see and the commitment to its destruction was absolute. One would think that horrible lesson would span the generations. One would think that the horror of 9/11 would have renewed Western civilization's commitment to the elimination of the barbarism and ignorance that were at the root of that horrible September morning.

It would appear that one would be wrong on all of those counts. We seem to believe that we can negotiate with evil, that "sanctions" can eliminate more than a millennium of benighted, violent ignorance. We seem so certain of these misbegotten ideals that we're apparently willing to risk one of the most dangerous regimes in history obtaining the most destructive weapon ever developed.

This is folly on a scale heretofore unknown by virtue of the cost alone.

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