Q: For those of us who don’t understand the issue, can you explain why you believe that Iran is so dangerous and why we must prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon?
A: I’ll give you not one reason, but many reasons.
Iran has been the # 1 government sponsor of terrorism since the government came to power, in 1979. This is not just my opinion, but the statement of all American administrations since that time. While it cannot be established that 9/11 was directly sponsored by the government of Iran, the government of Iran is clearly sympathetic to such terrorism, and would have loved to have been responsible for it.
The government of Iran states that it wants to obliterate Israel and wipe it off the face of the map. It promises to do so, once it has nuclear weapons. There’s no reason to believe they don’t mean what they say. Even the Soviet Union never went this far. The Soviet Union repeatedly said that they would eventually take over the world, in part because they were a superpower and in part because, they claimed, all of the world would eventually embrace “change” meaning: Communism. (Sounds like Obama, doesn’t it?) However, the Soviet Union never said, “Once we have nuclear weapons, we’re going to use them to wipe the USA off the face of the map.” In fact, they never attempted such a thing. There was a Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union, and an indirect “hot” war in places such as Korea and Vietnam. It’s interesting. The USA is criticized for its “recklessness” and “cowboy mentality” when a President even contemplates a military action. Yet when a nation like Iran threatens to wipe an entire country off the face of the earth — well, we’re asked, what’s your problem? What are you, some kind of jingoistic extremist for caring about that? This is the mentality of far left liberals, this is the mentality implicit in Obama’s foreign policy, and this is also the attitude of the Ron Paul supporters (including the one who wrote in with that question). It seems that when a country like Iran is jingoistic in a way that no American President, not even the most conservative Republican of them, would ever be, it’s not a cause for concern. Only when the USA defends itself is there ever any remote cause for concern.
Another reason Iran is dangerous is that it’s a threat to Israel, and Israel matters. Israel is far from a perfect country, and it’s not always right. But you can at least live in Israel as a Muslim without the threat of having your head or hands chopped off. Israel is too much a socialist democracy for my tastes, with its Big Government programs and such. But Israel is a haven of Jeffersonian Constitutional liberalism when compared with the horrific and unspeakable regime of the barbaric Ayatollahs. I don’t understand why liberals and libertarians rush to the defense of a fundamentalist and totalitarian religious state like Iran, while (properly) criticizing the fundamentalism of people like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. I’ll never understand this because there’s nothing to understand; it’s a Grand Canyon of logical contradictions.
Israel matters not only because it’s morally superior to the regimes of places like Iran, but because the American economy has a stake in the oil-rich territories of those countries. Obama and his EPA will never allow for oil drilling anywhere near American territory. Neither will environmentalist Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. This leaves us no choice but to endure ever-higher oil prices because most of our oil comes from barbaric territories such as Iran, or nations who live under their threat. The strong military backing of Israel is part of what enables us all to keep driving cars, having electricity and basically surviving as we always have. It’s fine to hate Israel and tolerate Iran, but remember whose military and moral support is keeping the lights and the computers on. It’s certainly no thanks to places like Iran. We want — indeed need — terrorist fundamentalist regimes to lose in any conflict between Israel and Iran. If you woke up tomorrow and Israel was gone, and the mullahs of Iran now ran that part of the world and controlled our oil supply, do you think your life would not be affected? Think again.
Obama said in a recent news conference that the American military can become leaner yet still be as mean as it needs to be. This is questionable at best, especially given the cuts he’s imposing on the Congress by refusing to make any cuts at all in foreign aid, agricultural subsidies, or socialized medicine and retirement. But even if it’s true, no military — well-funded or not — means anything without moral conviction behind it. Increasingly, the American military and State Department act like the U.S. is at best morally equivalent to any other foreign nation. A dictator who dies in North Korea is no more or less moral than a democratically elected President in a country that mostly respects individual rights. Seriously? Nobody would admit this in the abstract, but that’s the implication when we send official condolences to the people of North Korea for losing their dictator. Most Americans yawn at the distinction, dismiss it as “ideological” and therefore irrelevant. But most Americans would not prefer living under the impoverished dictatorships of North Korea or Iran as compared to the USA, even in the midst of a Great Recession.
You Ron Paul supporters out there ought to vote for Obama come November. You’ve already got the foreign policy you want.