There was a lot of noise this week about Iran once again, this in the wake of an IAEA report that raises questions about some aspects of their nuclear program. The 
occasion prompted appearances on evening news shows of all manner of expert, so long as they share the view that Iran should never, ever be allowed to possess nuclear technology. One “expert” opined that such an eventuality would set off an arms race in the Middle East, prompting Saudi Arabia to get the bomb and so on. Not sure how closely he’s been paying attention to his area of expertise, but that train left the station decades ago. Israel has a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons which, though undeclared, has inspired nuclear development programs in Iraq, perhaps Syria, and yes, Iran, if not elsewhere. That is the elephant in the room – the massive destructive power in the hands of a state that has recently and repeatedly attacked its neighbors, and that regularly threatens Iran with air strikes.
This cannot be spoken of, for some reason, at least not in the United States. Somehow when it comes to Israeli foreign policy, we are more Catholic than the Pope, unable to engage in anything close to the kind of lively debate you’re likely to hear in Israel itself. Here, all we can talk about is how Amadinejad purportedly wants to destroy Israel. (That’s a McCain stump speech staple, for sure.) Thing is, they don’t have the ability to carry that out, even if they wished to do so (which I doubt). Whereas Israel, on the other hand, can most certainly obliterate Iran’s major population centers, and perhaps the entire country, in a very short period of time. Their threats carry a certain verisimilitude, as do ours. (Recall that our military is well ensconced in the region, with theater nuclear weapons undoubtedly well within reach.) Is anyone really wondering why Iran might want the bomb?
It’s the “D” word, friends – deterrent. Our leaders try to suggest that it is inoperative in the post 9/11 world, but I don’t think so. Between states, the principle still 
applies. Iran’s leaders have the rudimentary intelligence it takes to see which countries get attacked by the sole remaining superpower and which ones get negotiated with. They don’t even need to look beyond the very exclusive club Dubya Bush himself established – the Axis of Evil – for their answer. Nuclear armed Korea, with batteries of conventional artillery massed in preparation for a retaliatory strike on Seoul, was able to cut a deal – no invasion was seriously contemplated. Non-nuclear Iraq, on the other hand, which had abandoned its early-stage atomic weapons program in the early 90s, was attacked, invaded, destroyed, occupied, and buried in corpses. What Bush claimed would be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East is, in fact, a national catastrophe no one will ever wish to emulate. So what lesson should the Iranians – third of three in the Axis – take away from this? Get the bomb… and fast.
One thing seems certain, at least – if Iran is attacked in the coming months, it probably won’t be by Olmert… unless the launch codes are buried somewhere in a suitcase stuffed with cash.
luv u,
jp
Want to see me make a donut disappear. Ala-kazam! (*Gulp*) Ta-daaaa! Okay, now… watch me do a half-moon. Presto-change-o! (*Gulp*) Where’d it go? Where’d it go? Next…
With me so far? Okay, then. So I sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to the local public library in search of some standard volumes on magical spells and incantations. He was gone several thirsty hours, only to return with some lame-ass tome they must have ordered through the mail in 1973 from a publisher’s over-stock house somewhere in New Jersey. (This I know from nothing.) I mean, it was full of pointy hats and al-a-kazams and hey-prestos… the kind of stuff that would embarrass a sit-com pre-teenager. Just plain sad. We were thinking the real dark arts stuff… you know. Beads and flammable powders, all that. Still, I was getting too thirsty to think clearly, so I actually started messing around with some of the spells in the book. I borrowed a few strands of spaghetti to use as a wand, a rolled-up newspaper for a sorcerer’s hat, and went to work. What happened next was shocking, just shocking….
collective attention of all of tubey’s relatives. Picture a thousand potatoes in a room, and all eyes on you. Kind of unnerving, actually… but they were being mildly entertained. And that meant less water being drawn off of our somewhat piffling little water table. Within an hour or so, the taps were working again and we could even switch on the humidifier in tubey’s terrarium. (His skin gets scaly during the summer months – that’s why I keep a peeler handy.) Talk about the law of unintended consequences! (Did that ever make it out of committee?) This situation was so twisted, it came out straight.
lives across the street, my sisters the next street over… in fact, none of my immediate relatives live more than 15 or 20 miles away, and they all work within spitting distance of where I live. Both of my wife’s and my vehicles, while ancient, are four-cylinder sedans, only one of which we drive with any regularity. If we clock 5,000 miles in a year’s time, that’s a lot for us, so I’m filling the tank of my ’93 Accord probably once every two weeks. A year ago, that cost around $30; now it’s $40 or so – manageable, thus far. But these precipitous price increases on gasoline are killing most people I know (and most of those I don’t know), and there appears no end in sight. It would be bad enough if it just hit you at the gas pump, but it affects everything else as well. The food you buy, the employer you work for, the community you live in – every aspect of our lives, it seems, is built on the assumption of cheap and plentiful fuel. Take that away, and our economy starts to scream.
improving fuel efficiency standards back in the late eighties and through the nineties, with horror stories about how U.S. auto manufacturers would lay off thousands of workers, etc. (an important talking point in Dan Quayle’s bizarro performance during the 1992 Vice Presidential debate). Of course, the auto manufacturers shed enormous numbers of workers anyway in the years that followed, even with fuel standards that allowed massive V-8 engines and SUV’s that look like passenger trains. Most states – including my own state, under Gov. George Pataki – allowed the speed limit to move up to 65, causing greater fuel consumption (55 mph was determined decades ago to be an optimum speed for fuel efficiency). And who can forget the current administration deploying Ari Fleischer and others to defend gas-guzzling as central to the American way of life? This is a failure of leadership, to be sure… but it is also enabled by the goofy choices we make.