Distinctions and Differences

Greg Sargent had a great post on TPM Cafe making the case that the '06 midterms vindicated the views of those of us who'd argued for strong Democratic counterattacks on the national security issue rather than those of the "duck and cover" camp. Ed Kilgore, however, correctly ripostes that you can't chalk duck-and-coverism up to the hawks of the DLC. As Ed says, their outfit has long (and I mean long, going all the way back to "The Politics of Evasion") called for more robust Democratic engagement with these issues.

The trouble, at the end of the day, is that though they have perfectly correct views on this meta-level issue, people in the liberal hawk neighborhood tend, on an operational level, to actually agree with George W. Bush about the bulk of the most important national security issues. Not that they're secretly Bush-lovers. Quite the reverse. They hate George W. Bush with a passion. With, indeed, a passion so strong that I think it tends to blind them to the extent to which they agree with him. Most generally, neoconservatives and liberal hawks essentially agree that the key to combatting jihadism is to combine killing terrorists with a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies. Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances.

That, I think, is the big conceptual debate about national security in this country, and lots of the leading figures in the Democratic Party are on Bush's side of the argument. Nor should that fact be especially surprising, since upper-level professional politicians and professional political operatives all chose their partisan affiiations long before anyone especially cared about Islamist terrorism.

Comments

Most generally, neoconservatives and liberal hawks essentially agree that the key to combatting jihadism is to combine killing terrorists with a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies. Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances.

This is a good way of looking at it, but the lines are very blurry. Which is part of the problem. Everyone on all sides things that Muslim societies need to be transformed. The latter subgroup you've pointed out just doesn't think if should be us doing it. That's a tough argument to make, politically and rhetorically, even if correct, especially when you're the hegemon.

The other thing is, if you look at it right, a lot of Muslim grievances are against their own societies, which we support in various ways.. so, therefore "address grievances" and "reorder societies" starts to look rather similar.

The real difference is the differing opinions on the limits of US power to accomplish goals, specifically relating to organized violence.

Posted by glasnost | November 11, 2006 5:37 PM

You understate this point. The best organised group in both political parties in relation to US ME policy is absolutely determined not to address these grievances. Given the small interest group based nature of US politics, its not surprising that partisan affiliations matter little and that conservative realists and mainstream liberals appear to be permanently powerless - conservative realists and mainstream liberals have no organisational power with which to force a change in US middle east policy.

Posted by otto | November 11, 2006 5:39 PM

By the way, saying that many Muslims have grievances with their own societies is of course a prime rhetorical technique for distracting from the grievances that they have with the US and the rest of the West. Plus of course many of the grievances they have with their own societies and governments is due to the fact that their own rulers are of necessity accomodationist to objectionable US foreign policy goals.

Posted by otto | November 11, 2006 5:43 PM

Israel.

I have nothing substantative to say, but discussions of US Middle East policy should all at least mention the word "Israel". I mean, what are we afraid of?

For example to finish the sentence, "... a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies" to what? Better would be "... large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies into societies that accept the legitimacy of Israel."

Posted by anon | November 11, 2006 6:03 PM

Matt cuts it right to the chase, again.

If he'd been with Dorothy in Munchkin Land, he'd have asked Glinda if the Yellow Brick Rd. trip were the ONLY way she was aware of to get back to Kansas.

Posted by ferd | November 11, 2006 6:14 PM

"Matt cuts it right to the chase, again."

Not for me, he doesn't. I can't quite see the direct road from a I/P settlement to the end of the autocracies and the beginning of economic and institutional development. Seems that Sadat is even a refutation.

Posted by bob mcmanus | November 11, 2006 6:32 PM

I think Matt is overcrediting the sincerity of the liberal hawks. In fact, a lot of the support for the Iraq war, and hawkish military stands in general, is motivated by beliefs that if you don't have these views, you get killed at the polls, as well as self-congratulatory beliefs that you are a much more serious person if you make the "tough" choice of advocating mass brutality (this latter feeling is the same thing that motivates those that push for torture).

Indeed, Iraq was a great indicator of this. Here you had a war that was simply and obviously indefensible on any number of levels, and that any reasonably knowledgeable person (if honest) would oppose, but obviously smart liberal hawks supported it. Not only that, but they continued to support it for years after it was obviously going to fail. It has nothing to do with any beliefs about the best way to fight Islamic terrorism.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 11, 2006 6:56 PM

"Most generally, neoconservatives and liberal hawks essentially agree that the key to combatting jihadism is to combine killing terrorists with a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies. Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances."

Matt is concise.

(That's a compliment, even if the girl in that probable urban legend didn't actually get into UCLA with a three word essay.)

The Iraq War had made me a catastrophist rather than a liberal hawk or mainstream liberal (and I'm too forthcoming about my taste for weird sex to ever pass as a conservative). I think change is coming and I think it is liable to be unpleasant for a lot of people. Whatever else we do, I think we should be energy independent as fast as possible (as in like really fast). And I think that in another twenty years the Arab world and probably Central Asia too will look more like the former Yugoslavia than maybe anywhere else. I think the future of the region is many more states (organized along sectarian lines), open borders, and some kind of regional bureaucracy (at least for the Arabs) to manage trade and other regional issues (kind of like the EU, but with more turbans, and more delicious tea).

Posted by Linus | November 11, 2006 11:01 PM

Most generally, neoconservatives and liberal hawks essentially agree that the key to combatting jihadism is to combine killing terrorists with a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies. Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances.

Fair enough. Although I would like to stand up for those who do not want to transform Muslim societies, but are also not hugely interested in addressing Muslim grievances. My preference is for leaving Muslims alone to the greatest extent possible. Of course, to the extent that one of the main Muslim grievances is our failure to leave them alone, then I'm all for addressing that particular grievance. But I would resist the urge to regard the Muslim world as some sort of problem to be solved - either by giving that world a social and political makeover, or by going around addressing all the many grievances various Muslims may have against us tracing back through the tortured historical path of our complicated relations. If we look at all of those grievances we find that a fair number of them resulted from misguided attempts to address and repair the harms that sparked earlier grievances.

Posted by Dan Kervick | November 12, 2006 12:06 AM

Matt:

Most generally, neoconservatives and liberal hawks essentially agree that the key to combatting jihadism is to combine killing terrorists with a large-scale effort to transform Muslim societies. Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances.

Nicely put, and right on target.

glasnost:

Everyone on all sides things that Muslim societies need to be transformed. The latter subgroup you've pointed out just doesn't think it should be us doing it.

My libertarian perspective is that people inhabiting modern countries can assist the modernization process in backward countries, Islamic or not, by privately funded projects like this one:

http://www.globam.org/

The error is to think of such efforts, private or public, as part of 'the key to combatting jihadism'. Modernization is a worthy cause because it improves the lives of the people concerned. The process will take its own time. It isn't to be relied on for addressing our immediate security issues.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 1:58 AM

"...widespread Muslim political grievances"

They seem to vary so much, it's hard to get a handle on it. Many complain about autocratic governments like that of Saudi Arabia. Yet it's hard to argue that instead of signing a treaty in 1945 with Ibn Saud, the US should have gone in and installed a democracy by force. But that's the alternative.

More deeply, grievances, like Osama bin Ladens complaint about US troops on Saudi soil, are not universal, and are not grievances of what we would call injustice. If the West had simply stolen, rather than paying for, Saudi oil, then there would be no rich bin Laden family and no Osama to build al-Queda. The artificial wealth of sections of the Muslim world causes most of the crises and the wars, not the grievances.

And if a US-supported Iraq invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia is a legitimate grievance, then how is evicting Saddam also a legitimate grievance?

The only universal grievance of the Islamists is that the West is not Islamic, and is not under the Islamists thumb. Even solving the legitimate grievances will not make the problem go away.

Can you really argue that it was the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 that caused the Ayatollahs to take over in 1979 and build nuclear weapons today, and probably use them tomorrow? And shouldn't the hostage taking of Americans in the embassy count as revenge taken if you're calculating legitimate grievances?

And what legitimate grievance caused them to blow up a nightclub in Bali? Balinese imperialism? And how does the West cure that? If supporting Saddam Hussein is a legitimate grievance then how is replacing him with democracy also a legitimate grievance?

India has plenty of grievances against the West, and they responded (in part) by legally taking over the British steel industry. Clearly the culture of third world nations shapes their response to grievances, not just the claims themselves. And only transformation can alter culture.

In the nuclear age, the suicide-cult culture of the Islamists simply cannot be tolerated or appeased, it must be altered or crushed.

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 4:49 AM

Yet it's hard to argue that instead of signing a treaty in 1945 with Ibn Saud, the US should have gone in and installed a democracy by force. But that's the alternative.

The only alternative? Why?

Can you really argue that it was the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 that caused the Ayatollahs to take over in 1979 . . .

Would you really argue that, in the alternate history in which Mossadegh was not ousted in 1953, the Ayatollahs would have taken power in 1979?

. . . and build nuclear weapons today . . .

Sorry to nitpick, but no one claims there is any evidence the Iranians are literally building nuclear weapons, as opposed to doing research that may make it possible for them to do so someday.

If the Iranians are interested in nuclear weapons, it is quite plausible that their interest has been stimulated by such things as the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal, and American threats of 'regime change'.

http://mysite.verizon.net/lardil/id70.html

. . . and probably use them tomorrow?

I don't share that assumption.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 5:41 AM

David Tomlin:
The only alternative to dealing with the Saudi royal family would have been to replace them. Do you think they would have given up without the use of force? Or do you think a lecture on democracy would have changed everything?

I don't know about the alternative history. My argument is that solving grievances won't solve the problem of the Jihadi war, and couldn't have prevented it. Once you have enormous oil wealth in a part of Islamic/Arabic culture, you have the recipe for conflict.

The Iranian death-cult philosophy possessing nuclear weapons should terrify you. It seems to be enough to frighten Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The Israeli nuclear arsenal is no threat to Iran unless Iran chooses to wage war. The Israelis have had at least 40 years to do what they will with any nukes they might have, yet Iran is untouched and unthreatened. There is no symmetry here. Israel has never called for the elimination of the nation of Iran or eradication of the Persians. The current Iranian government repeatedly calls for the elimination of Israel.

The issue is transformation of Islamic culture vs solving of grievances. You fail to argue that transformation is not required. If transforming the policies or strategy of the Islamists isn't hard enough, solving intractable, sometimes contradictory, grievances is even harder.

There simply are no grievances in Iran that the West can address. I am not claiming transformation will be easy, but at least we don't have to change the whole thing.

I also thing Mathew's division of Westerners into two classes, the transformers and the grievance-solvers is missing a lot.

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 6:30 AM

Here's an alternative distinction, is it more or less over-simplified than Matthew's?

"Doves think the choice is between fighting or not fighting. Hawks think the choice is between fighting now or fighting later."

See here for the full essay.

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 9:23 AM

In the nuclear age, the suicide-cult culture of the Islamists simply cannot be tolerated or appeased, it must be altered or crushed.

Simple assertions, even when made in your best Dungeon Master voice, are not an argument. Personally, I think we should look seriously at Yoo-style aggressive interpretations of the law and the Constitution, and think about shipping out the moronic pieces of crap who make the "arguments" that you do: as a country, we simply cannot afford to house and support people with little understanding of our culture, and less of other cultures. (All assertion? Yeah, but when in Rome....)

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 12, 2006 9:30 AM

The Islamic world needs a homegrown Voltaire, a homegrown William Penn. People like that. We can't conjure them up and drop them into Beirut or Damascus. I think liberal Hawks despair of the potential for that kind of thing and don't have the patience or imagination for amelioration.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 12, 2006 9:54 AM

I call you Tim, too:
Thank you for your comments on my "Dungeon Master" voice, it is nice to be noticed.

I am not Yoo. I know you aren't Yoo either. Yoo is he. I am not a lawyer, neither, but I fully support the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So far, the Yoo-laws haven't done much harm to our liberty, but I concede there is cause for concern.

The combination of the suicide bomber and nuclear weapons is too horrible to behold. This is not a bald assertion, it a conclusion from fact. It is not an issue of "Other cultures", it is an issue of nuclear holocaust. If the Iranian leadership were as multi-culti as Tim, we wouldn't have a problem.

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 11:07 AM

> The combination of the suicide bomber and
> nuclear weapons is too horrible to behold.
> This is not a bald assertion, it a conclusion
> from fact.

While I don't agree with your political conclusions Warren, there was a time when I might have agreed with this statement. That time was pre-Katrina. The devestation that Katrina inflicted on New Orleans was _exactly_ what would have happened if a terrorist had detonated a stolen tactical nuke on the NO levee in sight of downtown: massive wind damage followed by fires and flooding. Exactly the same effect. Yet we as a nation were quite content to sit back, watch the people of NO die, and then "blame game" them about school buses and corrupt mayors. Not a shred of sympathy for the death and disruption, not a care for a historical city being devastated, no concern for the economic effects.

So I am not sure what you mean when you say a nuclear attack is "too horrible to behold" since we have already seen an equivalent and it didn't bother us much as a Nation.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | November 12, 2006 11:33 AM

This post strikes me as mostly unfair in that it emphasizes a common goal but glosses over VERY significant differences in means. It reminds me of the way conservatives like to identify liberals as socialists because they both want to use the state to mitigate the suffering of the poor or underprivileged. Pollack, for example, did advocate the use of force against Iraq, but his book also contained a fairly long discussion on the need to address Arab grievances (the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for example) as part of any workable Iraq solution. (Perhaps I'm thinking of the wrong liberal hawks.)
Certainly, it's fair to criticize Pollack (and other liberal hawks, too) for making a number of mistakes concerning Iraq. But to suggest that such figures are just like Bush (and therefore always wrong, I suppose?) seems a rhetorical move that's unfair and not particularly helpful.

Posted by TC | November 12, 2006 11:56 AM

But to suggest that such figures are just like Bush (and therefore always wrong, I suppose?) seems a rhetorical move that's unfair and not particularly helpful.

Point me to the admissions by liberal hawks that they shouldn't have tarred the anti-Iraq war Democrats as Michael Moore hippies. (Maybe they've done so, I really don't know.) I think this might be an issue of "fair" vs. "clarifying."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 12, 2006 12:00 PM

Cranky O:
According to wikipedia, hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people in total, in NO and Mississippi, et cetera. See this Katrina page.

Also according to wikipedia, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 killed 80,000 souls immediately and another 30,000 from the aftermath, from radiation poisoning and such. The total of over 100,000 dead is more than 50 times the number of dead from Katrina. See this Hiroshima and Nagasaki page.

Counting only deaths in New Orleans, the Hiroshima bomb killed 66 times as many people as Katrina.

One reason for the difference is that New Orleans was warned in advance and most people evacuated. In a terrorist attack, there will be no warning.

Katrina was in no way equivalent to a nuclear attack.

I am not saying, though, that the US response to Katrina was thorough or proper. While there was a relaxed attitude to rebuilding New Orleans, the response to rescue was more robust, though still lacking. The reason for the hesitancy to rebuild is the idea that perhaps New Orleans wasn't located in the right place to begin with.

Given Iran's record of using suicide bombers as proxies, and the cavalier attitude of Iran's leaders toward nuclear weapons, there is ample cause for concern. Military action may be the only way to keep the peace.

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 12:01 PM

Admittedly, "fair" might be a loaded term in this case.

Posted by TC | November 12, 2006 12:18 PM

If the danger of nuclear bombing by terrorists is so pressing and withering, why is the Bush Admin content to examine containers coming into our ports so casually?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 12, 2006 12:34 PM

Well, face it, as a nation America is like the poor white people living in the river bottom. Fascinated by things that go "boom" or make a brilliant flash, we have little understanding of the power of raindrops. We're always surprised when the water rises.

This is unfair to the American people, who depend on media to tell them what's happening far away. Informed commentators might have pointed out that when the Shah cracked down on dissent, only the mosques had the political power to withstand his police, and the power of change lay in sermons and faith.

As for the idea that, golly gee, we couldn't just remove the Saudi rulers, this is so far from the actual hugging and mugging of Bush and his Saudi boyfriends that it's just laughable. We'd have no need for 600 overseas bases if it were a simple matter of allowing nations to govern themselves. As indeed it may well be.

Posted by serial catowner | November 12, 2006 12:40 PM

Re: Would you really argue that, in the alternate history in which Mossadegh was not ousted in 1953, the Ayatollahs would have taken power in 1979?

Yes, because a secularist, oppressive and eventually corrupt quasi-socialist govermment, a la Algeria or Syria, would have been just as anathema and alien to Khomeini and the Shi'ite Islamists as the Shah. Ultimately too the US and Europe would have cozied up nicely to Mossadegh and his successors (see: oil, strategic location). Mayben the revolution would not have come in 1979, but it would have come.

Posted by JonF | November 12, 2006 1:21 PM

Re: The devestation that Katrina inflicted on New Orleans was _exactly_ what would have happened if a terrorist had detonated a stolen tactical nuke on the NO levee in sight of downtown

Um, no. A nuke detonated in New Orleans would have easily killed 50-100 times as many people as died in Katrina. Blast, fire and radiation would have left rather few people to drown.

Posted by Jonf | November 12, 2006 1:23 PM

Mainstream liberals and many conservative realists, by contrast, think that you need to combine killing terrorists with an effort to address widespread Muslim political grievances

For the record, I disagree that "mainstream liberals" think we need to kill terrorists. Rather, they think we need to prosecute terrorists. After all, killing terrorists implies a war; they think we should instead use law enforcement as the correct model, not war.

Posted by Al | November 12, 2006 1:26 PM

Yes, because a secularist, oppressive and eventually corrupt quasi-socialist govermment, a la Algeria or Syria, would have been just as anathema and alien to Khomeini and the Shi'ite Islamists as the Shah.

Khomeini and the Islamists didn't overthrow the Shah by themselves. They had secular leftist allies (who were later purged) and the support of a popular uprising.

Are you suggesting that Mossadegh's government was as oppressive as those that have usually ruled Algeria and Syria? That is not my impression.

Mossadegh was the prime minister of a parliamentary monarchy. It's true that toward the end he dissolved the parliament and governed as a dictator, but that was in reaction to American and British agents manipulating the elections. The decision to overthrow him - more precisely, to replace the parliamentary system with the Shah's dictatorship - had already been made.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 2:53 PM

Also according to wikipedia, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 killed 80,000 souls immediately and another 30,000 from the aftermath . . .

The Hiroshima bomb was an airburst of at least 10 kilotons. (The highest estimate I've seen is 22 kilotons.) The altitude was estimated for maximum damage. A terrorist bomb would probably be a smaller ground burst.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 3:06 PM

The combination of the suicide bomber and nuclear weapons is too horrible to behold. This is not a bald assertion, it a conclusion from fact.

Show your work, Warren. Here's an argument I don't find convincing:

(1) The only country to ever use a nuclear weapon is the United States. (NB: IIRC, Iran, by contrast, has forsworn its use.) It did so to limit casualties.
(2) In the post-WWII period, there has been a long-standing argument that nuclear weapons should be considered simply another tool in the arsenal of war, and can be deployed as such.
(3) In the last several decades, the US has shown an accelerating unwillingness to sustain fatalities during war.
(4) Since at least Vietnam, the US has shown a willingness to use air-power and bombing in place of ground troops in order to minimize casualties. This is true in wars that cannot be considered "existential."
(5) Preventative war is now explicitly a part of US foreign policy.
(6) The US may be willing to use nuclear weapons offensively and in circumstances that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered existential, and therefore cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. (Cf. Rumors about the use of "bunker-buster" nukes against Iran's nuclear program.)

Not at all compelling to me, but more so than "they're suicidal and they might get nukes."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 12, 2006 3:24 PM

The only way to delay Iran's nuclear development is to bomb the facilities. Delaying it seriously may not be possible without using nuclear bunker-busters.

Iran is three times as big as Iraq. Occupying it would be out of the question even if the U.S. weren't already bogged down in Iraq.

Some neo-cons have talked of also bombing regime targets and security forces, on the assumption that the populace is eager to rise up and create a pro-American democracy. That's the same assumption that has worked out so well in Iraq.

Bombing Iran would actually alienate popular sentiment, not only in Iran but nearly everywhere else in the world. If anything it would be a setback for 'transformation'.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 5:33 PM

Warren,
Sorry to disagree, but the estimates I have seen[1] of the realistic damage that terrorists could inflict on a US city with a device they could actually get hold of (say a 5 kt Russian tactical nuke, or a 3-7 kt homemade gadget), combined with placement on a NO levy, match almost exactly what Katrina did to NO. You are comparing that to what a full-strength military semi-strategic weapon (e.g. 400 kt) with precise military delivery would do.

And I noticed you neatly sidestepped my point about what the Nation actually _did_ in response, particuarly the Federal Goverment. A lot of individuals tried to help, sure. But the coordinated response with heavy equipment and support that was badly needed /never/ happened and has not happened to this day.

Cranky

[1] pre-9/11 of course. No one publishes such things today.

Posted by Cranky Observer | November 12, 2006 5:51 PM

Cranky O:
It depends on what size bomb they bring in. They could put nearly anything inside a freighter and dock it downtown. Surround the nuke with lead shielding to dupe the scanners and it might work. The estimates you reference are real, it's just that they're estimates, not guarantees.

I'm not here to defend the Bush administration on Katrina. I just think a nuclear weapon should be expected to kill many more than 1500 people if detonated in any large Western city.

Tim:
The Iranians have kept their nuclear program secret from the IAEA, they have refined uranium to higher levels than reactors need, they have no need to generate nuclear electricity as they have a tremendous amount of cheap petroleum, they keep on saying how Israel is a one bomb country, they issue fatwas permitting the use of nuclear weapons, they send weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas even though they have nothing to do with legitimate Iranian interests, they argue publicly that they can sustain nuclear megadeaths while their opponents can't. And so on. The pattern of impending nuclear aggression is as clear as it could be.

And if Hezbollah has one nuke, they'll probably have a dozen. And they've already blown up people in Argentina.

If Iran just wanted to generate electricity -- well, I couldn't be happier for them. Fine. But I don't believe that. Are you really willing to take the risk of nuclear terrorism?

Posted by Warren | November 12, 2006 6:44 PM

. . . they issue fatwas permitting the use of nuclear weapons . . .

More precisely, one Iranian cleric has issued one such fatwa, challenging a long prevailing consensus to the contrary.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/19/wiran19.xml

This does suggest the Iranian leadership wants nuclear weapons, or wants the world to think they do.

I again point out the long period of American saber-rattling that preceded this development.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 12, 2006 8:18 PM

Warren, your argument is completely unsupported. You simply assert that Iran is some kind of crazy "suicide cult", in the absence of any evidence. Iran is behaving just as a responsible "realpolitik" nation surrounded by aggressive enemies would be behaving. The willingness of people like you to make these kinds of racist assertions in the absence of evidence strengthens my own fear that the U.S. is the most dangerous possessor of nuclear weapons right now.

Since its national sovereignty has been repeatedly threatened by a nation demonstrably willing to invade, the Iranian regime has as much or more more genuine national security justification to develop a bomb as any country ever has. Furthermore, looking the mess we have made of Iraq the Iranian regime can reasonably claim that its rulership is much better for the Iranian people than the results of any U.S. invasion would be.

Your list of reasons to distrust Iraq is singularly unimpressive. It would be easy to make a much longer list of reasons to distrust the U.S. or other Western powers with nuclear weapons, and one would not have to rely on obscure newspaper statements cherry-picked by MEMRI to make Iran look bad. Unlike your Iran list, the list of reasons to think the U.S. is a 'death cult' would include the actual use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations, and multiple aggressive invasions of distant nations that did not pose a threat to U.S. sovereignty. It truly boggles my mind that citizens of the same country that funded the Nicaraguan contras could find Iranian support of Hezbollah to be incomprehensibly evil.

Would the world be a less dangerous place if Iran didn't develop nukes? I guess so -- hell, the world would be a less dangerous place if no one had ever invented nukes. But the use of violence to stop them from doing so is a cure far worse than the disease. And there is a reasonable argument that creating some deterrence in the ME, Iranian nukes could make the situation safer and more stable. It worked with Russia and China, and any sane person who knows history would have to admit that Stalin's and Mao's regimes were much "crazier" and more aggressive than the current Iranian one.

Posted by MQ | November 13, 2006 3:24 AM

Matthew Y:

Saying "liberal hawks and neoconservatives generally agree that the key.." is false. It would be correct to say, "...liberal hawks and neoconservatives both claim to believe that the key..."

You take their stated arguments here at face value, which makes this post a regression to 2002 after three years of increasingly incisive ones.

Amen to "anon." A post discussing "liberal hawks" and "neoconservatives" which omits the word "Israel" is worthless.

Posted by brendan | November 13, 2006 12:14 PM