>> If the future was as knowable as Morris evidently thinks
>> it is, if it really was guaranteed, a fait accompli, an event
>> ordained in advance by some higher power, that Iran was going
>> to launch nuclear weapons at Israel, then I would agree - we
>> should nuke them first, even if it means killing millions of
>> innocent Iranians.
I suppose it should be comforting that the equation is simple enough to come down to trying to answer a hypothetical which would remain unknowable in the event.
If X then Nuke-em first.
But he gets back to something I tried to raise a few weeks ago:
>> Why do I think this? Because Stalin and Mao had hydrogen bombs that
>> could have blown up the world, and they were far, far more
>> bloodthirsty than the Iranians, and they weren't only ideologically
>> insane but maybe clinically insane as well, yet they never pushed the
>> button. As crazy as they were, they weren't that crazy.
Except of course that Israel is not the US: Israel is 10k square miles, about double the size of Los Angeles. Which leads me to conclude that the less-than-clinically-insane could reasonably believe in the concept of "limited nuclear war" ... as unbelievable as that sounds (because of the framing of the Cold War idea of MAD), it's the only kind of nuclear war the world has ever known.
And then:
>> I believe that even if they think they could take out Israel with a
>> first strike before Israel could retaliate, they realize that the US
>> would immediately nuke Iran to rubble, and would have the backing of
>> the world's other nuclear powers. The US wouldn't necessarily do it
>> to avenge Israel, either.
Aren't we just down to whose hypothetical is more "real" ...?
He says Morris is wrong for believing that a) they will do it once they are able and b) retaliation won't be an effective deterrant because it will "come too late" and besides, sacraficing the State of Iran for the cause of Islam has been blessed by Khomeini.
As far as I can tell, they are both 'telling the future' with the same results.
I also think that he leans to heavily on the "between the lines" assertion that Morris' answer is to nuke 'em first. Morris makes a clear distinction between a preemptive strike to destroy the Iranian program and "confronting a doomsday scenario" (i.e., nuke em all before they nuke us, which Morris does believe that Israel will have to answer to later):
>> IN SHORT order, therefore, the incompetent leadership in Jerusalem
>> would soon confront a doomsday scenario, either after launching
>> their marginally effective conventional offensive or in its stead,
>> of launching a preemptive nuclear strike against the Iranian nuclear
>> program, some of whose components are in or near major cities.
He has discounted the idea that a strike -- conventional or nuclear -- against the program "only" (as opposed to a "doomsday" which would target the State directly and thoroughly) as not being likely to end the issue in the way that the attach on Osirak did. Morris thinks that will delay the inevitable by "one or two years" ...
Derfner goes on to say:
>> Let me repeat that: Millions of Iranians would be killed. By Israel.
>> By Israel acting not in response to an attack, but in response to
>> general threats of a future attack.
>>
>> What would such an act be? It would be genocide. It would be a
>> holocaust.
It's certainly true, and Frankie said it best: When two tribes go to war, one is all that you can score.
And you might not even be able to do that.
/jordan