Seriously, we can deter Iran
Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 10:29PM OP-ED: Why Iran can't be contained, By Danielle Pletka, Washington Post, December 15, 2009
Some classic nonsense: apparently, all the existing nuclear powers, none of whom ever got their way on anything threatening nukes, are all going to be cowed and bullied by Iran's nukes.
Iran is unique! The Sovs, crazy Mao, etc., they were all peons compared to the mighty Persians! Easy to deter!
As for America? We are pussies, unable to pull triggers--as history shows time and again!
Thus, although Pletka can't bring herself to say it out loud (just implying Obama is too much of a coward to consider it), America must strike (because making Israel do it would be "appalling").
Curtis Le May lives and breathes, and he's still a complete strategic jackass.
(Via WPR's Media Roundup)
Reader Comments (2)
Did we read the same article? I don't see her stating anywhere that "Iran is unique" or "mighty" In fact, she makes the point of saying "Perhaps it is unfair to suggest that today's Iranian leadership is fashioned from different cloth than the Soviets..." "Tehran probably sees itself more in the mold of India, a great power whose nuclear weapons are acknowledged and now accepted, than of North Korea, a lunocracy without serious global aspirations or influence." - both of these statements are things I had imagined you'd agree with. You somehow conclude from her article though that she not-so-subtly suggests that America "must" strike which, again, I didn't get at all.
Unrelatedly, but also bizzarely (from the article): "Advocates of a containment policy suggest that in the absence of effective diplomacy or sanctions that deliver results, the stark U.S. options are acquiescence or military action." -- this is not "containment" at all. Per the John Foster Dulles theory, we neither struck the Sovs directly nor acquiesced to them. This is just a weird new definition of "containment" that I've never heard of. Someone's confusing their terminology.