How about we work the actionable problems?

ARTICLE: Security Council Adopts Nuclear Arms Measure, By DAVID E. SANGER, New York Times, September 24, 2009

The basics:

PITTSBURGH -- President Obama moved Thursday to tighten the noose around Iran, North Korea and other nations that have exploited gaping loopholes in the patchwork of global nuclear regulations. He pushed through a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would, if enforced, make it more difficult to turn peaceful nuclear programs into weapons projects.

But as Mr. Obama sat in New York as chairman of the Security Council -- a first for an American president, meant to symbolize his commitment to rebuilding the Council's tattered authority -- he received a taste of the opposition he is likely to face on some of his nuclear initiatives.

Some developing and nonnuclear nations bridled at the idea of Security Council mandates and talked of a "nuclear free zone" in the Middle East. That is widely recognized as a code phrase for requiring Israel to give up its unacknowledged nuclear arsenal.

Key phrase there: if enforced.

Our hypocrisy on the subject is rank: only our friend in the Middle East can have nukes.

People want to make this a thing about autocracies and democracies, but that's--quite frankly--completely irrelevant. For Iran, it's about keeping a democratic America from invading it.

Obama is pissing in the wind on this one, along with his flowery rhetoric on a nuclear-free world. Better he work problems he can actually impact rather than play--meaninglessly--to the history books.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

Historical evidence would seem to be at odds with the suggestion that democracies are less likely to use nuclear weapons than autocracies.