AdamW wrote:
Now assuming that is correct, we could undoubtedly kick their Salman Rushdie-hating bottoms, but it would be a real headache for us and the US. Lots dead on all three sides (us, them and the civilians), lots of big bangs. Not to mention the fact that they would hate us for several generations and this hatred would possibly stir up greater trouble later on.
I have difficulty understanding the concept of mixing religion with politics. Iran, like it or not, is a democracy, be it of a different kind to that of Western Europe's. But America mixes religion with politics to some extent. That is why Dubbya is in power. Liberalism, to the minds of the majority of Americans who recently voted, is a bad thing.
The Iranian people do not hate the Western Europeans nor Americans. Their politicians are of a background as diverse as possible. Their thinking as sophisticated as you could ever find. They are trying out and have somehow advanced in their religio-political experiment. The religion is Islam. Foreigners are treated better in Iran than in Saudi Arabia - friendly nation to the West.
From where I am sitting, nuclear weapons in the hands of the government of Iran would be no more dangerous than nuclear weapons in the hands of Pakistan.
When the professor, a pacifist, wrote to the president to warn him about the nazi A-bomb capabilty and advised him that it was possible for America to get the bomb first, the professor could not have known the devasted use America would make of the A-bomb. He should have from his equarion E=mc^2 that a small mass would relaese an infinite amount of energy. Look at the Russian Andrei Sacharov - the accidental inventor of the more potent H-bomb (or thermonuclear bomb), he also became a pacifist. I say accidental, because his supervisor, Dr Igor Tamm recognised the potency of his work on Comic ray research before he did.
Why should Iran not be allowed to learn from its own mistakes if it is the bomb they want and not electricity or both? Why should America have the capabilty and not Iran?
Who could have stopped Dubbya'sadministration from invading Iraq?
In the days of the Thatcher government Britain refused to put its Nuclear war heads into the equation for disarmanent. The Russians pressed America to factor in the British capability. I remember very well that Mrs Thatcher said that the trident missiles were nuclear deterent. So why can't have the capability for a nuclear deterrent?
We are all not safe so long as any one country has nuclear weapons. So the concept of nuclear deterrent is absolute rubbish. They should all give up. No one is the child of a lesser god. Iran should never be invaded under the pretext of possesion of nuclear weapons or nuclear capabilty.
Everyone should agree to bin their nuclear weapons!
We might just make a man of Kendor yet
