The New Yorker has a good article up about the logistics of a war with Iran, and why certain people in power are pushing for it. Its pretty long, and definitely written to scare, but a good read. It also brings up the fact that tactical nukes would have to be used in any airstrike, because most Iranian facilities are buried deep underground, or we just don’t have enough credible intel to locate all of their sites.
Best quote from the whole thing is in the first page or so-
If those sites even exist at all. This passive phrasing, “tactical nukes would have to be used,” is wrong. It’s not something abstract and inevitable. The only reason that nuclear weapons are being considered is because a few ideologues in the government (namely, the same neoconservatives that lied us into one war already) really want to use them. The article goes into some details on this subject:
"The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that ‘ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation. There are people who believe it’s the way to operate.’”
"‘We’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out’—remove the nuclear option—‘they’re shouted down.’”
Furthermore, as the article explains, there is significant opposition to using nuclear weapons from within the American military command.
I’ve been saying Iran is in for an assfucking for years. Its only logical that this discussion would be occuring considering what’s been going on. It is nevertheless a troubling reality, which hopefully the lack of popularity which the current government is facing, will ensure doesn’t happen.
What reason? Heh. Iran’s hasn’t been on the US good side since 1979. They create and support terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and the beginning of the regime involved the kidnap of US citizens when the embassy was stormed in 79. The nuclear weapon thing is very likely going to be one of the things we’ll hear over and over once the drumbeat for war starts. It is worth noting that Iran controls a huge amount of oil.
Since WHEN did public opinion matter to the current government? Hell, since when did it matter for ANY government?
A war with Iran would NOT end well, even if Iran lacks nukes. Instead of directly facing the US, they’ll use the opportunity to bomb the shit out of Israel, killing every living thing in their path. Any forces sent by either the US or UN will be forced to fight for every bloody inch of territory in Iran, and that’s not even counting the absolute hell that will follow any victory. True, Iran’s government is filled with religious lunatics that advocate nuking everyone that disagrees with them (much like the US government), but going to war will only cause further troubles.
It depends on which Democrat. Some Democrats, like Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, have bought into neoconservative ideology more or less completely. They try to put a more pragmatic face on it, but it’s basically the same thing. However, there is much more antiwar sentiment in the Democratic electorate overall, and there are other Democratic politicians (like Russ Feingold) who are significantly more distrustful of our current warmongering policy.
Yes, because they think that their ideology supercedes reality.
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend – but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ‘‘in what we call the reality-based community,’’ which he defined as people who ‘‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’’ he continued. ‘‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’’
The aide said that guys like me were ‘‘in what we call the reality-based community,’’ which he defined as people who ‘‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’’ he continued. ‘‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’’
Liberals have been using deconstruction against conservative morality for decades. It’s about time that conservatives caught on.
It’s very interesting. Liberals feel they have every right to tell conservatives that morality is something that varies among people, that sexuality and abortion and religion are private affairs. They point out cleverly that religion and morality have always been tools to control the masses, paradigms by which people are made useful, and that the meaning people find in spirituality is a crutch by which they bear themselves up. Now, conservatives have accepted this, and as a result they believe they can do what they like and create their own morality afterward. Hopefully you liberals are happy with this, because you’ve caused it.
The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation’s decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.
Mind you, this is just(?) to rejuvenate the aging arsenal, apparently the old nukes are becoming too expensive, too dangerous to maintain and obsolete (technologically).
Still, it would be hard to reconcile this “cold war revival” with US policy to stop nuclear proliferation.
All very clever, but actually the article refers, not to <i>morality</i>, but to <i>reality</i>. Neither the reporter nor the official in that quote made any statements about the <i>morality</i> of starting wars of aggression, restraining civil liberties, or any other aspects of the Bush administration’s policy. The official didn’t argue that all <i>moralities</i> are equivalent (presumably, that he thinks his own morality is superior goes without saying). He basically stated that Bush’s actions take precedence over objective, observable <i>reality</i>. There is a big difference. For example, it is possible to say that the people of Iran would bitterly resist an American invasion without really asserting anything about the morality of such an invasion. That conclusion isn’t some kind of philosophical or spiritual assertion, it’s just an extrapolation of empirical and historical observations. But the official’s argument in this quote is basically that the government can ignore all such observations, and create the conclusion that it wants (“our own reality”) apparently just by force of will or something. That is not the same as creating their own morality.
I should also point out that neoconservatives such as this official generally despise relativism, subjectivism, liberalism, “moral equivalence,” and all the other things that you’re denouncing here. In fact, they’re about as absolutist as possible, although their particular version of absolutism might not be up your alley. They tend to be big admirers of Plato, filtered through the Straussian interpretation, which means that they don’t care for “spirituality” so much, but they believe in the existence of an elite that has a “natural” and absolute right to rule (and therefore, to tell “noble lies” to the people they rule).
And yes, of course sexuality, abortion and religion are private affairs. None of these statements or arguments has any bearing on any of those issues. The statement that sexuality is a private affair does not imply that there is no objective reality of any kind, or that it can be changed at will by the government.
This is exactly the irony of the quotation: that liberals, who have long been using deconstruction to take apart conservative morality, <i>would disavow deconstruction when it was applied to them</i>. It’s not conservatives who have been hating against the Enlightenment for the last forty years. Essentially, this neo-con has realized quite brilliantly that, in reducing Western history to game-like interplay of paradigms of understanding, liberal deconstructionists have destroyed the basis for their own sympathetic morality. His approach, therefore, is to embrace a Nietzschean Overman-mentality and create his own morality and impose it on others. The quotation is really brilliant, and hopefully it will provoke some reaction against the idea that everything can be deconstructed.
I should also point out that neoconservatives such as this official generally despise relativism, subjectivism, liberalism, “moral equivalence,” and all the other things that you’re denouncing here.
Oh, don’t mistake me. Neoconservatism is brilliant, but I don’t believe in it. I’m more concerned that liberalism and conservatism continue to draw out the best in each other. I’m more or less a Modernist, in that I believe there is some elusive system governing the universe, and I believe that the interplay of liberalism and conservatism is largely what draws out that system: liberals to break apart the old scheme, conservatives to remake it more precisely and insightfully. I largely endorse relativism and subjectivism, limited only by the possibility that one’s actions impede on another’s attempts to act in accordance with that elusive system.
But he’s not really applying deconstruction to any notions of <i>morality</i>. His statement does not really have much to do with morality at all. This quotation is not arguing for the morality of neoconservatism, nor does it attempt to use the idea of “moral equivalence” anywhere to justify its tenets. Rather, he is claiming, basically, that his status in an “empire” allows him to manipulate “discernible reality,” which is something else entirely. This statement is quite in line with the neoconservative opposition to moral relativism of any kind and with the neoconservative belief in a “natural elite.” In some sense, I guess you could say that his statement reflects the post-modern idea that our understanding of reality can be “socially constructed,” but if anything that only shows the accuracy and insight of that idea as applied to political processes.