“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Who is McCain Kidding?

Jorge Hirsch writes, “The trigger will be Israel, the target Iran, the nuclear aggressor the U.S..”

O Boy, I hope not. Does anyone think that we, or Israel can drop bombs on Iran, dust off our hands and come home declaring “Mission Accomplished,” and think that will be the end of it? If we, or more likely Israel, attack Iran, it’s a whole new war. We can’t get out of the ones we are already in. Even after five years, 4000 of our troops dead, 30,000 wounded, many of them injured for life, a half trillion dollars down the tube… and that’s against a nation whose military had been broken by U.S. victories in 1991 followed by ten years of bombings and sanctions.

Iran, on the other hand has 70 million people, missiles capable of sinking ships, an army of over 850,000 troops, 1600 tanks, 21,000 armored vehicles, 70 warships and 3 submarines. I hope somebody is counting the cost this time.

The bigger question is: What crime has Iran committed? Developing a nuclear weapon? That may be stupid, but is it a crime? We have done it and so has Israel. According to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There are 30 countries that have nuclear programs, while only nine of them have nuclear weapons. If Bush allows us to get drawn into a nuclear attack on Iran because in the words of John Bolton, “Iran is a direct threat to Israel,” Jorge Hirsch describes how it will look to the world:

A nuclear superpower will have nuked a non-nuclear state that is a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty signatory and is cooperating with the IAEA, at the instigation of a state that is not an NPT signatory, that reportedly has over 100 nuclear bombs of its own, and that initiated hostilities with an unprovoked act of military aggression.[1]

What can we do? We can make it clear that the U.S. will protect Israel’s existence against any nation that aggressively seeks Israel’s destruction. At the same time, we must reign in Israel’s aggressive attacks on its neighbors and especially its brutal occupation of Palestinian lands and oppression of its people. And our leaders must meet and talk with the leaders of Iran about our concerns and theirs.

Thomas Are
September 7, 2008

[1] Jorge Hirsch, Israel, Iran, and the U.S: Nuclear War, Here We Come. (October 17, 2005)