"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."
-- George W. Bush
This is George Bush talking about Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. He explains that a National Intelligence Estimate that says they have no program is a warning that they might have one. Obviously this has to win some sort of award for circular reasoning (come on, how ridiculous is it that he says the fact they don't have one proves they might have one later….
And if he does believe this absurdity, then wasn't Japan justified in attacking us in Pearl Harbor?
They heard that we had a nuclear weapons program - and we did. And that we might be able to start it any time - which was relatively true. And that if we had nuclear weapons, we might use them against Japan one day - which obviously proved to be true. So, they launched a pre-emptive strike against the United States because we had a nuclear weapons program they feared we might use against them at a later time.
Under the Bush doctrine, isn't Pearl Harbor the perfect case for using a pre-emptive first strike? Japan was rightfully concerned about our weapons program and they rightfully struck us first.
Of course, the only problem with that theory is that there is an excellent chance we would have never used those nuclear weapons against Japan if they hadn't attacked us first. Gee, I wonder if this could be a decent argument against pre-emptive strikes.
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3 comments:
i don't really care for that analogy. the circumstances leading up to pearl harbor and wwII were just totally different.
sure the president is an idiot and is wrong about Iran, I just really don't see how this article justifies that...
robbie,
Thanks for the comment. Exactly how would you characterize Bush's argument that we have to confront Iran forcefully because they might have a nuclear weapon program at some time in the future?
i would characterize the argument as stupid, but thats just me!
i mean i see where he's coming from in terms of trying to get rid of a threat before it becomes serious, i (along with you) just don't agree.
i personally think its a policy issue. i don't see the need for us to intervene in the worlds business. i think if we really want to eliminate terrorism, then we need to stop meddling in middle eastern affairs and pissing everyone off.
i won't go too far into it thought because i am sure i am 'preachin to the choir' here.
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