Iran Nuclear Watch: Anonymous Assured Destruction

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, center, speaks at a Moscow Synagogue during a ceremony to mark its 100th anniversary on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appealed to Russia on Wednesday to help block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an apparent rebuff, offered him no public reassurances.

William Rusher: A world full of nukes?

It is therefore altogether possible that we will soon have to answer the unavoidable question: “Shall we use force against North Korea and Iran, or not?” Every responsible political leader, from George W. Bush to Nancy Pelosi, not to mention the horde of political commentators, owes the country a clear response to that question. For the next two years, the decisive response will be Bush’s; thereafter, it will be his successor’s. It may be possible to delay a decision up to some uncertain point, but thereafter the question will in effect have answered itself: “No.” (For the record, my answer would be “Yes.”) If, voluntarily or by the process of delay, “No” is our answer, let us at least be clear what kind of a world we will have opted to live in. North Korea and Iran will have nuclear weapons. (Indeed, North Korea already has a few.) Other nations will assuredly follow, beginning with their neighbors — Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan in the case of Iran; Japan, Taiwan and perhaps the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand in that of North Korea. Then the floodgates will open, as every country in Europe, South America and elsewhere that can afford to “go nuclear” will do so.

Prepare the war plans. It is inconceivable that the western world would survive with the destruction/failure of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the widespread desimination of nuclear bombs and missiles.

And then? Well, for one thing, if a nuclear weapon goes off in some American city, against whom shall we retaliate? The world will become a malignant hall of mirrors in which we cannot even tell who is attacking us.

And if our answer is “Yes,” and we use force against North Korea and Iran? The diplomatic consequences, in the case of Iran, would be dreadful. And North Korea, in its despotism’s dying hour, might manage to evade our countermeasures and drop one of its small hoard of nukes on South Korea or Japan — a ghastly consequence. But not as ghastly as condemning the world to live forever in the shadow of assured, and anonymous, destruction.

President Bush will NOT be able to punt these nuclear crises to a future president. The time is NOW for a decision.

Yes or no?

Military action or not?

Or prepare future generations to live in the SHADOW OF ASSURED ANONYMOUS DESTRUCTION.