Why They’ll Nuke Iran

Because they think they can.

Because they think they’ll get away with it. They control the U.S., they can ignore the U.N., they can intimidate everyone else.

They think, Russia’s nuclear arsenal is deteriorated, China’s isn’t yet big enough to matter, no one else has got squat. And it feels good to talk about, doesn’t it? Nuke ’em. Fry ’em. To a diseased, scared heart, heck yeah it feels good.

Fact is Iran is at least a decade from building a single atomic weapon. It takes thousands of centrifuges, working together over time, to produce enough fissionable material to make a bomb. (It also takes a heck of a lot of uranium.) Even if Iran had a bomb it wouldn’t do them any good. Once they fired it they’d be naked and we’d literally destroy the place — no one would complain in that case.

But nuke ’em now instead, the Bushies think. Nuke ’em because it’s distracting. Nuke ’em because it scares Americans just to think it. Nuke ’em and they’ll vote for you, you think, they’ll wet their pants like they did over 9/11.  They’ll let you get away with anything.

Now, you want to know how to stop ’em from this?

Bring back fear. In them.

George W. Bush can only be restrained (if he can be restrained at all) by fear, by the real fear that he himself will be tried, convicted and executed for war crimes if he goes nuclear.

That’s why I’ve never cottoned to this impeachment talk. It’s unrealistic, and it doesn’t scare ’em. A war crimes trial, that’s different. Sitting in The Hague next to Charles Taylor of Liberia might scare ’em. If they figured on dieing like Slobodan Milosevic, in a cell, of a heart attack, ignored, that might do it. If they saw themselves rotting like Sirhan Sirhan until no one knows what you’re in there for anymore, that might do it.

Right now that’s unlikely. Despite the lies, despite the brutality of Iraq, it’s not enough to get Bush to The Hague, where the case belongs. (A free, impartial judgement on the merits could not be made here. That’s why international justice matters.)

But nuke Iran?

No, they can’t nuke us back. No one can.

But if we nuke Iran no one has to do business with us. No one has to sell us oil. No one has to trade with us. No one has to come here to visit. And our best and brightest don’t have to stay here. (Many are already being lured overseas — there’s a brain drain on, folks.)

Watch the U.S. economy go into utter collapse and people are going to listen to the world again. Americans are going to understand, then, that the only way get our living standards back UP to Mexico’s standard is to do what the world demands. Hand over the war criminals, like Serbia and Liberia finally did.

Hand over Bush, and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Rice, the whole bunch of ’em. Hand over their enablers, and hand over their cheerleaders. Hand over the warbloggers. Hand over all of ’em. Hand over their lawyers, too, to defend them, to bill them every cent they or their kids or their grandkids might ever have, to leave ’em destitute even if one of ’em should get off. (The lawyers are the worst part.) Then stand back, watch the world take its judgement, and let it take its judgement of us, too.

Because it will. If we nuke Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, which is no real threat to us,  the world most assuredly will take its judgement of us. America’s role as a world leader will be destroyed by the world’s contempt if we nuke Iran.

Now you just have to convince Bush of this.