Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Unfortunately the religious radicals in the US and Israel already have them. What, in your mind, should be done about that?
How to stop Iran from wanting the bomb.
- Thread starter emzie
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BasketCase
Username sez it all
Seeing as how there are no such people in either the U.S. or Israel, I say let's cross that bridge if we get to it. (note use of the word "if")
Edit: Look, dude. The hypocrisy angle simply doesn't work here. It doesn't matter what the U.S. and Israel are doing right now. Is there any circumstance whatsoever where a religious nut should be allowed to have nukes? No. Should religious radicals be allowed to have nukes as a deterrent against U.S. invasion? No.
Edit: Look, dude. The hypocrisy angle simply doesn't work here. It doesn't matter what the U.S. and Israel are doing right now. Is there any circumstance whatsoever where a religious nut should be allowed to have nukes? No. Should religious radicals be allowed to have nukes as a deterrent against U.S. invasion? No.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
What nonsense.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
How so? There's nobody anywhere in the U.S. or Israeli government who comes anywhere close to the level of religious nutcasedom that exists in Iran.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Indeed. However that is true of the current regime in every country on the planet. However, there are some regimes which are more destructive than others. In that regard, none compare with the regime in Washington, DC. There is not another which even comes close. The current regime in Israel is a distant second.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Really? The entire Washington establishment is a gang of warmongering scum. I don't personally believe that this has much to do with religion but it is quite clear that it is driven by fundamentalist Christians and Jews.
Back in Iran, the Ayatollah says that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and that Iran would never embrace them.
Just who are the nutcases?
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Wow. I completely disagree with everything you wrote in both of those. I take it the word "anarchist" in your subtitle isn't just for kicks?
Only a very few regimes in the world really need to be destroyed. The current Iranian government is one; the U.S. and Israel are NOT. Many other regimes are far more destructive than the U.S. and Israel; one was Iraq, but we recently wiped that one out.
The Washington establishment is nowhere close to either fundamentalism nor warmongering. And, why would you take the Ayatollah at his word? If you're really an anarchist, he's the last kind of guy you should trust.
Only a very few regimes in the world really need to be destroyed. The current Iranian government is one; the U.S. and Israel are NOT. Many other regimes are far more destructive than the U.S. and Israel; one was Iraq, but we recently wiped that one out.
The Washington establishment is nowhere close to either fundamentalism nor warmongering. And, why would you take the Ayatollah at his word? If you're really an anarchist, he's the last kind of guy you should trust.
And this justifies having nuclear weapons… how?
Sooo, the real reasoning behind your arguments is 'Might makes right'. That'd be circular reasoning, you deserve to have nukes and the biggest, most powerful, armed forces because you're powerful and you are powerful because you have nukes and the biggest, most powerful, armed forces in the planet.BasketCase said:And the U.S. military has 9,000 M1A1 Abrams tanks that decline your proposal.
About the only sentence of yours in the whole thread that I can agree with, I think.BasketCase said:
No religious nuts? In the U.S. you have people who believe the Earth is flat, you have a Nazi party, you have the Tea Party, you even say 'Amen' when you agree to something. Never mind the people who claim that Obama is the Antichrist sometimes being elected into office.
Israel is based on a land claim by a book written in the name of God that states it's the perpetual home of a Chosen People. Is that not religious fanatism?
Already answered about religious radicals before… but why should any form of radical be allowed to have something as destructive as an atomic bomb?BasketCase said:
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Then, forget the rest. We agree that the Iranian government is a problem. Should they be allowed to have nukes, or not?
....absolutely nobody who even comes close to the religious insanity seen commonplace in Iran. When's the last time there was a stoning in the U.S......?
Case closed.
The Tea Party are not radicals. Flat Earthers and Nazis do exist in the U.S., but as I already said they have no presence in the U.S. government and never will. In fact, most Nazis refuse to work within the American political system because it's too tolerant of Jews, blacks, gays, and other people they consider verboten.
Radicals are not a problem in the U.S. or Israel.
And I happen to be an atheist.
No, it is not. Do Jews execute people for apostacy? When's the last time there was a stoning by Israelis? Whereas apostacy in Iran is punishable by death. In fact, one guy who refused Islam is being threatened with the death penalty in Iran, AT THIS VERY MOMENT.
By any measure, the current Iranian regime is far more radical than the U.S. or Israel.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
They aren't building nukes so the question is academic, isn't it?
Really? You think it's so much better when they are killed by lethal injection? And the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far. Just 5% of the world's population but 25% of the prisoners.
And you'd better believe that there are religious nutbars - people like Rick Santorum who have been pushing this "War of Civilizations" for years and continually are looking for yet another country to destroy. They are shameless in their endless warmongering.
Iran is mild group of people who haven't threatened another country in 150 years. Americans and Israelis, in contrast, are continually dealing death and destruction on country after another.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Not academic at all. In fact it should be foremost in your mind: should religious nutjobs such as those currently running Iran, be allowed to have nuclear weapons or not?
Actually, yes. However, you misunderstood the question. When's the last time there was any form of execution in the U.S. or Israel for apostacy?? In the U.S. and Israel, the government does not kill people for being the wrong religion. In Iran it's commonplace.
Of course. Because we have better police departments, with more advanced technology and training. Our incarceration rate is higher because we catch crooks more accurately.
Whereas in Iran (and many other countries) their method is along the lines of cutting off your fingers one at a time until you confess.
Nope. Not for a minute. Rick Santorum is a teddy bear compared to your average religious nutjob on the other side of the planet. There are no religious radicals in the U.S. or Israeli government.
Puleeze. With a capital puleeze. Iran has threatened many other countries, many times. Not just the U.S. and Israel, either. In fact, you should read up on Iran's rather icy relationship with Saudi Arabia--mostly because Saudi Arabia is about half a heartbeat away from making its own strike against Iran's nuclear program. (Saudi Arabia is hoping somebody else will do their dirty work for them, but right now the U.S. and Israel don't have the spine, and a Saudi-Iran war is looking like a very real possibility at the moment)
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
BasketCase
Username sez it all
That last bit terminates the conversation. We're done.
Iran should only be allowed to have nukes after it becomes a truly free state--as in, people can criticize the government without getting arrested and shot. This is the only way to make sure nuclear weapons serve the PEOPLE and not the government.
No free state, no nukes. What any other government is doing, whether U.S. or Israel or outer Mongolia or anybody else has nothing to do with it.
Iran should only be allowed to have nukes after it becomes a truly free state--as in, people can criticize the government without getting arrested and shot. This is the only way to make sure nuclear weapons serve the PEOPLE and not the government.
No free state, no nukes. What any other government is doing, whether U.S. or Israel or outer Mongolia or anybody else has nothing to do with it.
CaptainF
The Professional Poster
Who cares if they have nukes? If they strike anyone with nukes, Iran will cease to exist.
What you're failing to demonstrate is how a campaign of military violence would help this situation at all, or cause people to abandon their radical beliefs.
Complete and utter nonsense with no basis in reality. Factually incorrect.
On the contrary, it's looking like Israel is resorting to it's old warmongering ways.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
And that's a problem in more than one way.
First off, "if they strike anyone with nukes", then Iran STRUCK SOMEONE. Vaporizing a city full of completely innocent people. And second, when Iran ceases to exist, how many innocent Iranians do you think will die? Lots. We need to prevent both of these from happening. As I said several times (though I forget if it was this thread or one of the other Iran threads) the Iranian PEOPLE are not the problem. The Iranian GOVERNMENT is the problem.
Simple: dead radicals.
I'll skip the rest of your post, mostly because you stooped to that "complete disconnect from reality" deal. Knock that off.
kramerfan86
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2008
- Messages
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There is little reason to think Iran is suddenly going to just nuke something for the sake of nuking something. Why should the world assume Iran is suddenly going to be the first nation to just not care about MAD? Because the Israelis say so?
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Because religious fanatics are precisely the kind of people MAD doesn't work against. So what if they die, as long as they take a couple million infidels and heretics with them??? That's how a religious nut thinks.
The U.S. is simply the only nation to do it with nuclear weapons. And that was actually an act of mercy. The Japanese mindset at the time was something along the lines of the Klingon warrior code. Fight to the death. A conventional invasion would have been met with fanatical Japanese resistance and resulted in the slaughter of many millions of Japanese civilians. The way to crush a fanatical warrior's spirit is to deny them the chance to die honorably on the battlefield. That's why nukes were necessary to get Japan to surrender: attack in a way they can't fight back, show them a war they can't possibly win.
And the U.S. has never used nuclear weapons since. Not against the Soviet Union, or against Vietnam, or against North Korea, or against Cuba, or against Iraq, or against Afghanistan, or against Iran (yet!). That's why the U.S. has the right to possess nuclear weapons: because we've demonstrated that we know when to push The Button and when not to.
Wrong. Many nations that participated in World War II (on BOTH sides!) did the same thing. That was how war was fought back then, because "smart" weapons didn't exist. Entire cities were bombed off the map, many times.
The U.S. is simply the only nation to do it with nuclear weapons. And that was actually an act of mercy. The Japanese mindset at the time was something along the lines of the Klingon warrior code. Fight to the death. A conventional invasion would have been met with fanatical Japanese resistance and resulted in the slaughter of many millions of Japanese civilians. The way to crush a fanatical warrior's spirit is to deny them the chance to die honorably on the battlefield. That's why nukes were necessary to get Japan to surrender: attack in a way they can't fight back, show them a war they can't possibly win.
And the U.S. has never used nuclear weapons since. Not against the Soviet Union, or against Vietnam, or against North Korea, or against Cuba, or against Iraq, or against Afghanistan, or against Iran (yet!). That's why the U.S. has the right to possess nuclear weapons: because we've demonstrated that we know when to push The Button and when not to.
A rarely-made but incredibly valid point in the argument!
As much as killing everyone who might ever harbour radical ideology is appealing (didn't a certain Senator McCarthy have a slightly watered-down plan to do that?), the fact remains that killing 10,000 radical muslims will create 100,000 radicalised normal muslims, insane grieving brothers, and patriotic zealots wanting to kill the bastards that bombed 10,000 of their countrymen. Can you imagine that happening in the USA? Think how many people became violently anti-Muslim post 9/11, and imagine that on an infinitely greater scale.
