Nuclear Iran

Fox brings us this story about the shame on the Administration when a nuclear Iran occurs.

This much is certain: an Iranian bomb would be a crushing setback for President Bush, whose doctrine of "pre-emption" is based on the policy of keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people.

“This administration's entire foreign policy, in the name of which we have fought two wars, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, would look hollow,” said Walter Russell Mead (search), a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Pre-Emption was a policy we've explored with significantly disappointing results (to nobody's surprise) and have, at no point in time, had no real interest in pursuing. The Pre-emption of Iraq's WMD programs occured concurrently with our inaction against both North Korea and Iran, both of whom were undergoing, at the time of our invasion, aggressive, declared pursual of the Nuclear weapon.

Another parallel world erupted when Dr Kahn started handing the stuff out.

We pre-empted none of it. The Administration created the myth of pre-emption as a propagandist technique of salesmanship- convince the relevent parties in the country (you and I are not included in this) that a country A) might acquire dangerous weapons and B) might decide to use them, or worse, to threaten to use them [an effective blackmail], and invade that country knowing full well that A) our intelligence suggesting they might have those resources is dubious at best and B) they also, conveniently, are a historical enemy in an oil-rich, Arab country, both of which fit nicely into profiling paradigms in our invasive catalogue.

Does pre-emption exist? I used to think so. Now, I believe it was another pamphaleteer's jargon that created a false, macho reaction to a non-existant threat.

So where is Fox News' real shame on the Administration? It clearly is that our initial military actions have fallen so far behind schedule for the real "pre-emption" to begin.

Quel Conundrum. Would invading a country because of a factual nuclear threat be worse than invading a country because of a fabricated one? There's little doubt that Iran's possession of a nuclear weapon would be a devastating problem [as any country that possesses a nuclear weapon poses a devastating problem], but the question is, how do you deal with it?

I don't want "the smoking gun to be a nuclear cloud," either, but hell... they already blew that one, didn't they?