EXCEPT THAT PAKISTAN KEPT THEIRS AND WE ATTACK THEM EVERY DAY:

Libya: The Lost War (Amitai Etzioni, June 24, 2011, National Interest)

For one thing, the intervention emboldens Iran. The Obama administration has declared repeatedly that it is “unacceptable” for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. The same statement was made by the previous White House and endorsed by our European allies. Moreover, the U.S. government has repeatedly stated that “all options are on the table,” the phrase used to threaten military action. WikiLeaks make it clear that defanging Iran is viewed by our main allies in the Middle East as vital to their interests.

Despite these bipartisan, multilateral declarations, the leaders of Iran cannot but conclude that a nation that gives up its program of obtaining of WMDs—as Qaddafi’s Libya did—is much more vulnerable to Western intervention than a nation that succeeds in acquiring them, as North Korea did, and furthermore, that the Western alliance has a hard time dealing with military forces much less impressive than those of Iran. NATO forces, in Secretary Gates’ words, are so weak they face “collective military irrelevance.”

It is, however, certainly true that we should demonstrate the uselessness of nukes to these sorts of regimes by taking out Pakistan and North Korea's.

Posted by oj at June 28, 2011 5:31 AM
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