Agree and disagree

Submitted by Sully (United States), May 17, 2006 at 10:16

You wrote "The US would preserve its own interests by doing it before the Israelis. Unfortunate perhaps, but it's about time to be real."

You were making sense to me up to this point when the form of your proposed solution revealed one of the main problems in the world today.

The U.S. has infantilized much of the world by overplaying its role as the watchful daddy. Naturally the world resents the U.S. and indulges in adolescent temper tantrums even as it clings to its bottle.

The U.S., Europe, China, India, Russia, the Middle East would all preserve their own interests by doing it before the Israelis. Given that the U.S. is well downwind of the fallout pattern, less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and farther away as a target I would think that others should come calling to ask U.S. participation in a coalition.

Additionally, it is not obvious to me that the limitation of collateral damage is necessarily a good thing. The Iranian leader has threatened the existence of Israel. Perhaps it would be well for the world to learn again on a relatively small scale that such existential threats should not be engaged in lightly. Nuclear weapons will, after all, eventually become common among nations.

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