Daniel Luban saw former Amb. John Bolton last night in Chicago and it was hair-raising. Bear in mind that this guy is talking at Temple Judea in Manhasset, Long Island, next week. Big lecture. Temple Judea, do you think this is wise, prudent, or in line with Jewish values? Luban:
Discussing Iran during a Tuesday speech at the University of Chicago, Bolton appeared to call for nothing less than an Israeli nuclear first strike against the Islamic Republic [of Iran]. (The speech, sponsored by the University Young Republicans and Chicago Friends of Israel, was titled, apparently without a trace of irony, “Ensuring Peace.”)
“Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” Bolton said, echoing his previously-stated belief that sanctions will prove ineffectual in changing Tehran’s behavior. “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”
Bolton made clear that the latter option is unacceptable. “There are some people in the administration who think that it’s not really a problem, we can contain and deter Iran, as we did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I think this is a great, great mistake and a dangerously weak approach…I don’t think [deterrence] works that way with a country like Iran.”…
Of course, it is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton’s use of the “n-word” is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks.
Can’t you just see the FOX/necon/nutjob argument forming: ‘America HAS to invade Iran so that Israel doesn’t nuke them.’
I’ve already seen that line being peddled.
If Israel attacks Iran it will mean war, which is to say that Israelis might actually get hurt when Iran retaliates. So the US needs to attack Iran instead and – I assume – use such overwhelming firepower that Iran won’t be able to retaliate and Israel will get its way with impunity – again.
So the US needs to make war in Iran to guarantee (Israel) peace.
Yeah, because the only thing that’s better than a war on two fronts is a war on three fronts.
I wish somebody would explain to the Pentagon that Three of a Kind is a scoring hand in Poker but not in War.
Well, the only ones who could be peddling that must be Israelis because any military expert with half a brain knows that you can’t be involved in three wars at once. But Israel, as a country, has never engaged in anything more difficult than going next door and dropping our materiel on its neighbors. It has never engaged in a world war. It has never engaged in a real regional war; every ‘war’ Israel has engaged in involved one country at a time. They’re like Halloween cartoons dressing up in big boy uniforms and talking like they know what they’re doing. They’re small-minded little S.S. cut-outs inflicting pain on prison rats, but their soldiers have never paid the price on the world stage.
Bolton has clearly gone off the deep end, even compared to deep ends he has previously gone off. He’s like living proof that going mad is not like dying — having done it once, you can do it repeatedly to ever-greater degrees.
You know he gets paid for these public speaking engagements. In this case the Temple Judea site informs us the fee was provided by AIPAC.
Bolton, what a dork. One of our most prominent neo-con, armchair warriors who pounds the table to put the children of the heartland at lethal risk. This from a coward who doesn’t have the cojones to actually put on a uniform and defend his own country (as is the case with so many other weenie-cons).
Source: link to democraticunderground.com
Dork??? How about murderer? How about ‘a threat to Western Civilization’? How about any American Jew who goes along with his insanity deserves the virulent anti-semitism that will result if this happens? How about someone run a stake through his heart the way we should have done Hitler?
That’s a waste of resources. What we need to do is sentence him to life without parole. In one of those carnival dunk tanks. Finally! An appointment well suited to his sense of decorum and intellectual magnitude.
:-)
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Bolton is also quoted from that same speech arguing against the notion that deterrence can work with Iran: “the Soviets believed that they only went around once in this world, and they weren’t real eager to give that up — as compared to a theological regime in Tehran which yearns for life in the hereafter more than life on earth…I don’t think [deterrence] works that way with a country like Iran.”
This brings to mind the arguments that were made during the Korean war and the Vietnam war that the US should use nuclear weapons. Namely, Asians valued life less than the Americans do. Thus we should not fight them with our troops on the ground but just exterminate them with nuclear war. This is fundamentally a deeply racist argument. I had a Chinese American friend from the antiwar movement in 1968 that was so deeply offended by that argument. He would become enraged when he saw the prowar forces pushing this notion that Asians somehow had less respect for life than the “civilized” west. Look at the behavior of French and British troops launching mass suicide attacks against entrenched German positions at Somme, etc during WWI.
Also comparing this to the actions of the Soviets is another grotesque distortion of history. Read about the heroic defence of Moscow in the winter of 1941 or the battle of Stalingrad a year later. Literally hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers gave up their lives resisting German aggression. These actions are now considered heroic. But let a Palestinian show similar bravery against foreign aggression, it is called ‘cowardly’ or for those who engage in suicide attacks, it is reformulated as ‘homicide’ attacks.
It should be clear that when a people feel that their entire culture is threatened by an outside aggressor, many of their soldiers (or insurgents, who happen to defend a people not recognized as a state) will be willing to sacrifice their lives. This is true for the French and British boys in WWI, the Russians during WWII, many Americans in our perpetual state of war, Israeli soldiers to be sure, Palestinians and most recently the Iranians. It is so deeply racist to describe us and our allies willingness to die in war as heroic and our enemies willingness to die in war as somehow subhuman.
Actually (and I wish I understood this at the time), there is an analogy to Russia. Though the US claimed to be worried about a Soviet first strike, that was never their doctrine: for one thing, they had no need for it. First use of nukes was, however, official US doctrine, as in the European “tripwire.” Now with Iran we see USIsrael projecting our intended attack onto an enemy to justify our intended attack.
As for “Strangelove,” how seriously does anyone take a guy who appears on the Bill Maher ? Sorry I asked.
It is so deeply racist to describe us and our allies willingness to die in war as heroic and our enemies willingness to die in war as somehow subhuman. Beyond racist.
Oh god, the Russians suffered so much during WWII. An incredible amount of deaths. Benjamin Schwarz, Literary Editor for The Atlantic, said is was 50 million civilians and 29 million military. They fought in the dead of winter with no socks, just newspaper in their shoes and vodka to deaden the pain (Schwarz didn’t say this; I read it somewhere else). I should find Schwarz article located somewhere on my computer, and even though its OT, put it up: it’s bracing for a discussion such as this.
Here’s the Benjamin Schwarz article, which I thought was terrific.