Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Dumb Letters: Nukes Are Awesome for Us, Very Bad for Them

Will newspapers never cease printing letters from guys in flannel shirts and baseball caps that say "CAT Diesel Power"?

Here's yet another from the They're-Going-to-Kill-Us-All dungheap. Thank you, LA Times.

Doyle McManus doesn't pay enough attention to one of the most serious potential consequences of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon -- proliferation. If Iran can thumb its nose at the U.S. and build nuclear capability, why couldn't Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia? Or, indeed, any country? Sooner or later, you're looking at a Middle East boiling with countries hostile to Israel and the United States, all with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. This would be a nightmare scenario.

Given such a probability, wouldn't the decision to mount a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities become not only justifiable but a necessity?

Carl Moore
Lomita

There is a very very simple test that people like this never seem to conduct. It's called putting the shoe on the other foot. It's fun! Let's try it.

Right now, we have nukes. Lots of 'em. Enough to wipe out everybody on the planet several times over. And we constantly threaten other nations with them. The Idiot made a habit of it. It was on his schedule. So, using the criteria that the letter-"writer" states, aren't we the most dangerous and hostile nation on earth? Aren't we the embodiment of the "nightmare scenario" for the rest of the world? And, given this, shouldn't other nations be attacking us right now? It's totally justifiable.

This all boils down to the usual argument that WE are good and THEY are evil. Therefore, anything we do is okay, even if it's exactly the same thing as what the evil people are doing. There's a word for this. Ready for it? You know it's coming. Hypocrisy.

A person that lives near me has a gun. I know he does. And he's not the nicest fellow in the world. Should I get a gun and shoot him before he shoots me? Apparently so. It's justifiable. And he, of course, should shoot me before I get my gun, because I couldn't possibly be getting it to defend myself against him. I'm getting it because I want to get into a shooting match with him.

Beyond whether any of this saber-rattling is justifiable in a moral sense, we have a deficit of logic in the political sense. These people know that we have all those nukes. They know that if they send one teensy-weensy little nukey-wuke our way then Allah's going to have to place a rush order for a whole pile of virgins. So why would any remotely sane leader order a strike against the most heavily weaponized nation in the history of the planet?

Of course, this is logic. And Larry the Cable Guy doesn't seem to think that those crazy ragheads are capable of that. But then, neither is he. Takes one to know one, I reckon.

2 comments:

Mrs. Chili said...

I LOVE this feature. I regularly read them aloud to Mr. Chili. Keep doing it.

MAB said...

Aw, shucks. Thanks.