With Iran's hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.
Iran's nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.
- John R. Bolton in the Washington Post
Add Iran to the long list of places Bolton would love to attack. The full list includes Somalia, Chicago, Iraq (he wanted this one so badly he manipulated inspections by firing the head of a global arms-control agency in 2002,) and of course, North Korea. It appears Johnny Bolton is itching to kill more civilians, and so this time he's playing the part of reluctant chickenhawk. It's not that he wants to bomb Iran, but that regime change thing just didn't work out!
As if President Mousavi's ascension would have suddenly made Bolton a pro-Iran lover. Even if there had been regime change, Mirhossein Mousavi had explicitly opposed any moves to suspend uranium enrichment. Mousavi said the same thing back in 2003 when Mohammad Khatami decided to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
We obtained the technology one hundred percent internally. Subsequently, the issue of suspension came up. In view of concerns at the international level, activities were suspended in order to put to rest any suspicions over the probability of the activities being diverted to nuclear weapons and such. I must say here explicitly that I opposed the suspension decision from the outset.
Bolton brings up the lost opportunity of regime change to disguise the fact that he's simply itching to drop some bombs on Iran. Because if he looked that eager to kill a lot of innocent civilians, he'd look...well...batshit crazy. Which he is.
It never occurs to Bolton that: A) Iran, a growing state, needs to supply power to its people, and one way to do that is with nuclear power and B) The US, the only country to ever detonate a nuclear bomb among civilians, and one of the leading proprietors of nuclear weapons, is in no position to dictate to the rest of the world what they can and cannot do with nuclear technology.
But we should expect nothing less than poor planning and caveman-like grunts from a former comrade of the great war strategist George W. Bush. Like his former boss, Bolton is super psyched to go to war, but he fails to mention civilians casualties, or even a basic game plan for how an invasion of Iran would go down. Maybe that's because he never served in a war himself, and he just doesn't know what to do. He could have served in Vietnam, but according to John, "I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy." Oh. Fair enough. He attended Yale instead, which is sort of like going to war in Vietnam if the Vietnamese were all white WASPS and the constant gunfire and bombs were witty retorts.
That's okay, John. Don't feel ashamed. You can play General all you like, but stop killing civilians to prove that you're not a total coward.
Cross-posted from Allison Kilkenny's blog. Also available on Facebook and Twitter.