CLEVELAND — Newt Gingrich asserted on Wednesday that an Iranian nuclear attack on the United States was “a real danger” and that it could kill and wound hundreds of thousands of Americans.Read the rest here.
His comments were the latest in a string of hawkish and even apocalyptic statements that some Republican presidential candidates, particularly Mr. Gingrich, have been using to discuss Iran.
But his remarks Wednesday at an appearance here may have been intended to carve out new space on the issue against Rick Santorum, who now appears much more of a threat to Mr. Gingrich after Mr. Santorum’s surprisingly wide victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday night.
Mr. Santorum has made warning about the threat of the Iranian nuclear program a signature issue, and he is betting his campaign on a strong showing in many of the same “Super Tuesday” states, like Ohio, that Mr. Gingrich must perform well in to remain viable.
This chickenhawks pandering to the war crowd is repulsive.
They're pandering to the "Israel Lobby", which imagines it has to support whatever Israel ever does, right or wrong.
ReplyDelete(My code word to publish this is "berate"!
Anyway, Iran isn't that crazy! It knows Israel has all kinds of nukes and so does the US, and any attack Iran could make would be met with prompt annihilation of that entire country.
ReplyDeleteThe Soviet Union didn't use her nukes. Neither has India, nor Pakistan.
We should protect ourselves from these nuclear scare tactics by recalling exactly which country is the only one to have used nuclear weapons to attack an enemy in war.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the worst aspect of this politics of perpetual war (worse, even, than the delusion that the interests of the United States and those of Israel are identical) is the facile conviction that the United States has never done wrong, will not do wrong, and is always and everywhere is incapable of doing wrong; but whoever we designate as our enemy this week is irredeemably evil and sure to do all manner of evil against us (and, of course, against Israel).
This is madness.
TO say it's madness is to give up hope of correcting it. It isn't madness and it isn't hopeless; hence, in principle it can be corrected. In practice I'm not sure how!
ReplyDelete