I think Barnett sees the future far better than you or I do. He's got a gift.
I ask myself, what does he see that the rest of us don't?
Try this for size -- suppose Iran has a nuclear bomb? Just one? What would they do with it?
They could bomb Israel -- if so, bye-bye Israel, bye-bye Palestine. If someone really wants to do it, it can't be stopped, no more than suicide bombers, no more than terrorists, just delayed.
What's the followup? Bye-bye Tehran, for sure. And, if I were an Israeli submarine captain, bye-bye Mecca just to show them what I think of their stupid rock and their stupid "religion."
Can we imagine the entire Muslim world mobilizing like the Germans mobilized in 1939? Sure, we can imagine it. They've been doing it since the 8th century. Not even a hundred years ago, the Ottomans possessed most of Eastern Europe, had the right to every first born son and one out of every three Christian children were conscripted into the Janissaries.
Are we looking at a return of the Caliphate? Some Muslims have been trying for that since the fall of the Ottomans, and probably always will, as long as there are Muslims.
Can they achieve this with one bomb?
No. We couldn't even conquer Japan with one bomb. What scared the Japanese was two bombs, and the expectation of more to come.
As nasty as one bomb is, it isn't the harbinger of nuclear war. For that, you need a superpower. And Iran isn't it.
Do you want to radicalize the entire world of Islam? So that they are motivated to reform the Caliphate in order to protect themselves? That idea scares me far more than one bomb going off, even in Washington.
It may sound ridiculous but I've given it a lot of thought. One nuclear bomb set off at ground level would be a terrible thing but life would go on for the rest of us. We'd adjust. The Japanese adjusted. |
