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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (16406)	4/9/2006 6:42:53 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541339

I personally think Iran's nuclear ambitions must be stopped. We all wish so. As long as the US does not renounce nuclear weapons and refrains from calling other nations as "an axis of evil", no degree of diplomacy or military adventures such as the one being espoused by Bush will stop other nations from going nuclear.

To: carranza2 who wrote (16406)	4/9/2006 8:48:31 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541339

The Bush folk should have learned by now that public opinion, world as well as domestic, is a necessary not a contingent part of any foreign policy. In no particular order, here are the parts that come to mind. 1. US military leaders are going to be reluctant at best, unwilling at worst, to engage in tactics which are outside the bounds of acceptable warfare. If one accepts the notion that "acceptable" varies by circumstance, it is still the case that the use of nuclear capabilities would be acceptable in only the most dire of circumstances. So understood by a wide body of public opinion. 2. If a fairly large portion of American public opinion is not on board, the Bush administration not only bumps into the limitation above, but, given the antipathy to nuclear weapons and the sense they should be used in only the worst of circumstances, they will face a great deal of public opposition at home. Street demonstrations might be the least of it. The Republican party might well sense it will not only lose its momentary dominance but might well lose political clout for a much longer time. It could well bail out, leaving the Bush folk with absolutely no support. It's hard to imagine a worst foreign policy. 3. One of the major failures of the Iraq invasion was the failure to manage the runup to the invasion such that the "coalition" was a broad based one. Much of the personnel limitations after the invasion stem from the inability and unwillingness of other governments to commit resources. 4. All of this in conjunction with the disdain with which the entire middle east would now look upon the US would be a foreign policy calamity of the first order. The US troops in Iraq would be in much greater danger; the likelihood of terrorist attacks on the US would be greatly increased. Etc. Admittedly, the Bush folk have so lost their credibility that, even if the threat is as serious and immediate as you believe, they will be unable to do persuade public opinion. It's just one more indication of their failures that they seem unwilling to see this and acknowledge the limitations it presents. I gather you would argue that all this pales in the face of an Iran with nuclear capabilities. But there are many, many more options available than simple bombing. That should only be the last, most desperate of options. Not the first.