Whether Bomb or No Bomb: How America Is Cornering Iran To Develop Nuclear Arms

Ask the average citizen in this country to highlight any major difference between Iran and Iraq, and I can bet you my lunch money most people will stumble. The current Presidential administration has thrown around descriptions of a possible preemptive military strike on Iran with words with like “World War III” and “bombing them back five years”, and the American public, half a decade into a war with Iraq, can at best only differentiate Iraq and Iran on the level of MadTV puns on iRack, iRan, and iPod products. With the mission of Iraq still underway, assuming that mission is now democratization rather than the original weapons of mass destruction case, the people of America risk growing numb to the idea of the second blatant preemptive attack on a foreign country in our lifetimes.

This is a stark contrast to all the uproar over the unprecedented preemptive character of the proposed Iraq war nearly five years ago, almost as though preemptive wars are as so totally five years ago as Friendster or Pepsi Blue, and subsequently no longer worth the media attention. As a whole, the population then dangerously underestimates the gravity of the situation with Iran and talks of bombing. After all, one of the current justifications behind the invasion of Iraq was the need for “regime change” and the need to oust a leader who they felt had carried out atrocities against his own nation. In the months of United Nations inspections leading up to the American ultimatum on Iraq, the United States initiated heavy discussion over Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, including over his defiance and alleged lack of compliance and cooperation with weapons inspections. Recently, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name grabs the headlines, often with the Western nations complaining about his general lack of cooperation with the United Nations’ demands that he cease alleged higher-level uranium enrichment for developing nuclear weapons. Note the parallel trend.

While Ahmadinejad does not share Saddam Hussein’s history of chemical gas attacks against his own civilian population (the Kurds), the American populace on average is known for its weak grasp on history, and can easily confuse and group the two as one and the same, just as some still group Iraq and 9/11 as intertwined cause and effect. Perception of the situation is the method upon which much of the nation deals with the complexity of global affairs, and the U.S. Presidential administration essentially sold the Iraq war to Americans with the simplicity of stirring this perception – ‘Iraq will attack us with anthrax, nerve gas, and anything else from their chemical arsenal, and we must act first’. It instills fear in the people, and what could be more fearsome than chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons.

The hawks in Washington are beating their war drums, suggesting an imminent doomsday if America does not act soon, lest we do not mind starting World War III. They toss around comparisons to Hitler, seeing that the era is one of the few frightening bits of history to which the average American can relate, even though neither Saddam Hussein nor Ahmadinejad stand at the same level. Yet we have top Guiliani adviser Norman Podhoretz urging bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”, and our future Presidential candidate hopefuls like Rudy Guiliani and Hillary Clinton sniping at each other on being too soft on Iran for the sake of appearing strong on national security issues.

Never mind if the world nations cannot assert with evidence that there really are nuclear weapons. We were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we cannot afford to be carelessly led into another nation with such assertions. Yet even if they did possess them, how would that be justification for carpet bombing nuclear facilities? We do not see Iran desiring to bomb France or India for having attained the capability of using the bomb. The U.S. holds Iran to a double standard, and the American public idly watches its leaders set those foreign policies. I would dread another nuclear bomb nation to the count as much as the next person, but with American soldiers occupying countries on two sides of its borders – Iraq and Afghanistan – as well as two aircraft carriers and a dozen warships in the Gulf, it becomes more plausible to assume Iran feels pressured to defend itself any way it can. And while there is a fair share of reluctance already among the American citizens to proceed with another war, the public sitting around uninvolved and desensitized to these kinds of preemptive wars is not going do much to derail those in Washington placing Iran in their crosshairs, believing they are helping America.

Whether the atomic ambitions are true or not, the United States is only going to work this out with Iran not by spearing threats to solely protect self interests, but by understanding their perspective and interests as a growing nation wrestling itself from its past of American influence, and it is us the American people who can involve ourselves to help our leaders back onto a path that truly benefits America.