Stoopid Stuff

Kerry Good!

In an interview with Financial Times, Sen. John Kerry did something unprecedented among Washington politicians and pundits. He told the truth about Iran's nuclear program. After years of wondering whether ANYBODY in the American leadership had ever even READ the NPT, it is stunning to discover that finally someone has the cojones to actually say that under the treaty and international law Iran has every right to enrich Uranium to produce reactor fuel, which is what they have been doing. The IAEA inspection regime has repeatedly assured the world that there is absolutely NO evidence that the Iranians have diverted any fissile materials to weaponization.

When you think of all the time, effort and international political collateral that has been wasted in order to try to end a program that is entirely legal and that exists unchallenged in dozens of other nations you realize how outrageous, unproductive and unnecessary it is. When you think about how many people have called for starting a WAR over the perfectly legal actions of the Iranian researchers, you wonder how it is that the US is not an utter laughingstock.

Israel has an advanced nuclear deterrent. There is no possibility that any reasonable, thinking person in Israel actually believes that an Iran with nuclear weapons, let alone an Iran with a nuclear research program under IAEA monitoring is truly an "existential threat". It's pretty clear that if the people in power in Israel want to avoid making any concessions to the Palestinians they need a credible external threat to keep people from concentrating on the brutal occupation of the West Bank and the horrible conditions being forced on the people of Gaza, and Iran fills that requirement nicely. It has, however, been appalling to watch the American government blindly and unquestioningly go along with nothing more than a political ruse in order to support a single political party in Israel.

And now, finally, someone stood up and told the truth. Someone powerful, as Kerry is the chairman of the foreign relations committee. Someone has actually pointed out the pasty white ugliness of the naked emperor. I'm very proud of John Kerry today. Maybe even slightly hopeful that this whole weird honesty thing might become a trend.

Pundits like to refer to a particular school of thought around International Relations as "realist", and oddly, much of the foreign policy under Bush/Cheney did not fall into that category. They never had much truck with realism, of that there can be no doubt. But one should be careful not to confuse a "realist" stance on foreign policy with being realistic. It is clearly time to start viewing the world without the obfuscation of ideology and fantasy, and learn to put the maximum effort into the most genuine challenges. To spend so much capital trying to artificially define challenges to serve nothing but a political agenda is nothing short of stupid. There are real challenges, from climate change and energy policy to human rights to economics to resource depletion. All the time spent addressing imaginary challenges only takes away from doing something about unquestionably REAL challenges. If there are solutions, they will come from powerful people being honest about what they are.

posted by mikey @ 1:05 PM