I’ve had a number of interesting emails in the last few days about Iran… or at least, I think they were about Iran. It’s hard to be sure when mid-stream thoughts seem to morph into a discussion about Iraq. For example:
“The haste to attack Iran does not surprise me at all. Doesn’t anyone care that threatening Iraq with a nuclear attack will mobilize the entire Middle East against us?”
I’ve not only received emails like this, I’ve seen similar things online.
Now it’s possible, I suppose, that people have simply achieved Pavlovian-esque conditioning, and just need to pay closer attention to where they put their fingers on their keyboards. “Oops. I’m just so used to writing about Iraq…lol…”
Polimom, however, suspects a different psychological cause: the Freudian slip — or in the non-vocal world of the new media, the Freudian keystroke.
Polimom agrees that many of the arguments, debates, and rhetoric regarding Iran sound disturbingly familiar; a chilling deja vu for those of us who did not buy into the “Saddam is a terrible threat to America, and we have to get him out of there before he blows us all up with his Terrible Weapons of Mass Destruction!”, or “Hussein was part of the 9-11 plot!”
But folks, Ahmadinejad is not on the neocon payroll. Cherry-picking intelligence reports is not required here.
Beyond the overarching Arab anger about Palestine, there is little commonality between the situations in Iraq and Iran. There is, however, one enormous difference: Iran can, in the foreseeable future, achieve this:
“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,” Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”
For anyone still suffering from subconscious psychological confusion, yesterday’s statements from Ahmadinejad should make the distinction easier for flying fingers on opinion keyboards.
The threat risks do not compare, and no matter how angry someone is about Iraq or Bush, unclouded thinking is required now. Iraq is not Iran, and it’s crucial to remember that.
Sure, “unclouded thinking” is nice. And being angry at how badly Bush has botched things in Iraq is perfectly rational. it’s also very rational to say that if has committed one major disaster he is not to be trusted again.
There are no good options left for dealing with Iran. Period.