Contumacious

You did not address the question I posed to you in regards to America's stance on nuclear proliferation and which states it chooses to support and which ones it chooses not to support. Instead you seem to be using this forum as a means to selfishly decry that Israel has no right to exist, which puts you position of nuclear rights for Iran in a new light.





Lesly, really THE worst? I personally feel Rwanda wins that award, but which partition do you refer to exactly? Since it follows this strange reasoning for the "real anti-Semitic type" I am guessing you are not being general and do in fact refer to Israel? I am really not totally sure tho.

In regards to nuclear proliferation and what role it plays in escalating war or regional instability why does no one here think we can and should consider the dynamics in the India and Pakistan conflict? Or even the Korean Peninsula? It seems unnaturally obsessive and a dishonest display of intellectual pursuit when this discussion only ever involves one particular state, one region of the world and one political dynamic. The IAEA is in fact an international (thats what the I stands for) agency.
Again I will state the fact that India enjoys US nuclear support, not to mention Pakistan and later Bangladesh was also created by and partitioned by foreign powers, and yet we never hear this global "seething hatred" for Pakistanis, even tho some claim they murdered 3 million Bengali (in a war in which the US sided with Pakistan) we never hear anyone around here yelling about how Pakistan should not exist.

I think the partitioning itself has little to do with it and who it was partitioned for is a far more relevant factor. I think the idea that people focus on Israel not because of that fact it is a Jewish state but instead for dressed up reasons of historical geographic unfairness and for the concerns of the indigenous people of the lands is just simply not true. If it was we would hear more concern for those who lived in Bengali during Pakistan's attempt, with American support, of ethnic cleansing. Richard Nixon, America's president at the time, personally despised India's PM Indira Gandhi and called her an "old witch" among other things and he stated that all Indians were "a slippery, treacherous people" *link While his support for Pakistan can best be summed up by one of his advisors comments refering to the then Pakistani President.... "In all honesty, the president has special feelings for Yahya. One cannot make policy on that basis, but it is a fact of life." --Henry Kissinger

I don't think this condition is reserved only for American presidents, I think many people make political decisions and form their opinions based on "special feelings' and not always based on what is the best policy or of any kind of objectivity.

Maybe my history is off but didn't the U.N. try intervening in Rwanda with peacekeepers? Intervening military would have been just as botched as invading Iraq. We (as in the countries capable of projecting military power) would have been just as clueless about the origins of Tutsi and Hutu hatred and incapable of telling one from another. We would have been policing the countryside and falling short of stated goals. What we should have done was passed a two-sided arms embargo sooner and pressured France and Europe to enforce the terms. Regardless, I wouldn't support partitioning Rwanda and Sudan as a solution.


I'm refering to Israel, yes, making a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.


I don't know why nobody thinks U.S. nuclear support for Pakistan and India is not a big deal. It's believed Iran got some nuclear assistance from Pakistan and I've criticized our support for India here and on my blog because they're under no obligation to accept any conditions. If Musharraf's government falls... I guess I've just been overreacting. Maybe I have, but I wish the same people were just as lackadaisical about Iran.


This is sadly too often the case and why I think it's in Israel's interest to align U.S. and Israeli interests.

This is not the right forum for this debate, I was only sharing what I considered personally to be my all time worst failure of the UN, yet even our own president has admitted regret in not doing enough.
You highlighted Israel as being such a travesty of the international community's actions through the UN that it justifies what you termed as ..."seething hatred of the real anti-Semitic type"� and I argue that the mistakes of the UN are hardly confined to only Israel and yet no "seething hatred"� seems to be warranted or even well established on a global scale as we see with antisemitism today in the 21st century. If you are not offering the creation of Israel as a justifiable source of anger then please explain your argument better, because that is how I have taken it. I think this anger has other sources and I feel as you exemplified for us, the perceived injustice of the existence of the state of Israel only serves to better justify this anger.

Regardless, Rwanda today exists in a sort of political partitioning, that was redrawn with direct assistance and guidance of the UN, (see UNDP) it was what they call a decentralization and reorganization. Do you support this method of UN (or international) partitioning of Rwanda?


It is also said that Pakistan received assistance from China, more likely China was more significant. Iran has vowed to form a nuclear exchange with Venezuela too and I am sure that makes some here just giddy with joy. I think US support for India and how public and defiant it has become is a very interesting topic to explore when we consider or debate what is our govt's role or stance on nuclear proliferation. Yet it receives very little interest by those here who claim to be so sensitive to our nation's contradictory position. Again I believe this to be a result of other factors outside of nuclear rights and proliferation.


Just as long as we recognize that these special feelings are also a factor on the otherside of the debate too.

I can tell you that back in the early '90s, I spent 6 weeks in Britain, and never got a word of news from an American news source. Everything I read or saw (and I kept up with the news while I was there) was from British media. Granted, that was some time ago, and so while it's possible the American media machine has gained some traction over in Europe since then, I have a hard time seeing why their own media wouldn't suit their needs just fine.

The pronouncements of our President would have even less impact on their beliefs, except maybe to get them to believe the opposite of whatever he says. American public opinion doesn't rate his credibility all that high, and I'd wager it ain't any higher among Europeans. So in conclusion, if the Europeans believe that Iran is building nukes, the most logical explanation for that is that there must be pretty good reason to believe that Iran is building nukes. My post contained a link to show that for at least one of the reactors they're building, peaceful explanations stretch the bounds of plausibility.


How, by directly encouraging it? I think you'll need to explain this one a little more.

Fact is, they don't need to appease us in order to forestall another military campaign. All they'd have to do is be opposed to it. Bush just got whacked bad in the latest election, and his poll ratings are at historic lows for just about any president, mostly becuase of a war which the Europeans have been against, and which has stretched our troop strength way beyond the point where another campaign would even be much of a viable option. So with no public mood for another likely difficult war, European opposition would most certainly be the final nail in the door.


The first item I'd dispute. I don't think that Iran had self-determination if its elected leaders served only at the pleasure of unelected mullahs. And more to the point, I don't think the country has self-determination now, what with the same mullah-imposed restrictions on elected officials, and the fact that press freedoms are practically non-existent there (Reporters Without Borders ranks it among the bottom 10 worldwide in that department).

That being the case, and given the mullahs' implacable hostility towards at least one country in particular, it would be absolutely reckless to let them have access to nuclear anything.

I called it the biggest mistake the organization committed. A very big, short-sighted mistake. I don't know how you got from "biggest mistake" to "justifies ... 'seething hatred of the real anti-Semitic type'." It's questionable whether anti-Semitism was as pervasive in the Middle East at the time of Israel's establishment, but how do you defeat anti-Semitism without state-on-state war and damaging a population's psyche enough in order to change it? It's obvious it takes more than a UN mandated partition to address yes real anti-Semitism, and Egypt's peace treaty with Israel doesn't help as much as it should. The partition just translocated anti-Semitism.


Your link doesn't offer much info. Neither does this and this UNDP link. Wiki's Rwanda article mentions the state's partitioning but attributes it to the Rwandan government. And no, I don't support it if it was mandated from the top international organization. I don't support dividing Iraq either because according to reports I've read Iraqis, despite their misery, have rejected the idea.


China provided more significant assistance to Iran? I think that would be Russia, which has nuclear contracts with Iran and access to Iranian facilities.


Obviously.