The Emperor is Naked

"Pundita! It's not like you to be mean to Bush! I understand what you're saying [in previous post] but he's just trying to find ways to persuade Iran not to continue with their nuclear weapon development. I don't think it hurts for Bush to say he's considering Europe's plan to offer incentives to Iran. It makes him sound reasonable.[Signed] Sleepless again in St. Louis"

Dear Sleepless:

It makes him sound dizzy. That is one reason Pundita jumped all over him. Tehran is not engaged in nuclear weapon development. We have their word on that. So it makes no sense to offer them incentives not to do something they're already not doing. In other words, we can't nail the slippery bastards. That means we'll have to bomb half of Iran to rubble before we can figure out where they're hiding the nuke-building facilities. The good news is that Iran won't look much different after the bombing than before. Once you get out of the cities you're in the 5th Century BCE.

This observation brings us to the crux of the problem. If you have to hire German or French engineers just to figure out how to put up an electricity grid, and if you're stoning children to death as government policy, you're just not ready for modern weapons. But no one in the modern world told the Iranians that. Why? Because they have oil. Everybody pandered to them. Nobody told them the truth about themselves. Nobody cared enough about them to speak straight.

So they're like emperors who have never once been contradicted. They do not have an idea of civilized behavior, much less responsible behavior. Yet they are completely convinced that they're doing just fine in the modern era. So if they can't have a nuclear weapon, they are going to throw a tantrum and break things.

The first thing Dr. Phil would advise is that you don't play into that. You don't offer incentives for the same reason you don't bribe children into stopping a tantrum. And for the same reason you don't pay thugs not to rob you. If you go down that road, the thug will be back next week asking for another payment.

Every adult with half a brain knows all this. So why are European officials heading for Geneva this week for yet another round of negotiations about a nuclear weapons program Tehran says they don't have?

The answer is that by keeping the discussion centered on nukes, the EU3 hope to distract the world's attention from the fact that they're pandering to a regime that makes history's barbarian chieftains look like the model of civilized behavior.

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