The “Washington Post” recently reported: “Iran resumes processing yellowcake uranium in Isfahan, rejecting a European deal and ignoring warnings of possible U.N. sanctions.” (8/9/05, front page)
What makes the Iranian government unique is that it shrinks from nothing. The people who comprise that government firmly believe they are in the right and that the U.S. is in the wrong. They ignore the meaningless platitudes and pleadings of the hapless U.N. and European union. They likewise laugh at even the more principled and determined of Western leaders (in short supply since the Reagan-Thatcher era).
Cartoon by Cox and Forkum.
The Iranian mullahs can watch the U.S. invade neighboring Iraq and topple its dictatorship; they don’t care. They watch the U.S. as it attempts to do the impossible–create and impose a free, rational society in a lost, confused and dazed country like Iraq, while its mighty military takes shots every other day–and they can sneer.
The U.S. could threaten to bomb every weapons facility Iran attempts to build or conceal, and the Iranian religious tyrants wouldn’t care. First of all, they know that no such thing will ever happen. Why would it and how could it? The U.S. is trying to transform Iraq and has lost the focus of defending the U.S. It’s a perfect time to seize the initiative and build something really dangerous, and the Iranians know this. It’s a perfect time because they can count on the U.S. to do nothing about it, aside from sending Secretary of State Rice around the world looking annoyed and concerned.
Even if the U.S. bombed every weapons facility and yellowcake factory in Iran, Iran would simply shrug and start over. Why? Its leaders have no question they are in the right. Are they in the right? Of course not! Few dictatorships have ever been so much in the wrong; so evil; so contemptible. Religious tyranny–both the extreme version in the Middle East and the more watered down version among the “Christian right” of the United States–is the single biggest threat to human civilization of our time. Unfortunately, while most don’t sympathize with religious tyranny, most don’t have the stomach or gumption to stand up to it. “Right-wingers” like George W. Bush ultimately love fundamentalist religion too much to denounce its roots for what they really are; and liberals like the Clintons and Kerrys just plain don’t want to use American force, no matter how great the threat.
Look how well unflinching moral certainty and determination works for a pitiful, irrational and evil dictatorship such as that in Iran. Just imagine how these qualities of unflinching moral certainty and determination could work for the U.S., if only the U.S. would exhibit them.
