Nukes & nutters........

The possession of nukes is demonstrably a very strong deterrent against foreign aggression. No country that possesses such a deterrent has yet to be invaded and for obvious reasons. And the more fanatic the country possessing nukes, the more hesitant we Western peacekeepers are about changing the regime. Thus, to continue your dialogue re Iran, we either perform a pre-emptive strike before Iran's uranium is weaponized, or we allow them to develop a nuclear capacity and do our best to placate them. It is pretty clear that the US does not want Iran to become a nuclear power and will, along with Israel, take out their key nuclear processing plants. This was successfully achieved in Syria. Too bad it was not also done in Pakistan and Korea.

Our leading Republican contenders for the Presidency want to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power even if it means invading the country. Militating against this view is a strong body of opinion that does not want to repeat our invasion of Iraq on the erroneous grounds that they possessed weapons of mass destruction. At present, we are weighing fuzzy intelligence on the subject, curbing Israel and risking waiting too long to do anything. Everybody in the US wants Iran's nuclear potential to be limited and nobody wants another war. It looks like we are determined to be irresolute.

The Egyptian people have reared up again. Let's hope this time the US will not plunge in with all four feet in its mouth by lauding the glories of the proletarian masses and their fanatical Islamic underpinnings. A good test of such fanaticism is the public reaction to the young Egyptian lass who bared her body in Facebook in protest over her county's Neanderthal values. I would not sell her life insurance. More to the point, we should have learned by now that being in the Middle Eastern frying pan is preferable to the fire. Egypt's military is the only institutionalized force in the country capable of running the government. It has not done a bad job, comparatively speaking, and has managed to keep the fanatics at bay. It also tolerates Israel and for that alone should maintain its dominance until the Arab world experiences a Reformation.

Syria, meanwhile, is doing an excellent job of engineering its own grave. The regime will fall because Asaad's ham fisted tactics will only deepen enmity and hostility toward him and his Alawite minority. No doubt the West is already feeding and arming the rebels and no doubt also that the protests will be hijacked by the Syrian equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood. What a shame for a country as great as Syria to be subject to the myopia of a frightened leader whose inheritance from the golden age of Arab rule amounts to nothing.