Posted by Andy
But hey, picture the world as it appears from Tehran: Bellicose Great Satan ensconced just across both the eastern and western borders, with Hell’s chattering classes pondering the advisability of invading a charter member of the Axis of Evil. Nuclear-armed Little Satan only a few hundred miles away, its willingness to strike against its real or presumed enemies amply demonstrated in the past. Nuclear-armed Pakistan preoccupied with India and no current threat, but you never know. A long history of Western imperialists, British and Russian and then American, divvying up spheres of influence, forcibly manipulating internal politics and treating Iran like some impotent banana republic.
It is of course impossible to separate the Islamic fervor of the mullahs from the Iranian body politic in general, but I suspect that one reason they have so far prevailed, in that divided society, is an understandable and not entirely unreasonable appeal to Iranian nationalism, irrespective of religion. President Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel are certainly distressing, but from the limited accounts I’ve seen (mainly in the Times) I don’t think his Holocaust denial is quite unequivocal and in any case he’s right about one thing–the Palestinians have been forced to pay the price for the sins of Europe.
God knows nuclear nonproliferation is a worthy goal, but in practice the effort is sure as hell selective, in large part necessarily, and has not so far been notably successful in the world at large. Assuming the Iranians want nuclear weapons and not just peaceable energy, which I suppose we have to, I have no idea what to do about it either. As you suggest, I think the potential danger is less the use of nuclear weapons by Iran or any other national entity but the possibility of nukes falling into the hands of people like Bin Laden who would have no compunction about using them. But an invasion of Iran? Bombing of nuclear facilities, insofar as they can be pinpointed? Leave it to the Israelis? The ramifications seem to me to be prohibitive.
I read Mark Steyn’s article online in the Journal and was about to recommend it, then saw that you had already posted the link. A fat, self-indulgent West that’s lost its religious compass, committing demographic suicide? Given the unpredictability of history it may be a little dire, but it’s very well argued and impressively detailed–Steyn is a terrific writer–and it’s hard to disagree. Not exactly a new perspective though–Buchanan, for instance, explored much the same territory in “The Death of the West.” For that matter Jean Raspail did too, a few decades ago, though emphasizing immigration more than birth rates, which were not at the time so starkly ominous.
I haven’t read “Death of the West” or any of Buchanan’s other books, but I check out his column occasionally and hear him on TV. He’s not moronic, or even an isolationist in any Fortress America sense. Whether or not Bush’s neo-Wilsonian visions will ultimately bear bitter fruit remains to be seen–and I’m an agnostic–but Buchanan’s apprehensions about a hubristic and potentially disastrous over-extension of American power cannot in my opinion be easily dismissed.