Ron Paul has long advocated talking to the Iranians in lieu of another wasteful and dangerous war. Back during the last Presidential campaign Dr. Paul said as follows:
“I don’t want them [Iran] to get a weapon. But I think what we’re doing is encouraging them to have a weapon because they feel threatened. If you look at a map of Iran, we have 45 bases around their country, plus our submarines. The Iranians can’t possibly attack anybody, and we’re worrying about the possibility of one nuclear weapon.
Now, just think about the Cold War. The Soviets had 30,000 of them, and we talked to them. The Soviets killed 100 million people…and we worked our way out of it…
We talked to the Soviets during the Cuban Crisis. We can at least talk to somebody who we do not have proof that [they] have a weapon. Why go to war so carelessly?”
Here we are approaching the end of 2013, and an American President has finally broken the 34 year silence by speaking with an Iranian leader.
To non-interventionists, and those who seek peace instead of war, this is a very positive first step. On the other side of the coin, this development has the neocons reeling. Peace may be breaking out, and they don’t know how to handle it.
Neocon Danielle Pletka wonders what Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, who is speaking tomorrow at the UN General Assembly, will be able to do to keep the war machine moving. Pletka fears that the U.S. and Israel will part ways on this issue:
Likely it will be over Barack Obama’s rather shameful canoodling with new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week that the Israeli and American leaders part ways.
Israel is armed to the teeth with hundreds of nuclear weapons. They can turn Iran into dust. But the major fear is the lack of a pretext. If a nuclear weapon is no longer an issue with Iran, what excuse will the U.S. and Israel have to invade. The nuclear weapon pretext has been drilled over and over into everyone’s minds as “the” excuse. What happens if it were to disappear? Neocons, who want complete domination over the Middle East, would be caught in a bind.
Pletka, several years ago, explicitly displayed that what the neocons truly desire is obedience from Iran:
The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power.
According to Pletka, Iran was damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
Dr. Paul had the correct solution, and fortunately, the first step has been taken. It’s much too early to even know if peace will occur. But the direction is now in the positive, and the neocons have suffered yet another black eye.
