Thank God that we’ve had the likes of Jack Kennedy and Nikita Kruschev
in our past to show us how serious disagreements can be resolved. Maybe we’ll find the same kind in the Bush Administration, but we definitely won’t find them in the current leadership of the Democratic Party!

Kennedy and Khruschev may have been facing an abyss but what we could be facing here is a new “Dark Age”. Imagine what a few weel place nukes would do to the world as we know it - international markets, monetary systems, health organizations, the very fabric that our lives are built around.

I agree with you here that no garuntee for the current or any regime will affect the situation.

Ahmadinejad may not be speaking for the people in the street but he will have at his disposal the equivilent of “the football”. It doesn’t matter how pro-US the people are.

I do not believe these people have any concept of what nuclear annihilation means much less fear it. We (for those of us over 30) grew up under the nuclear umbrella. It was in one way a shield and in another way a constant threat that silently affected our daily lives. Books, treatises, movies and television showed us the potential effects of a nuclear showdown and if struck fear in our hearts. Same for Iran? I doubt it.

And lastly their nationalistic fervor is the one thing that will add to the very flames of rhetoric spewing from Ahmadinejad. Watch the people as he speaks - they agree with him.

On a personal note - I take his threats, especially regarding Israel, seriously. And to take it one step further, I believe he has to wonder if there would be any retribution directed at Iran if they were to put a bomb to Israel. All you have to do is look at how the world sees Israel. Could he believe he could get away with the unthinkable?

Don’t get me wrong, Reagan was a great president in many ways, but his anti-communist outlook blinded him to the threat of radical Islam and because of a well-documented lack of foresight among many administrations (going back to Reagan and even Carter), we were left with Afghanistan and an intact and strong Iran. How might things be different if we had been more selective about who we armed in Afghanistan or actually cared what happened there after the USSR folded? Or what if we had actually tried to topple the Iranian mullahs in the early years (the 80’s) when the revolution was still fresh and weak? Reagan didn’t care about the mullahs because they were anti-communist, just like he didn’t care about the radicals in Afghanistan for the same reason.

Reagan did great things during his presidency and certainly will be remembered as one of the great Presidents. But don’t forget his failings or those of other republicans simply because of your blind hatred of Clinton.

It is other.
As they insisted again this morning.

Since 1979 they have been saying just one thing.
I do the the respect of taking them seriously
They believe. They have faith. I take that seriously.

If the foreign policy objective of Iran is to destroy Israel, and Hassan Abbassi (Iran’s “kissinger”) is correct about the west producing risk averse men and societies, what good is promising them we won’t invade them? It will give them the security they need to push their goals even further, and solidify to them the objective truth of their foerign policy theories about the USA.

Now we an have the ’so they destroy Israel, so what’? discussion. But the best way to do that may be to hurt us badly, and force us to withdraw support …it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine such a scenario if you believe we won’t risk Harrisburg for Tel Aviv.

The the abyss Kennedy and Khruschev were peering into was more than war - it was the total annihilation of their respective civilizations and a catastrophe on a planetary scale (and possibly the destructon of the human race). I think both realized that. In my mind, the situation we have with Iran is a few orders of magnitude less meaningful than the issues we faced in the missile crisis. First of all, assuming Iran does develop nukes and they actually use them against us (which is debatable), America will survive. Iran will not if we feel particularly vengeful afterward. The balance of power between us and Iran is equal in no single area - but in the early 60’s the USSR was our equal in many areas.

2nd, I don’t see what a guarantee for their regime would bring. We are not actively trying to topple the Iranian government like we were with Cuba. We are not talking about invading simply to end the regime, and that’s not something we’ve ever considered in a serious way. So the Iranians would see such an offer for what it is, which is not much, since it just preserves the status quo.

3rd, too many people think Ahmadinejad speaks for and represents all of Iranian society and government. He does not. We need to keep in mind that the Iranian people are the most pro-American muslims on the planet. We also need to look at the Iranian government, which is factional. It’s also still a republic even though the religious leaders have a veto over everything. For all these reasons and more, comparisons with Hitler and Cuba do not apply in my view. We need to tread carefully to prevent Ahmadinejad from becoming more powerful by isolationg the pro-west factions in Iranian society. We don’t want to confirm to everyone his views on the west and the US and have those views become the majority in Iran. What we really need is some creative thinking to unleash all the hidden pro-americanism at the Iranian grassroots level.

4th, there may be elements of the Iranian government and society that have no fear of nuclear annihilation - that point is debatable - but I don’t think that is a majority view. If Ahmadinejad or some other radical leader wanted to plunge the Iranian nation into annihilation, then I think cooler heads would calmly put a bullet in his head to prevent that.

5th, the Iranian street is nationalistic. They feel it is their right to have nuclear technology, and according to international treaty, the do have that right. Enriching uranium like they are doing is not against any international law or treaty. The problem lies with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows enrichment for nuclear fuel, but doesn’t provide specific safeguards against making HEU. It’s the fatal flaw of the NPT and it would be nice we supported amending it to close that loophole.