The cost of the Iraq war? Nuclear proliferation?

The situation: The Iraq war and situation are worsening. A couple days ago some members of the Medhi army took over a town, for a short time, declaring the formation of an "Republic" in Iraq that's outside the central government. Their leader told them to stand down, and they did, but it certainly reflects the will on the street. Namely undoing the damage done by the British 100 years ago when they caused the three peoples, Kurds, Sunni and Shia to form a single country.

The situation: Iran may or may not be developing nuclear weapons. They have a nuclear program whose side effects include weapons grade material. Their president is being very confrontational with the rest of the world, but to be fair the Bush administration only knows confrontaton as well.

The situation: North Korea has recently exploded a small nuclear bomb, giving them entree to the exclusive club of countries who have nuclear weapons.

In 2002 GW Bush declared an Axis of Evil vowing to stop nuclear proliferation etc. It was Iraq, Iran and North Korea he said was in this Axis. But we see the failure of that declaration, don't we?

The Iraq war has gone terribly astray. This article The week the war unravelled: Bush to 'refocus' Iraq strategy gives a rundown of the recent events that illustrate this. Emergency meetings with the leaders of the Iraq war effort, calls for quick pullout from Iraq, growing calls for a partitioning of Iraq into three semi-autonomous zones, etc.

At the same time we have real nuclear proliferation happening. Nuclear proliferation being the real danger in this world, not this ephemeral danger of Terrorism, and not this false danger that was Iraq. They propped up Iraq as the extreme threat and conned us into launching a war there, while at the same time the real threats grew and grew.

And what of Pakistan? Pakistan is the country from whom both Iran and North Korea acquired their nuclear technology. Without Pakistan exporting nuclear know-how neither of these countries would have gotten as far as they are. Yet, are we threatening Pakistan? Nope. They are (supposedly) U.S. allies.

And what of the Taliban and al Qaeda? They are having a resurgence in Afghanistan.

The key theme I'm seeing in all this is the mismanagement of Iraq. The situation in Iraq seems to be highly distracting, leading U.S. leadership to focus all their attention on Iraq while other countries and situations are not getting the attention they deserve.

I think we can call this "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater" eh?

Re: North Korea says conducted nuclear test

North Korea says conducted nuclear test ... North Korea was one of the Axis of Evil countries which GW ominously warned us about a few years ago. It wasn't really clear why he wanted to label them as "evil", but he did. Iraq of course was another of them, as was Iran.

The phrase "axis of evil" drags the mind back to The Axis, which was the arrangement between Germany, Italy and Japan that led to World War II. The phrase implies cooperation between one group of countries to stand against another group of countries. But, really, how could we believe that Iran and Iraq could agree to stand together. After that long war fought between Iran and Iraq, how could they ever stand together? There is that principle, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" but I believe the divisions between the old Iraq regime, and the Iran regime, were too deep for even that principle to bring them together.

In any case, the danger Iran and Korea present are nuclear weapons developed outside the legal framework of the International Atomic Energy Commission. In other words, Nuclear Proliferation. The danger of nuclear proliferation is that if everybody has nukes, then eventually someone will again use them in warfare. And of course nuclear weapons are so vehemently dangerous that they should never be used in warfare.

Right, Mr. President?

Oh, wait, our dear President GW Bush wants to use nuclear weapons. I forgot.

In any case, back to North Korea. This story has been growing for quite some time, North Korea and its nuclear program. There have been on and off negotiations etc. And at the same time Iran has been moving towards nuclear weapons, while protesting their nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

But where has most of the U.S. resources been spent? Iraq. Iraq had no nuclear program, had no biological weapons program, etc. Yet the danger of a mushroom cloud coming at us from Iraq propelled the U.S. into a boondoggle of a war, that's costing hundreds of billions per year, costing tens of thousands of lives, creating great anger around the world toward the U.S. etc.

And all the while North Korea and Iran have been developing their nuclear programs, outside the inspection system, outside the world legal system, etc. And because the U.S. is consumed with the war in Iraq we haven't had the freedom to take any actions against North Korea or Iran.

And it's worth considering what "take actions against" means.

Of what worth is Sovereingty? Being a sovereign nation means defending the country against all intrusions from outsiders, and that the nation makes its own decisions over its destiny.

So if a nation wishes to develop nuclear weapons, the assumption in nuclear proliferation theory is that the world cannot allow nuclear proliferation. The world cannot allow this because it's dangerous. The genie is out of the bottle with some countries, with nuclear weapons having already proliferated to a few countries during the 1950's. Any step by any country not already possessing nuclear weapons is of great concern. The weapons are so dangerous that, as I said before, the more widely available they are, the more possibility is they might be used again.

Hence the world powers have decided that no countries should "be allowed" to develop nuclear weapons unless they also submit to outside monitoring.

But what is this "be allowed" crap when we're talking about sovereign nations? As sovereign nations shouldn't Iran and North Korea and Iraq have been free to do whatever they want? If one set of countries want their own sovereignty to be respected, shouldn't they respect the sovereignty of other countries?

In order to take action against North Korea or Iran the world powers must be ready to do as the U.S. has done against Iraq. Right? If they're going to run nuclear processing plants, then the world powers must be ready to invade those countries and destroy the plants. Right?

In other words, stopping nuclear proliferation requires violating the sovereignty of free nations.

Just so long as we understand what's at stake.