Can’t Out-Crazy Us—Don’t Even Try

Serious Sam Suicide BomberThe commuter rag[1] on the Swiss train today ran a small article about Iran’s army of suicide bombers, which was recently on display in a military parade. They marched by with their dynamite wrapped about their torsos and their detonators held high. 40,000 strong they are. These lethal forces are poised to deploy to 29 key points in Britain and the US if Iran’s nuclear facilities were to be bombed. Fully 1,300 bombers per attack point—they’d be kind of hard to miss, no? Anyone who’s played one of the Serious Sam games will know what these guys look like. A little strafe of the chain gun and they’re as good as done.

Though it sounds like ridiculous blustering on the surface, the usual suspects picked it up and ran with it—a quick search at Google News turned up the American Enterprise Institute, Ha’aretz, Rush Limbaugh, Australia’s Daily Telegraph and FOX News (though the last two both take their lead from Rupert Murdoch’s fevered imaginings). Iran sure is crazy. Their president sure is crazy. Muslims sure are crazy.

Whatever. They got nothing. Watch and learn, oh bearded ones.

Are We Really Going To Nuke Iran? (Slate) offers a quick run-down of the current situation: the option to use nukes against Iran is not off the table. There are those who would like to take it off, but the objections of the executive (Bush administration) have so far kept it in play.

“Pre-emptive war—attacking a country to keep it from attacking us or an ally—is sometimes justifiable. Preventive war—attacking a country to keep it from developing a capability to attack an ally sometime in the future—almost never is. And preventive war waged with nuclear weapons is (not to put too fine a spin on it) crazy.”

Ignoring the fact that the announcement about Iran’s zombie army is being carried primarily on right-wing sites[2] and taking it as responsibly reported fact, what does this tell us? It tells us that Iran is hopelessly outclassed in this contest. There is no way they can appear batshit-crazier than our guys. No way. We win, hands down. It’s over before it started. We’re Americans and we went big, right off the bat. We’re playing the nuke card. You just can’t trump that. Unless Iran has the “illudium Q-38 explosive space modulator” Marvin the Martian wanted to use on Bugs Bunny. And it clearly doesn’t have one of those or it wouldn’t have trundled out that sad-ass C4 army.

Ted Rall 'Irony'Nukes. Now that’s batshit crazy. Especially in this case, where Iran isn’t even a threat yet. At all. They’re bragging about wanting to attain the technology to be sort-of a threat within the next ten years. Sounds awful—far worse than the threat we ourselves pose. To paraphrase the people of Krikkit[3]: “They’ll have to go”.

40,000 suicide bombers? I mean, c’mon. We threaten with nuclear death from 30,000 feet and they come back with that old saw? That’s as good as admitting that they expect to sustain losses of 40,000 men in their war against the Great Satan. That’s just loser talk. Hell, we could stay in Iraq for 40 years and not lose that many. With nukes in our corner, we don’t expect to lose any in our war with Iran. Or at least Bush and his madcap bunch don’t.

You want nukes so bad, Iran? Look up.