I notice that almost the moment that North Korea acquired (or was thought to have acquired) a nuclear weapon, the screeching Washington warmongers and their brethren in the MSM became eerily silent. It was if N.K.'s acquisition represented an instant 'Get-out-of-the-Axis-of-Evil-Free' card, and focus shifted to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who was much vilified for endlessly repeated misquoted statements regarding Israel and treated with astonishing discourtesy by both CBS' Sixty Minutes and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, who acted like a freshman dunce. Every so often (quite often, actually) America drinks a supersized Slurpee and then gets brain-freeze and forgets certain important facts. Like its Native genocide. Or slavery. Or commie hysteria. Or dozens of insane wars and incursions. Or that in 1953 it got rid of an elected Iranian Prime Minister and installed the nefarious Shah to rule by torture and terror. It was all about oil. Oops! Forgot! Brain-freeze, not our fault! Start over!
I wondered if Iran could get one of those 'Get-out-of-the-Axis-Free' cards. Depending on how reckless the bomb-droppers were (probably pretty reckless, if past experience is an indicator) a lot of Iranian lives might be spared, a lot of radiation prevented from entering an atmosphere already contaminated with all kinds of crap and depleted uranium, and since a lot of oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, well, we could continue to guzzle the stuff at a mere $1.30 a liter or whatever it's gone up to by now. Bonus!
But where to get such a thing? I ransacked my whole basement and garden shed before remembering that I lent my last dented Fat Boy to my dim cousin Dwayne, along with the lawn mower, and I don't expect to see either ever again. Guess who's not getting invited to my next surprise birthday party, at which I am confident there will be an astonishing abundance of Dwayne's favorite Bud Lite? Damn right!
Then it came to me. Pakistan! Pakistan has around a dozen nukes in reasonable condition that they're hiding from Muslim militants until they need to drop them on India and vice-versa. Surely eleven would do the job almost as well. If they could just loan one to Iran-wait, they could even rent it, and then have it back later. Rupees in the bank! I'd ask General Musharraf, maybe send him an e-mail, but I understand he's no longer the go-to guy for stuff like that. I'll Google around, but I think President Ahmadinejad recently went there himself and found the Pakistanis to be a lot more polite than the Americans. Imagine that! So maybe they already worked something out 'Ok, Mahmoud, but we want the damn thing back in one piece. The lawn mower too. And don't be like that Dwayne character. He's a vedy bad man!'
Normally I'm a very non-proliferation type of guy, but that only works if everybody is doing it, and I'm afraid not everyone is. When a nation is threatened with nuclear weapons just in case it's thinking of acquiring one to bully-proof itself, when next-door Israel has two hundred of the nasty things thanks to America (and is on record as being willing to destroy the whole region or even its best buddy and sidekick), the USA possesses around ten thousand and is ducking out of treaties left and right and adopting first-strike policies, then it's time to call in the Lone Ranger.
Another factor is the danger of drawing both Russia and China (and other nations) into a much broader war, or even WW III. Many within power circles in the US don't necessarily fear such a scenario, because they believe that a Middle East nuclear Armageddon will be preceded by the Second Coming and their being 'raptured' up to heaven. With such thinking one can see that any lunacy is possible, even likely within the ranks of the Bush Administration. Bombing Iran could provide the much predicted (and feared) pretext for canceling the upcoming scheduled election, and maybe a few after that.
The world would actually be safer if Iran were to follow North Korea's example and beg, borrow or steal a nuclear device or two.
Hey, buddy, can you spare a nuke?
John S. Hatch is a Vancouver writer and film-maker.
