Posted by
Andrews on Monday, May 19, 2008 1:12:46 PM
It is interesting how the press' reaction depends on the speaker. Take, for example, this statement:
Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever
tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance
Were Republican to say that, it would be taken as a warmongering statement dangerous to the peace of the world. However, as it comes from Obama, defending his statement that Iran is a "tiny country" we can ignore, it has drawn no ire at all.
There really is little need to respond to this particular Obama insanity, as the response is obvious. Not only the response McCain gave, that a nuclear Iran could pass weapons to terrorists, but also the fact that we are not necessarily worried about Iran destroying the US.
What threat there is, and what Obama in all his smug glory manages to ignore, is that a nuclear Iran could attack a nuclear Israel and start a larger war in a region that supplies a large percentage of the world's oil. Even if China and Russia stay out of it, the loss of oil production could be a serious threat to the US. So, it is not that anyone thinks Iran is necessarily planning to attack the US, it is that the acts Iran might undertake could create situations which threaten the US.
So, it doesn't matter if Iran is 1/100th the size of the US, or 1/10,000th, it can still create a threat. Gavrilo Princip was just one man, a tiny fraction the size of the Hapsburg Empire, yet his actions brought that empire down. So don't rely on relative size to defend us.
ADDENDUM
By the way, I am not really waiting for the Democrats or the press to criticize Obama's aggressive quote. They didn't say anything critical about his statement that he would unilaterally go into Pakistan to get Osama, so I don't expect his new statement to get criticism either. Of course either one would have been a scandal had it come from a Republican, but pointing out such double standards seems pointless. Everyone but Democrats knows all about them, and Democrats deny they exist, so it seems a bit futile to keep pointing them out.