And You Thought MAD* Was Mad

In his City Journal article "Facing Down Iran," Mark Steyn writes:

"Now a state openly committed to the annihilation of a neighboring nation has nukes, and we shrug. . . Just the way things are. . . . let everyone get 'em, and then no one will use them."

In the face of fatalism, he calls for:

". . . ending the one regime whose political establishment is explicitly pledged to the nuclear annihilation of neighboring states. . . with swift, massive, devastating force."

"Whether or not we end the nuclearization of the Islamic Republic will be an act that defines our time."

Attacking Iran is Steyn's idea of defeating the fatalists who would let Iran and other states arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Though he personally doesn't advocate a nuclear attack, he fails, as hawks generally do, to realize that a more accurate definition of a fatalist is one with an opinion of human nature too low to ever imagine mankind capable of achieving global security without nuclear weapons.

In fact, nuclear weaponry, though it may represent one of mankind's greatest scientific achievements, is even more of a failure of imagination than war itself.

 *Mutually Assured Destruction  

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