Follow-up on Iran post

To understand what's going on in Iran, let's take a look at the Republican strategy with North Korea. During the 90's, the Clinton approach to North Korea was to keep diplomatic channels open, and maintain the previous agreement - they suspend all nuclear weapons activity and the US and others would supply fuel oil until a nuclear power plant was completed. This was a workable solution to the problem: their existing nuclear power plant could produce weapons-grade plutonium, and the new one being built with international assistance could not produce the plutonium. We did not want them to have nuclear weapons.

When the Bush regime took over, the agreement with North Korea was broken by the US, diplomatic channels were closed, and Bush personally and publicly insulted the leader. As experts predicted, this resulted in North Korea restarting their nuclear weapons program, so Bush declared them as "evil". North Korea continued development until they had a working nuclear weapon, which they detonated with marginal success. Once that happened, the Republican plan was to revert back to the successful Clinton plan of diplomacy and providing North Korea with non-nuclear fuel. So, we're back where we were 8 years ago, except now we don't know how many nuclear weapons they may have produced.

Understanding that action is the key to understanding the Republican approach to Iran. Just like Iraq, the neocons really, really wanted to take military action against Iran, so their massive oil and natural gas fields could be seized. The problem was that there was no justification at all for attacking them outright, so something had to be done to manufacture this justification. That's when the saber-rattling began. While we were still supplying them with military goods, we kept provoking and threatening them. Just as predictably as North Korea's reaction to the Bush doctrine, Iran's path was to massively ramp up their long-range missile and nuclear weapons programs. They have seen through example that the best way to get the Republican-led US to do what they want is to develop nuclear weapons - because once that happens, then the concessions flow like water from Bush and company.

That leads us to McCain's recent comments on Obama on Iran. McCain tows the party line of tough talk and military posturing to the public, while actually advocating diplomacy. To illustrate the myth that Republicans are good for the military and Democrats are always week, he said about Iran's Revolutionary Gard:
“This is the same organization that I voted to condemn as a terrorist organization when an amendment was on the floor of the United States Senate. Senator Obama refused to vote.”
The problem with the critique? McCain also missed that vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on September 26, 2007. Records show that Obama was in New Hampshire and McCain was in New York instead of being in the Senate chamber for the vote in question.

Same old Republican political plan - talk tough, even if you're lying, and don't worry about your words matching your actions - the important thing is to keep up the rhetoric.