No More Nukes

I USUALLY read Gwynne Dyer’s editorials with bland interest, mainly because he is often so off base that it isn’t worth bothering about.

However, in the past couple of weeks, two articles he has written have particularly stood out to me, both dealing with nuclear weapons. The first was several weeks ago when Dyer chided the French government for its apparent hypocrisy in looking to deter Iran from producing nuclear weapons, while France of course owns its own arsenal.However, the argument that because some countries own nuclear weapons, all countries should be allowed to, is just a flimsy argument.For starters, aren’t most liberals of Dyer’s ilk the ones normally arguing against the production of nuclear weapons anyway? Now who is being hypocritical? The second article involved Dyer’s most recent comments concerning the United States and its worries about Iran as an “imminent” threat.Of course, Dyer scoffed at any notion that the threat in Iran is “imminent,” noting that their ability to produce nuclear weapons is still several years away.Am I the only one who thinks this is quite a shoddy argument? What does Dyer propose that we do, wait until the weapons lie red-hot in Iranian hands before any threat is recognised? Dyer suffers from the same convoluted logic that worked in the favour of such twentieth-century despots as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein.There were many Dyer-esque comments coming during the late 1930s when Hitler was amassing his war machine, and even as he started rolling over half of Europe, there were still people claiming no “imminent” threat.In fact, not until Hitler had gobbled up most of Europe did many even recognise the problem, let alone have the will to stop it.I wonder what would have happened if, instead of blithely standing by while Hitler grew his empire, the world had reacted immediately and put down the threat? Think of the millions of lives that possibly could have been saved, had we been smarter to recognise the imminent threat sooner? The Iranian president has stated in no uncertain terms that, if he had the ability to do so, he would wipe the nation of Israel from the face of the earth.Does Dyer, or anybody else for that matter, really want to argue about the sovereign right of such a nation to hold nuclear weapons? Would Dyer be singing a different tune if he lived in Israel, as opposed to the out-of-Iranian-nuclear-range UK? Nuclear weapons are certainly a problem.I for one believe that the best way to deal with the dilemma is to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of rogue states, especially those known to fund and support terrorist organisations as we speak, not to encourage their proliferation.Victor Kuligin WindhoekThe first was several weeks ago when Dyer chided the French government for its apparent hypocrisy in looking to deter Iran from producing nuclear weapons, while France of course owns its own arsenal.However, the argument that because some countries own nuclear weapons, all countries should be allowed to, is just a flimsy argument.For starters, aren’t most liberals of Dyer’s ilk the ones normally arguing against the production of nuclear weapons anyway? Now who is being hypocritical? The second article involved Dyer’s most recent comments concerning the United States and its worries about Iran as an “imminent” threat.Of course, Dyer scoffed at any notion that the threat in Iran is “imminent,” noting that their ability to produce nuclear weapons is still several years away.Am I the only one who thinks this is quite a shoddy argument? What does Dyer propose that we do, wait until the weapons lie red-hot in Iranian hands before any threat is recognised? Dyer suffers from the same convoluted logic that worked in the favour of such twentieth-century despots as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein.There were many Dyer-esque comments coming during the late 1930s when Hitler was amassing his war machine, and even as he started rolling over half of Europe, there were still people claiming no “imminent” threat.In fact, not until Hitler had gobbled up most of Europe did many even recognise the problem, let alone have the will to stop it.I wonder what would have happened if, instead of blithely standing by while Hitler grew his empire, the world had reacted immediately and put down the threat? Think of the millions of lives that possibly could have been saved, had we been smarter to recognise the imminent threat sooner? The Iranian president has stated in no uncertain terms that, if he had the ability to do so, he would wipe the nation of Israel from the face of the earth.Does Dyer, or anybody else for that matter, really want to argue about the sovereign right of such a nation to hold nuclear weapons? Would Dyer be singing a different tune if he lived in Israel, as opposed to the out-of-Iranian-nuclear-range UK? Nuclear weapons are certainly a problem.I for one believe that the best way to deal with the dilemma is to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of rogue states, especially those known to fund and support terrorist organisations as we speak, not to encourage their proliferation.Victor Kuligin Windhoek