THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 8, 2009
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "From our point of view, Iran's nuclear issue is over." Meaning: No negotiations. Meaning Obama must now decide whether he really wants to pursue those "crippling" sanctions. Watch to see whether the White House gives a green light to Congress to move on sanctions aimed at Iran's gasoline industry later this month. My sense is that people who follow the issue are increasingly resigned to the likelihood that Iran will wind up with at least a "breakout" nuclear capacity regardless of what Obama does at this point. Opinion is sharply divided on whether the Israelis are serious about airstrikes.
1 comments
scare quote: n. Either of a pair of quotation marks used to emphasize a word or phrase or to indicate its special status, especially to express doubt about its validity or to criticize its use. george: Whenever you encounter "crippling" sanctions in the media, it often means sanctions that hurt the other guys. When they hurt us instead there is usually nothing parenthetical about them at all. So, how will the new Congressional sanctions against Iran hurt us too? It's like U.S. foreign policy and China. The White House and the Congress huff and puff about the outrageous political repression in China. We smugly compare them to us. We're free...they're not. Remember the Olympics? But, when it comes down to actually holding China accountable for this, what do the folks in Congress and the White House do? They "huff and puff", of course. It will be interesting to see what happens if another incident in China...one closer to Tiananmen Square...breaks out. Oh how clever they will have to be to rationalize that one. Alas opinions about things like this in America revolve around citizens who are generally ready, willing and able to accept the age-old axiom of one or another the ruling class , "if we want your opinion, we'll give you one". george
- iambiguous
September 8, 2009 at 11:13am