Today's reading is yesterday's NYT article on Bush's dealing with Iran, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It bothers me immensely that the U.S.'s position is to reinterpret a document and continue acting as if we're a parent to the world.
It's not that I trust Iran. I said in a comment further down the page that I can't "know" that Iran would make weapons with nuclear materials. I take that back. I expect that Iran would make weapons ina second if tey thought that they could get away with it. If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking frantically what would be the best way to keep the U.S. the hell off my land.
I'm not even against limiting the enrichment of Uranium in the case of other locales that seem like they too would like to make themselves some shiny new bombs. The fewer nuclear weapons that exist in the world, the better, I say.
My problem is, rather, the way we come across.
After a visit to Tehran last week for a conference that Iran sponsored to explain its nuclear ambitions, George Perkovich, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said he had concluded that Mr. Bush had the right instinct, but might not be taking the right approach.That's the gist of it. We threaten, and treat other countries like children who must be watched. We need to remember that we are *not* a parent to the world, and that pride exists everywhere, and will color people's reactions. We need to remember that we've called ourselves a superpower for a long time and yet we find ourselves unable to put down insurgency in one small country. We need to remind ourselves that we live in the world, not rule it.
The Iranians have decided to go on the offensive and simply assert their right, even if the treaty doesn't explicitly say that they have a right to enrich their own uranium," he said Monday. The view expressed by Iran's nuclear negotiators, he said, amounted to "We're not hiding it, we're not embarrassed by it, and no one is going to take our right away."
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