Greetings!
If I may employ some classic Catholic phraseology, it appears that we are exposing "our older brothers in the faith," Israel, to a "near occasion of sin." The Bipartisan Policy Center, with support from Congress members from both sides of the aisle, recently recommended that we make "credible preparations for a military option" against Iran, which includes arming Israel with 200 "bunker buster" conventional bombs, among other arms. I hope it is clear this time around that the "two sides of the debate" on going to war with Iran are a unified smokescreen. As a child, I watched the television debates about whether or not Iraq possessed WMD's, and my mind began to shape itself according to the fantasy that it was given. After a decade of miserable attrition, I think, or I hope, that we find reality more attractive than fantasy this time around. I think that our leaders cannot be so foolish as to, again, incur prodigious war-related debt on the grounds of highly dubious moral principles and intelligence. As Ray McGovern has pointed out recently, the guilty party here is the media. US Defense Secretary Panetta and Israeli Defense Minister Barak are still officially in harmony with the 2007 and 2011 reports of all 16 US intelligence agencies that Tehran has no intent to develop a nuclear bomb, recent reckless predictions notwithstanding. But I also think that, unfortunately, the Defense Department will not lose this precious opportunity to protect itself from the massive cuts which, in one happy outcome of the Deficit Debacle, are scheduled to take place through current sequestration plans over the next decade. Here's one clear and egregious example: the Pentagon plans to redevelop the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP), a more powerful "bunker buster" bomb. $330 million have already gone towards this 30,000-pound weapon, with $82 million more slated for improvements because "the bomb might not penetrate far enough to destroy Iran's underground nuclear facilities," according to ABC News. Improved conventional weapons - that's our "austerity measure." 
We should be prayerful and active so that the Obama Administration, which is scheduled to release a nuclear posture review in the coming weeks, adheres to its stated disarmament commitments. We still have 20,000 nuclear weapons, and Israel, which has not signed the UN non-proliferation treaty, has 400. It should be clear that the way to peace in the Middle East is mutual disarmament and inter-religious dialogue, not hypocrisy and broken promises. In the Peace of Christ, Taylor Reese Program Associate |
