On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart thinks that the bellicose language about war with Iran is the result of politicians pandering to their own constituencies, and tries to lower the intensity of the war rhetoric.
(This clip appeared on March 6, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
What Mr. Stewart fails to mention that Obama and Bibi could lose their elections. The mad mullahs in Iran have no such worries as their election is fixed, much like the elections in the former Soviet Union.
So? One of the reasons why Bush II was so disliked, even by people on the right, was his unilateral declaration of undeclared war against Iraq on the basis of imaginary WMD and “Saddam is a big meanie.” Now we hear people screaming for war with Iran because of imaginary nuclear weapons and “the Ayatollahs are saying mean things about Israel.”
The development of nuclear weapons by Iran is anything but imaginary. As for the mean things about Israel, Frankenberger also said mean things about Jews before his ascent to power in Germany in 1933 but nobody took him seriously, just as Mr. Himself doesn’t take the mad mullahs seriously. As the philosopher Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“.