Tuesday, 27 February 2007

Another Modest Proposal - the STFU scale

Thanks to Digby for this post on Dick Chaney running around the world drumming up support for the next War On Little Brown People.

I note this particular comment:

"US Vice-President Dick Cheney has raised the possibility of military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

He has endorsed Republican senator John McCain's proposition that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.
"

Now, this is interesting, given that more people around the world consider the US than consider Iran the major threat to peace these days.

We are told that every person is equal. I suggest a Modest Proposal based on this - the Statistics Towards a Fairer Universe scale.

The US has about 10,000 nuclear warheads in total. It has a population of 300 million. Iran, as we understand it, has no nuclear warheads - yet. It has about 70 million people.

I propose that Iran be allowed to continue to research nuclear weapons, and the US not be allowed to bitch in public about it until Iran gets 2,334 warheads. This can be enforced simply by everyone in the UN walking out whenever the US starts moaning, by every newspaper refusing to print any of the US's complaints on this matter, and by every government simply ignoring President Bush whining on this matter.

But I don't want to be anti-American. Therefore, a large, prominent chart should be kept in the UN General Assembly and Security Council halls, displaying the rankings of each country on the STFU scale. We should not single out the US - any country on the list should be required to keep quiet about any country below it on the list, and should be reminded of this by people pointing out "STFU, dude, STFU."

And the nifty thing about this is that when the US reduces its own nuclear arsenal, it automatically gets to whine about more and more other countries. Seems perfectly fair to me...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, its worse than that to a certain extent, because if you remember, the US is also through action pulling out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, in giving assistance to India.

Now, I know to a certain extent there is an argument to be made that a nuclear India provides a balance to a nuclear Pakistan. However, that said, they are hardly the two most stable countries on the face of the earth to be playing stand-off MAD.

Further, what is particularly pertinent is the fact that this all means that the US is taken upon itself to cherry-pick which countries should have nuclear tech, and which shouldn't. What this has meant, is a complete disintegration of any moral high ground the US may have to police the spread of such technology.

But then, the US has lost pretty much ALL moral high ground, on ALL issues ... such a long fall over 7 years ...

Oh, and OT, but can I just say I'm having a particularly homesick day today ... I can almost reach out and touch the sparkles off Wellington Harbour ...

Span said...

Could this principle also be applied to things like income levels?