Brutally Honest Rant - 04/12/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Is Iran Next?
Audio Transcripts
04/12/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Okay, so in 2001 we were attacked by self-righteous bloodthirsty mass-murdering terrorists, and we responded by going to Afghanistan and sending the Taliban screaming into the mountains like the gutless cowards that they are. We kicked the Taliban out of power, we helped the people there get their new government set up… and then we went a-calling for the next ass to kick.

Next stop, Iraq! Hey, we were just ITCHING to kick Saddam Hussein’s ass for quite some time now! We were ready to go! We were still pissed-off! We were living in FEAR, we were afraid of the next big terrorist attack, and if WE were living in fear, then THE REST OF THE WORLD was going to live in fear too! We really didn’t need a reason… we just needed an excuse and an ass to kick!

Okay, so we invaded Iraq, we kicked Saddam Hussein’s narcissistic ass and killed his evil hellspawn bastards. Saddam is awaiting trial, the government has been reorganized, and we’re TRYING to fix what we broke.

So now the cons and neo-cons are wondering just where the hell to go next! And I think that answer is staring at us square in the face… IRAN!

Now folks, let’s get brutally honest here… much like having to deal with Saddam Hussein was inevitable, so too is a conflict with Iran.

But unlike Iraq, this is not a confrontation that is ours to choose. People who have been listening to my rants for quite some time know that I have never said that it was either right or wrong for us to go to Iraq, only that it was inevitable. Saddam Hussein was just too much of an egotistical dickhead to simply let him go away.

Iran, on the other hand, is a problem that we’ve been ducking for almost thirty years now! This was a problem that actually started back in 1979 when the US Embassy was stormed and American citizens were taken hostage. We should have gone all-out against Iran back then, and we didn’t. And every year that Iran was allowed to continue as a mad-dog rogue country was simply holding back the inevitable.

YES, we sat back and watched as Iran and Iraq blew each other to pieces, and yes, we did help Saddam do that… much to our own regret later on. Guess what? Neither side finished the job.

YES, we watched with hope as more moderate forces TRIED to tame the extremist views of the country and TRIED to bring it back into the modern world. Guess what? Didn’t work. The mullahs in Iran were smart enough to write up their constitution so they would get an automatic veto power on anything about the government that they didn’t like, and they used it to remove the moderates from power, one by one. And now Iran has a scroll-pounder running things over there, who may or may not have been one of the terrorists who held our citizens hostage!

There it is, folks, thirty years of doing nothing in a nutshell.

And now Iran is on the verge of having what it has LONG wanted to have ever since they even heard of it… nuclear power!

You know, we thankfully don’t have too many countries in the so-called "Nuclear Club", but having Iran join that club is about as DANGEROUS as you can get! The whole reason why we had to give Pakistan nuclear weapons was to offset India. But there is no counter-balance to Iran! What sort of "voice of reason" could we provide to contain a country whose two chief exports are oil and global theocratic terrorism?

And mind you, we’re not the only ones concerned about this! Russia has been concerned about this as well, and they have more at stake at this because they’re right next door to them! And it’s not like they haven’t TRIED to help resolve this. Unfortunately they seem to lack the resolve to deal with this growing problem.

And this part’s really going to cook your noodle, but we’re not really equipped to deal with Iran right now. Yes, we have forces to the right and to the left of the country, but we NEED them there! We still haven’t caught Osama bin PigBastard, and we’re still trying to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan! We can’t just pack up and march on in like it was some chess game! I’m sorry, Junior, but the real world IS NOT like the board game version!

Now if we DIDN’T move on over to Iraq to deal with Saddam - and if we didn’t burn a few bridges in foreign intelligence trying to justify that move - then we would have had the manpower, the intelligence, and the international support to deal with Iran. Right now, we don’t have any of it. We just have a whole bunch of people pissed off over Iran and are expecting that WE would deal with the matter, since we’ve pretty assumed the de facto role of the global policeman again.

That’s why some folks are talking about a NUCLEAR option against Iran! And I don’t know about you, but that scares the crap out of me!

America has the singular distinction of being the ONLY country that has EVER used atomic weapons against another country. Don’t think for a moment that the rest of the world has ever forgotten about that. And we didn’t make any friends in invading and occupying Iraq either! Using nukes as a retaliation strike against chemical, biological, or radioactive attacks is one thing. That’s a logical extension of our original Mutual Assured Destruction policy. But NOT as a first-strike option! And certainly NOT against military installations near any civilian areas! That kind of carnage just opens the door to all-out global war, and the only people who really want that in this country are the extremist end-timers!

YES, we need to deal with Iran, but right now we NEED this to be a global involvement! Having Iran with nuclear materials is a threat to EVERY modern country around the world. NOW is the time to get the world in on this, and not just a handful of so-called "willing nations". Iran needs to be contained, it needs to be corralled, and it needs to be neutered of its nuclear ambition once and for all. And if we don’t do that, and if we don’t get the whole world in on it, then WE WILL have a nuclear threat to deal with. If not now, then in the very near future.

Yes, conflict with Iraq was inevitable, but it was an inevitable conflict of OUR choosing. WE made the decision in 2003 to deal with the problem, no matter if it was the right decision or the wrong one. Iran is something that we should have dealt with years ago and didn’t, and now THEY get to decide when and how THIS inevitable conflict takes place.

(Computer – a mix of sounds, including a clip from the US Government courtesy of "Atomic Café")
(Fade Music In – "Future Remembered" by Brad Fidel)

You know who is the scariest group of people to have nuclear weapons? It’s the people who are deeply religious. It’s not their religious beliefs, per se, that make them so dangerous. It’s the fact that their beliefs would be so strong and so self-righteous that they would avoid listening to reason and would instead believe that the whole purpose of them having these weapons would be to use them against the so-called "non-believers", or to bring about the so-called "end of days".

That was one of the underlying fears of having a conservative Republican in charge of the country. People didn’t want to wake up one morning and have their president go on the air and announce: "Well, God says it’s time, so I just pushed the button! See y’all in the afterlife!" The same thing applies to other religious beliefs around the world. ANY religion that has in its doctrines the justification to use FORCE against another person is potentially dangerous. And that’s what we need to understand and be aware of, even when and especially if that religion happens to be our own!

Part of having this incredible power is the responsibility of making sure that it is used properly. That certainly cannot happen when that power is in the hands of people who think that their ultimate mission in life is to make sure that this world comes to a fiery end just to satisfy their religious dogma.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

[End of program]
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