Month: October 2007
To attack or not to attack
Here are a few good articles about Iran. “Good” in the sense that they present the arguments for both sides of the attack vs. do not attack issue.
The do not attack argument fails on at least 3 points:
1. Iran is not Iraq. Therefore, you can”t point to the failure in Iraq as evidence for why there should be no attack against Iran. First, there was never any credible evidence that Iraq posed a threat to the West. Iran, on the other hand, is bragging of its efforts to develop a “peaceful” nuclear capability. The trouble is, Iran refuses to limit its uranium enrichment to peaceful levels. So, Iran definitely constitutes a threat whereas Iraq did not. Second, the attack against Iran would be an air war and not an occupation. It would be designed to set back Iran”s nuclear program and could be repeated whenever the program progressed to the point where the threat reappeared. No dead US soldiers, no allied occupation, no occupation. Iran is not Iraq.
2. There is good reason to fear that Iran”s leadership would not be deterred by the concept of MAD – mutually assured destruction – which deterred the Soviet leadership from using nukes all through the cold war years. These religious fanatics might actually like the prospect of (a) bringing on Judgment Day via nuclear Armageddon, or (b) just reshuffling the deck through a nuclear exchange with the West in the hope that this time it gets dealt a better geopolitically strategic hand (especially when there”s always prospect (a) to fall back on).
3. Appeasement doesn’t prevent war, it just makes it worse when it happens. Weren’t we supposed to have learned this already from WW2? The best time to stop Hitler would have been when he reoccupied the Rhineland in violation of the peace treaty ending WW1. Yes it would have meant war but it would have been fought entirely in Germany, it would have been of short duration, and its outcome would have certain victory for the West. How many millions of lives would have been saved? How much misery prevented?
By this time next year Iran will be a smouldering ruin
It”s a simple choice. Iran is a nuclear power or Iran is a smoldering ash heap. I don”t see how you get to any other alternative. The US will bomb Iran before Bush ends his term because it is too risky for him to leave it to the next President who may be Hilary Clinton. Guiliani would do it but he has to get elected first. I’d rather take the consequences of bombing Iran then let them acquire the means of starting a new cold war.
How to eliminate income tax
Gov. Huckabee is running for the US Republican Presidential nomination. He won”t get it but he has a good idea. His idea is to eliminate all personal and corporate income taxes. He correctly points out that corporate income tax is really just a tax on the consumer because companies just treat tax as a cost of production and pass it along in the price charged to consumers. That”s not new but it”s not often spoken of – in fact it”s completely ignored by Canadian politicians who are deathly afraid of suggesting we reduce let alone eliminate corporate taxes.
But Huckabee also would eliminate personal income taxes as well. He points out that all the offshore capital now safely out of the reach of the tax authorities would come back into the economy. Even better, the deterrent income tax poses to increased productivity would be gone and the economy freed to run at full production.
So how does the government pay for itself? With a tax on consumption. His proposal is a 23% sales tax. It sounds bad but its better than an income tax. With no income tax the black market economy would service and end up paying the sales tax. A monthly “prebate” would compensate (in advance) poor individuals for the tax they would end up paying for living essentials. This would make it progressive as the poor would be exempt and those who can afford to spend a lot would pay a lot.
It also has the advantage of being open and immediate – in your face – so there would be continuous pressure on government to keep it at an absolute minimum.
Faith and Reason
There are many dichotomies people seem to accept as givens without actually considering whether they are legitimate. One of these is faith and reason. It is commonly held, or at least unquestionably assumed, at least in some circles, that these are two distinct and dissimilar methods for discovering truth. I disagree.The only means for discovering truth with which we humans have been endowed is reason. Our senses deliver raw data to our brain which processes this data until our conscious mind can identify and categorize what we sense and then proceed to form opinions and to make and carry out plans based on those opinions.
Faith comes in one of two flavours. Some invoke it to bestow some divine legitimacy on what is nothing more than their closed-minded refusal to abandon bias in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This “blind” faith is no path to truth but a means of obfuscation.The other flavour is simply a word meaning that a judgment has been made on the basis of incomplete evidence, partly in the hope that the object of one”s faith is true. But where does this original judgment originate if not from the mind”s rational process.
The evidence, though incomplete, as in not overwhelmingly conclusive, must originate come from the senses. It may seem like a stray thought and may even be difficult or impossible to trace back to distinct sensory input. But it must have originated there or one is forced to believe in senses beyond the only ones of which we have any reliable evidence.