Preparing to use a WMD on Iran

[Tipsy]

You can think of nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, etc when thinking about using WMD's, but there is another type of weapon that has a strikingly errie similarity to these - economic sanctions.

I am personally against the use of any WMD under any circumstance because it would directly hurt innocent people. In the same manner, economic sanctions also hurts the innocent, maybe even to a greater degree. To put economic sanctions on the same page as WMD's, let's take a look at Iraq's economic sanctions before the war.

When asked why the sanctions were in place, Bush (father) said: "By making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] would eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power." So our strategy is to hurt and kill innocent people to compel them to remove Saddam. Our wonderful sanctions led to disease, starvation, and killed thousands of innocent people who had no power and no involvement in the issue they were being killed over. Not to mention it didn't work.

So not only does it hurt innocent civilians, it just plainly doesn't work. Did the sanctions get Saddam out of power? Have the last half a century of sanctions on Cuba get the people to kick Castro out of power? How exactly is imposing economic sanctions on Iran, or in general, be considered an option in foreign policy.

There is no big boom or instant death of people, but economic sanctions directly hurt the people who are the weakest and most of the time, most innocent in a society.

[Irrelevant]

What is a WMD?

[Venice_native]

Fight fire with fire.

In the same analogy, it would be stupid to fight water with fire. So when a group of people harm a group of people, it wouldn't make sense to target only those responsible. That puts out the message "Hey, we can kill 2000+ civilians and they are only going to kill a few militants who are serving to die anyway".

[Tipsy]

Originally Posted by Irrelevant

What is a WMD?

A weapon of mass destruction.

Originally Posted by Venice_native

Fight fire with fire.

In the same analogy, it would be stupid to fight water with fire. So when a group of people harm a group of people, it wouldn't make sense to target only those responsible. That puts out the message "Hey, we can kill 2000+ civilians and they are only going to kill a few militants who are serving to die anyway".

I'm not saying only hold the person who pulled the metaphoric trigger responsible, hold the people responsible and those directly supporting them responsible. But going back the Iraq example, hold Saddam and his generals, cabinet, etc responsible, but not the everyday Iraqi who is just trying to get from day to day. Is it a two year old child's fault that Saddam isn't following the rules of the world has put out? The answer has to be yes for a lot of people because the biggest age group hurt by the economic sanctions were children.

[Venice_native]

Well I get that too, but I don't think it's going to have as big of an impact on who you are fightning if you only attack them. Hiroshima was the biggest factor in winning WW2, not fightning the Japanese directly.

[Snagg]

I agree, not only does economic sanctions not help in putting dictators out of power, but could be used to help dictators get his people to hate other countries like US. He could make it sound like US is soley responsible for the misery of the civilians and look what happens now, tons of people still trying to kill US troops in Iraq after Saddam's gone. I'm not saying that is all caused by the econimc sanction, but probably influenced it a bit.

[Lizardbreath]

It would be alot easier if we would just...i dunno. ASSASINATE THE PERSON IN POWER!.....What a ****ing good idea. Now only if we had a presidential staff who knew what they were doing.

[x42bn6]

Personally, I would prefer US forces to invade Iran rather than use a nuclear missile. But both options are stupid.

And unfortunately, Bush's logic there is flawed. You torture people to remove someone else you hate. That is akin to blackmail. And blackmail does not always work. Sanctioning Iran will only make things worse. Nuking it is even worse.*

[betaalpha5]

guess i'm going to get drafted
we need the robots

[Tipsy]

I think what I said may have been taken the wrong way. I wasn't actually talking about using a conventional WMD on Iran, but comparing trade sanctions to the worst parts of a WMD (blindly hurting the innocent) and not even having the good qualities (bringing success). I was saying that trade sanctions do resemble WMD's. The WMD I’m talking about in the title “Preparing to use a WMD on Iran” is supposed to mean trade sanctions when put into context.

[Lizardbreath]

There is no comparison. Yes sanctions hurt the poor the most. That is a fact. But a WMD has radiation....which lasts for years and is deadly.

[Tipsy]

Originally Posted by lizardbreath

There is no comparison. Yes sanctions hurt the poor the most. That is a fact. But a WMD has radiation....which lasts for years and is deadly.

Not all WMD's have radiation, they are not all nuclear. I was simply comparing the worst part of the collective pool of WMD's to the worst part of sanctions. The only parts I compare are clearly stated in my first post.