3 April 2015

Iran was not behind the 9/11 attacks, Rep. Zinke

Rep. Ryan Zinke has been to war. He served in the Middle East. He should know that Osama Bin Laden and Saudi jihadists organized and carried out the 9/11 attacks. But he made some very strange remarks at his town hall meeting in Kalispell on 2 April. According to the Daily InterLake’s Sam Wilson, a good reporter, he said:

“There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that we’re going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They will stop at nothing to destroy us. And believe me, if they bring a commercial jet into our towers and kill 3,000 innocent civilians, if they had access to a nuclear weapon, they would do the same.”

Here are a few facts for Rep. Zinke to consider:

Iran didn't attack us on 9/11.

There's really no way we can stop Iran from building an atomic bomb unless through diplomacy we can convince that nation not to build one. Unless of course we're willing to invade and forever occupy a nation of 80 million and 636,00 square miles of rugged land; a nation larger than any in western Europe, and more populous than all but Germany.

It would not be good were Iran to build an atomic bomb, but neither would it be the end of the world nor an existential threat to the United States. If we can co-exist with Russia and its tens of thousands of bombs, we can co-exist with an Iran armed with a handful of bombs.

Rep. Zinke’s off-target remarks make him a contender for the Tom Cotton Award. That’s not a good thing.