Please go read the article by George Lakoff entitled "The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War". Lakoff makes the point that by not saying those words, but by using euphemisms instead, we are making it more likely. I really cannot do the article justice with an excerpt but I'll give you this:
I really think this is going to happen. I don't want to think this but I think it has something to do with Bush and his manhood. He is immature enough to do it. And, from all accounts, he wants to.The stories in the major media suggest that an attack against Iran is a real possibility and that the Natanz nuclear development site is the number one target. As the above quotes from two of our best sources note, military experts say that conventional "bunker-busters" like the GBU-28 might be able to destroy the Natanz facility, especially with repeated bombings. But on the other hand, they also say such iterated use of conventional weapons might not work, e.g., if the rock and earth above the facility becomes liquefied. On that supposition, a "low yield" "tactical" nuclear weapon, say, the B61-11, might be needed.
If the Bush administration, for example, were to insist on a sure "success," then the "attack" would constitute nuclear war. The words in [italics] are nuclear war, that's right, nuclear war — a first strike nuclear war.
We don't know what exactly is being planned — conventional GBU-28's or nuclear B61-11's. And that is the point. Discussion needs to be open. Nuclear war is not a minor matter.
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Even if the attack were limited to nuclear installations, starting a nuclear war with Iran would have terrible consequences — and not just for Iranians. First, it would strengthen the hand of the Islamic fundamentalists — exactly the opposite of the effect US planners would want. It would be viewed as yet another major attack on Islam. Fundamentalist Islam is a revenge culture. If you want to recruit fundamentalist Islamists all over the world to become violent jihadists, this is the best way to do it. America would become a world pariah. Any idea of the US as a peaceful nation would be destroyed. Moreover, you don't work against the spread of nuclear weapons by using those weapons. That will just make countries all over the world want nuclear weaponry all the more. Trying to stop nuclear proliferation through nuclear war is self-defeating.
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