Binyamin Netanyahu: “Do you want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?”

From Karen, the Lonely Conservative:

‘A New Standard for Human Stupidity’

September 16, 2012

We now have to look to foreign leaders to hear some common sense. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Meet the Press this morning, saying things that make sense. I’m surprised his comments weren’t cut.

Continuing his calls for the United States to join Israel in imposing “red lines” threatening military action if Iran continues to pursue weapons made from enriched uranium, Netanyahu told David Gregory that “Iran is guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism.”

“It’s the same fanaticism that you see storming your embassies today,” he added. “Do you want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?”

He then lamented that some in the American press have vocalized opposition to Israel’s desired end to an Iranian nuclear program: “I mean I heard some people suggest, David — I actually read this in the American press — they said, ‘Well, you know, if you take action, that’s a lot worse than having Iran with nuclear weapons. Some have even said that Iran with nuclear weapons would stabilize the Middle East, stabilize the Middle East.”

“I think the people who say this have set a new standard for human stupidity,” he said of those opponents.

No wonder Obama doesn’t want to meet with him.

The Other McCain has more.

Bob Woodward made a very important observation on Meet the Press, that our intelligence information, that everyone’s intelligence information, is often not as accurate as they’d like to believe it is. The most well-known failure of intelligence was when the United States believed, wholeheartedly, that Iraq retained old, and was building new, chemical weapons in 2002, but it was hardly the only one. Mr Woodward stated that any claims that anyone knew, for certain, exactly how far along Iran was toward building nuclear weapons were foolish; their intelligence estimates might happen to be dead-on accurate, but they could also be very far off.

That, of course, brings up the very old military question: do you prepare for what you believe is the worst your enemies could do, or for what you believe they are most likely to do? For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat, and the answer, for most intelligent people, would be that they must prepare for the worst Iran could do; if it turns out that they overprepared, then they will have wasted time and effort and money, but their nation will endure. If they decide to base their preparations on what they think their enemies are most likely to do, and they guess wrong, the consequences could be devastating.

And that is why, to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the notion that there is anything worse than an Iran armed with nuclear weapons “set(s) a new standard for human stupidity.” Armchair strategists who have the responsibility for nothing have the luxury of theorizing about what might or could or should or probably will or will not happen; the men with the actual responsibility of protecting their nations’ actual survival don’t have that luxury.
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Cross-posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.