David Ignatius (The Washington Post) on Iran's Nuclear Program

David Ignatius - It's Hip to Be Hypocritical

October 28, 2007

Letter to the Editor: March 3, 2006

This letter was sent to The Washington Post about 2 weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting buddy in the face. It responds to an editorial by Op-Ed columnist, novelist and TV pundit David Ignatius that openly celebrates hypocrisy in international affairs.

To the Editor,

In his March 1st column "Good Nukes, Bad Nukes", David Ignatius views the double standard applied to Iranian and Indian nukes as an "enlightened hypocrisy". Contrasting the two nations as "the dream and the nightmare", Ignatius portrays India as the proverbial teacher's pet while Iran is the unruly juvenile delinquent. What's troubling, however, is the assumption that the "teacher"— the United States government — has the legal and moral authority to take such a position.

Unlike Iran, India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed a clandestine nuclear weapons program in defiance of the international community. India boasts a higher poverty rate than any other country on the planet and a rampant AIDS epidemic, yet rather than assisting its suffering masses, the Indian government sought weapons of mass destruction. Is this "the promise of globalization"?

Ignatius writes, "India has nuclear weapons, Iran wants them." This cannot be proven, and Iran strongly denies it. What should be emphasized is that whether under the mullahs or not, Iran has not attacked any other country in over 250 years. How many countries has the U.S. attacked? Got a calculator?

While you are condemning Iran, also ask why the only country that has actually dropped a nuclear bomb on other human beings has the right to deprive others of a nuclear fuel cycle under the NPT.

The United States has just lied the country into waging an illegal war of choice, murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, tortured and sexually humiliated people in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, massacred 18 innocent Pakistani villagers, used banned white phosphorus chemical weapons against Iraqi citizens in Fallujah, paid journalists to write state propaganda, allowed a major American city to be destroyed by a hurricane, and shot an old man in the face. This administration cannot even be trusted with birdshot—why trust them with nuclear weapons?

Arash Norouzi