Bush administration considering using nuclear weapons against Iran

Most Americans, like most people in the rest of the world, can't manage Anarchy responsibly because of their lack of emotional maturity and their underdeveloped moral reasoning (which, in turn, is linked to their underdeveloped level of logical reasoning).

Let me explain by using Kohlberg's (1958) "Stages of Moral Reasoning". It is a slightly flawed and culture-biased model, but generally it holds up well. It goes as follows:

As people grow up, and their brains and mind develop, they move through the following stages of moral reasoning:

Level 1: Pre-Conventional
1. Obedience and punishment orientation (do/don't else you get punished --the inplication being that if you don't get caught, it's OK)
2. Self-interest orientation (do/don't to get rewarded)

Level 2: Conventional
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (do/don't else people will disapprove --a.k.a. The good boy/good girl attitude)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (do/don't because it's the law/social rule --a.k.a. law and order morality)

Level 3: Post-Conventional
5. Social contract orientation (do/don't because it is for the common good --a.k.a. altruistic principles)
6. Universal ethical principles (do/don't because you believe it is right --regardless whether it has positive or negative consequences for you --a.k.a. principled conscience)

Kohlberg found in his research that few people make it beyond level 4.

Interestingly, these stages correspond nicely to Piaget's stages of cognitive development, particularly the:

- Preoperational stage, which occurs from roughly ages two to seven, during which children think in simple cause-effect relationships, however illogical or "magical" they appear; Thinking is still egocentric, has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others, and classifies by single categories (e.g. all good/all bad);

- the Concrete operational stage, which occurs from roughly ages seven to eleven in which children think logically about concrete events, but not abstract concepts such as "freedom", "justice" etc.

- the Formal Operational stage, which occurs after roughly age eleven, in which children can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses systemically, and become concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological issues.

Again, most people do not get far beyond the Concrete Operational stage. Language development ties into this in important and influential ways, but that gets too complex to discuss here. Needless to say, if you lack the vocabularly, you cannot manage abstract concepts well.

Basically, people are too dumb and immature to manage responsible living in a large society without simple rules and authority figures to guide/command them. This is true with the apes (where the group falls apart without a dominant male/female pecking order) and it is true for us.

If you bothered to read all this, by the way, you have my respect. Not to let this newly acquired information go to waste, I wish to point out a practical application: one could consider how Kohlberg's and Piaget's stages might affect how a person regards the issues we are discussing in this thread, about Iraq, Iran and terrorism in general.

 

Try Chechnya, they were separatists wanting Chechnya to become independent and a country in it's own right. These people are the majority of terrorists in Russia at the minute. The same way that the London tube bombing was the first Al-Quaeda based attack in the UK, most of the rest in recent history have been the IRA, again a movement wanting Independence for their native country. And also another terrorist movement much like Al-Quaeda that gained a lot of support from the US.

 

That does it! If I ever make it to the UKL I am tracking you down and buying you a pint of the beverage of your choice!

Always nice to have the things you have always kown to be true confirmed with bigger words

 

thank you nexxo. great post. i'm with cthippo: we owe you a pint.
of course now i'm trying to figure out what stage i'm at....

 

Gaaah, its like psychology class. Although I guess its good for Nexxo to be informative. I can see most people dont make it past 4, looking at the 6 stages I can tell I jump between them.

 

G.W.Bush is a liar and a criminal. In a justice world he must be judge for crimes against humanity.
I'm sick of all his lies and criminal atittudes.
He's goin' to start another war with another lie....?!
Where is Osama Bin Laddin ?
Where are the weapons of mass destruction ?
Where are Iran Nuclear weapons ?

LIES LIES LIES.

 

I guess Bush operates at moral stage 1.

 

But look at it from the other side... Money, Oil, Money, Oil, Money, Oil... He has to do something to keep his "investers" -aka The Weapons Lobby- happy.

Where is Osama Bin Laddin? Probably Bush is hiding him somwhere in Texas
Where are the weapons of mass destruction? USA took them with, fur use in their next war
Where are Iran Nuclear weapons? Rumors are they are shipping from the US as we speak

Hey inventing stuff is cool, I should move to the US and run for President. I just need to mention God some more... Ah well, God Bless America... NOT

EDIT:

Is there a -1 stage too?

 

I have something interesting to add. being a daily viewer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart i do my best keeping up with all the news and bush inconsistencies, if you haven't seen this show, you should, google it. One thing i found very interesting though was this:

on the show, they had a former air force general (i think) that worked for Saddam and had regular access to him. He escaped to America, the general, not saddam, and wrote a book and the most interesting thing is that he said saddam actually had wmds but moved them to a nearby country prior to the invasion. The weird thing is if this were true, the bushies would have been all over this guy, who appears to be credible.

Can anyone make sense of this? Nexxo? except that one guy, u know who you are

 

There was a recent editorial in the Christitian Science monitor saying that Bush had good reason to believe that Iraq had WMDs based on what Saddam was saying. In fact, when, on the eve of the US invasion Saddam told his generals that there wern't any WMDs to save their asses, they were shocked having believed all along that the were just well hidden.

I almost bought into this line of reasoning until I remembered reading a book by one of the members of the UN special Commission team which was looking for Chemical and biological weapons before the war and in this book he made a very convinceing case that there werre none. Of course, subsequent events proved him, and UNSCOM to be correct. That book was published, and indeed I read it, before we invaded, so the information was in the public domain at that time.

If the General Greensabbath is refering to left Iraq prior to the invasion he may well have believed that such weapons existed and had been moved out of the country.

The question becomes, moved to where? Obviously not Iran, because Saddam was maintaining the illusion that he had them to deter Iran. Saudi Arabia or Jordan? Hardly likley given their strong support of the US leading up to the war. Syria? maybe, but one would think we would have heard about it by now. Turkey? Also no way. Keep in mind, Iraq was a secular nation surrounded by unfriendly theocracies of several stripes. If such weapons existed and left the country, there is no way they expected to get them back.

 

That's the single thing that lends any credibility to Bush's WMD claim. We know for a fact that Sadaam had WMDs - he used them on his own people. So there was no reason to doubt that we would find them.

Were there other motives for going into Iraq? Sure, we'd be dumb to think there weren't. But not all of them hold water, at least with me. Take the oil scheme scenario, which seems to be the most popular. If we went into Iraq to get its oil, then why have gas prices nearly doubled since the start of the war? An increase in supply lowers the price. Or at least that's what they told me in my Economics classes in college.

I don't think we went into Iraq for either oil or terrorism. I think after 9/11, Bush felt the need to show a strong display of 'we've been hit, now see how hard we can hit back'. What I mean is that Iraq was a convenient target, even though it had nothing to do with 9/11. Afghanistan was easy, but we didn't have anything to show for it - no Osama. The idea to go into Iraq probably seemed great on paper - quick prior defeat of Sadaam, WMDs, Iraq's chronic defiance of the UN, etc.

Now don't misunderstand me - I'm not of the Fox and Friends camp that says Bush can do no wrong. We have a hell of a mess over in Iraq and Afghanistan that is entirely our responsibility. We have missing WMDs. Osama's still on the loose. Every day, some our soldiers and the innocent citizens of Iraq are blown to pieces. We highly underestimated the scope and difficulty of the mission. I just don't buy all the 'Bush is an evil puppet master' conspiracy theories. This is the same man that can't find his own arse with both hands, remember?

What scares me is who has the WMDs now. At least when Sadaam had them, we knew where they were.

Better the enemy you know than the one you don't know.

==========

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming, er, thread topic.

The Iran situation is 100X scarier than anything going on in Iraq. Iran's leader openly defies the UN with his nuclear program and expresses a public desire to wipe another country off the map. Even Sadaam never went that far. But a wrong move from anybody involved could easily have us in WWIII. And with nukes involved, regardless of who's throwing them, the consequences are higher than ever.

 

About Saddam and WMD. AS I have said many times before, a dictator's business is to stay in business. In order to do so, he has to appear strong and ruthless to all the people (including his own accomplices) who might get ambitious and want to overthrow him. This is a constant threat to a dictator. As such, Saddam was never going to admit he had no WMD, even if he clearly did not. He was never going to allow inspectors unrestricted access to prove to all the world and his many, many enemies that the lion, in fact, had no teeth. In order to guarantee the continued support of his generals, he would tell them anything to make them believe that Saddam's rule was strong and powerful. The best proof that he had no WMD was the fact that he was not co-operating with weapons inspection --otherwise he would be proudly parading its capabilities down the street every day, boasting about his power. Bit like Iran is doing now.

So he gassed a village. It doesn't take serious hardware to do that, and in any case we knew damn well what he used for that because the U.S. sold the materials to him (and continued to do so even after that atrocity that shocked the world).

Arthur2Sheds: your logic is flawed. Oil companies want nothing more than the price to go up because it improves their profit margins. However U.S. companies can not just jack up the price in the face of cheaper competing Middle Eastern oil --they have to jack up the world price of oil everywhere. This means that they have to restrict supply of Middle Eastern oil relative to demand to increase its price along with their own. In official transcripts in which April Glapsie, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, pretty much gave Saddam tacit permission to invade Kuwait she literally stated that U.S. oil companies would like to see an increase in the price of oil.

And although Bush is an idiot, the people that put him in power (for that reason) and control him definitely are not.

Can the paranoia about Iran. It has the number five biggest oil reserve in the world (Iraq had number two). This is the real reason Iran is "dangerous".

 

after the cluster ****ups in Afghanistan and Iraq i dont think the EU or UN will allow the US to go to war with Iran. sanctions and political plea bargaining yes, but no war. i hope.

i did read some where that Iraq was invaded because saddam was selling his oil for Euros in stead of $$. now as the Us's economical strength is partly reliant on the amount of dollars other countries buy and sell with i thought this was a plausible reason at the time.

 

The general guy said he actually saw the wmds being moved, i'll try to find the interview.

alright, the general's name is Georges Sada and he said they were taken to Syria and i have some quotes:

In his book he doesn't say he saw the WMD sent to Syria, but he describes the operation, and says this:

"My own knowledge of these transfers [WMD to Syria] doesn't come from any of the published reports but from a man who was actually involved in the transfers - a civilian pilot who witnessed the commercial 747 going back and forth between Syria and Iraq at that time. And he has confirmed for me that it happened just this way."

Sada says there were about 56 transfers. He is much more specific about his first-hand knowledge of a planned WMD attack on Israel in the run-up to the first Gulf War, but of course we have to take his word for it all. Or not.


On some accounts, he said he saw them, but apparently he didn't see them being moved but saw them in Iraq but the whole thing is still fairly suspicious so i guess we get to make up out own minds. The book by the way is "Saddam's Secrets"

 

A nutter on a self confessed mission from God, in charge of some of the world's deadliest weapons.

Am I talking about Bush, Blair, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (he's the president of Iran, Dubya)?

Sam

 

I kinda feel sorry for you guys in America, the home of the free...and the saviours of the world in your hollyood movies.
You're livin' in Paranoia Country.
Try to discuss something like we are doing here at bit-tech, in a US forum, or even over the phone to someone in the States, and you know what i'm talking about... You are no longer free men.
Do you still believe that Bin Laddin made that horrible crime all by himself...
Of course he blow up the two towers, but with a little help from some of his american long time friends.
For what ?
Look at what happens next...
The Two Towers were just the trigger to all the invasions and atrocity who cames after.
It is so damned hard to see this ?!
I'm sick of you all "saviours of the world, keepers of the peace and democracy".
The world is no longer the same after 9/11...

 

That was another reason. There were, in fact, several:

- The U.S.' own oil reserves are limited, and would last it for about 30 years. Middle Eastern oil would keep it chugging along for another century at least. So it needs Middle Eastern oil. Thing is, so do other emerging economies such as China. So the U.S. needs to safeguard its access to Middle Eastern oil.

- The second reason is, as you say, to do with Saddam considering accepting Euros for oil (seeing as the U.S. was boycotting him). The fear was that this might finally tip OPEC over to accept Euros also rather than U.S. dollars only, given that it has been toying with that idea. This means that any country which wants to buy oil no longer needs to buy dollars. The implications for the currency value is clear.

- The top five biggest oil reserves are all in the Middle East. The only two of those top five countries that are not friends with the U.S. are Iraq (number 2) and Iran (number 5). Do the maths. It is not about threat; the U.S. identifies about 30 countries as "threats". But only Iraq and Iran are the focus of its military attentions.

 

Going way back, the flaw with post conventional morality is that if you're truly "whacked," whats moral to you is absurd or utterly wrong to someone else. </tangent>

 

What's with all the anti-american sentiment in here? Like the UK is really great...**** off.

 

I'll give you an example that the comedian Lewis Black gave.
Say you're in an office and there was somebody that jumped up on his desk and yell out at the top of his lungs: "I'm the greatest employee here and you would all die without me!" every 5 minutes. I guarantee you, you would have killed him within a week.

As Americans, we're bred into this idea that there couldn't be a single country that's better than us under any circumstances. We're also bred to believe everything that the government says and to not question. Those who do question are called anarchists, exremists, anti-establishment, or otherwise stigmatized by conservatives.

In the words of Anti-Flag: "I saw an article in the New York Times actually mention Anti-Flag in it and one of the things they say is that people on college campuses are being more turned on to the military and turn off of songwriters like Bob Dylan and Neil Young and anti-establishment bands like Anti-Flag. One of the things I think to myself: what's f**kin' wrong and what's so anti-establishment with the idea of wanting peace? Why is that so anti-establishment? Why is wanting to be told the truth anti-establishment? These aren't anti-establishment ideas, these are pro f**kin' peace ideas."