Comments on the Belmont Club,"The devil you know"

One way to look at the problem is what can you measure? It is hard to determine what Iran is building in an underground plant. It is impossible to determine whether it is planning to launch an attack if it has a weapon. It was difficult to determine if the Soviets or Russians were on Alert status. It is impossible to know if they are telling the truth when they say the missiles have been retargeted. The reliability of information about intentions, a highly subjective subject, must be considered also.

On balance the policy of negotiating arms control agreements with the Russians, based upon a reasonable level of assurance that they were hostile but rational actors, can be defended but can also be disputed on specifics. The policy of treating the Iranians as an equivalent case is based entirely on wishful thinking. Since we have absolutely no reason to take their word on anything, including the targeting or intent to use pre-emptively any weapons they acquire, and since we have no way of verifying what they are building in concealed facilities, and since the very act of going to the expense of building shielded underground plants is more consistent with an aggressive weapons program than any peaceful project, we must stop them from conducting any activities that could contribute to hostile activities. That means that the burden must be on Iran to prove that it is not dangerous and the US and anyone else threatened should issue an Ultimatum and destroy the underground facilities and anything that would support the production of WMD unless they are made completely and unconditionally transparent within a period of no more than 72 hours.

If the Iranian regime went to all this expense and trouble to build underground aspirin factories and teddy bear storage in order to prove how bad the Americans and Zionists are by precipitating an attack that destroys Iran then the responsibility for the suffering caused will rest on them. It is the responsibility of the Iranian people to evaluate the risk and remove the regime that places them in danger by engaging in reckless provocation.

In Pakistan we can not take their word that the gun will not be pointed at us. In addition we have no reason to want the gun pointed at India, which is a better friend and a more useful trade partner now. Therefor our policy should also be focused there on identifying what we can measure, if there is a training camp at all, and not what we can't measure, who is in it and what they are going to attack. We should then focus on shutting down the camps and getting the Pakistanis to devote their resources to more worthwhile projects. Those would include building law, order, secular education, and infrastructure.

-------
Brock,
any plan BHO devises trying to Spell Out “if A, then B” ... completely irrational relationships between A and B,

We need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel. We had a doctrine that worked.
Here it is laid out by John Foster Dulles. The key phrase is

The way to deter aggression is for the free community to be willing and able to respond vigorously at places and with means of its own choosing.

This is completely at variance with the legalist model that Obama and Holder are devoted to.