Payback is a Bitch

Car bombs have been used to target several of Israel envoys in India and Georgia and you can guess who the Israelis are accusing:

Bombers have targeted staff at Israeli embassies in India and Georgia, officials say, with Israel accusing Iran of masterminding the attacks.

All I can say is that this isn’t surprising considering the recent use of car bombs to kill Iranian nuclear scientists being blamed on Israel:

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.

I think this demonstrates succinctly that violence will beget violent. If you are going to use violence to kill somebody don’t be surprised if violence is then employed to kill you. This is why a foreign policy built upon the concept of preemptive war is so dangerous. Preemptive war advocates claim we need to kill an potential enemy before they kill us. What a preemptive war actually does is take the possibility of war and turn it into a guarantee.

For the same of argument let’s say we have two countries who strongly dislike each other; the United States and Iran. Setting history aside let’s assume these two countries strongly hate one another and have been threatening each other for years. In the decades that the threats have been flying back and forth no actual war has broken out but both sides are insinuating that they are willing to make a first strike. While both sides are rattling sabers no actual war has broken out and the loss of life has been minimal, isolated to a handful of incidents. Things could remain in this tense but mostly peaceful state for decades to come. Now let’s assume the United States makes a preemptive strike against Iran sparking off a war. Instead of a tense situation where war was a possibility but so far avoided we have an actual war. That is all preemptive war can get you, war.

Israel, hoping to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, has been a likely culprit in the recent bombing of Iranian nuclear scientists. Any idiot could tell you that Iran was eventually going to retaliate in kind. Now Israel will feign surprise and pretent they have no idea why Iran is targeting Israeli officials while many people in the United States will scream about the need for us to go over and help our “friend” Israel.