Editor, The Times:
“Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death.” - Otto Von Bismarck.
With the exception of Niccolo Machiavelli, Bismarck is perhaps the most misunderstood figure in history.
Tall, monocle in one eye, often accompanied by two large dogs that made German shepherds look like midgets, Bismarck looked and often talked like the epitome of the arrogant, over-bearing Prussian that everyone loves to hate.
Beneath that harsh surface lay a shrewd operator, a man who knew when to compromise to keep the balance of power without going to war.
Even his early wars - Denmark 1864, Austria 1866 and finally France 1870 - 71, were designed to push a bunch of weak quarrelsome Germanic states into one powerful united entity that, despite the disasters of two world wars and partition, Germany is to this day.
I don’t for one minute buy the view that Germany was alone responsible for World War I. However it would have been good if Bismarck had been around (he was dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1890) during the Balkan crisis. Instead the belligerency of Moltke, Tirpitz and Kaiser Wilhelm ruled the day.
Now we have the saber rattling of Israel against Iran, the need to prevent that unlovable country from developing atomic weapons has grown to a crescendo.
Yes, yes, I know the Ahmedinajad regime talks about the destruction of Israel but so does virtually every Saudi prince and I haven’t heard anything about a preventive strike on Saudi Arabia.
Beside that, it’s Israel that has 2-300 atomic weapons, completely uninspected or acknowledged. Even that totally miserable North Korea does a better job of conforming to the rules than Israel, but then it wouldn’t take much for that, would it?
Waging war on Iran’s nuclear program via the Internet is fair game, one can suppose.
However, a real preventive war, a strike on Iran, could well be committing suicide for real.
Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor, a facility in Syria and laid waste to a good part of Lebanon in 2006.
But, there is such a thing as luck running out.
Bismarck, where are you when we need you most?
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.