25. September 2009 by Raleigh Miller.

We’ve just found out that Iran has been building a nuclear plant that it has been hiding from U.N. inspectors.  This is a pretty big problem, and it signals that suspicions towards Iran were well founded.  Sanger and Cooper at the NYT report…

 The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization confirmed for the first time on Friday that Iran was building a “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility,” designed to produce nuclear fuel that it had not previously announced to international authorities, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported….“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, standing beside Mr. Obama and Mr. Sarkozy. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”  The extraordinary and hastily arranged joint appearance by the three leaders — and Mr. Obama said that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had asked him to convey that she stood with them as well — adds urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambition to build a nuclear weapons capacity. The three men demanded that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran, near the holy city of Qum.

There will inevitably be a chorus of “I told you so” coming from the right on this issue, but I think this turn of events signals the exact opposite.  It’s important we not overlook what distinguishes the above reporting from past speculations concerning the Iranian threat: the explicit announcement of solidarity between America, England, France and Germany.  And presumably, that list will grow if the threat of aggression is further required.  By waiting it out, and allowing Iran and Ahmadinejad to provide unequivocal evidence that they’re operating without much regard for international law, rather than rushing in on a hunch and attempting to justify the attack after the fact, Obama has made it much more likely that we can avoid agression altogether.  A diplomatic solution is made much more plausible when we’ve got the world on our side. It will even be insisted that, having been briefed on the secret plants almost a year ago, Obama was irresponsible not to comport himself more aggressively and with more hostility towards Iran, but this commits the same mistake.  If such aggression had been levied, based on the claim that such plants exist (and in the face of Ahmadinejad’s flat denials) it would have rang hollow with a public that was exhausted with fabricated justifications for war.  Now, having heard of the existence of such a nuclear plant straight from Iranian officials, Western leaders will be well poised to threaten as much as neccessary, and such threats are all the more likely to not require following through (which is the most preferable scenario, surely).  It may be easy to compare this style of foreign policy to the Bush doctrine and to point out, not incorrectly, that these tactics do provide less in the way of *immediate* and *gun at the hip* deterrence and prevention, but this is how civilized countries ought to act, and it provides more security in the long run, because it doesn’t have the tendency to dissolve tenuous international coalitions when other countries think we’re being to presumptuous.  This is actual diplomacy, something we haven’t seen for nearly a decade. (NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/middleeast/26nuke.html?_r=1&hp)

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21. September 2009 by Raleigh Miller.

I’ve now moved to Columbus OH, and i’m waiting for classes to begin at OSU.  Today, along with four other incoming graduate students, I’m taking a test to get out of logic 250.  Tomorrow there is a series of meetings and get-to-know you type events.  Finally classes begin on Wednesday.  This Wednesday i’m sitting in on Shabel’s PhilMath class, which I probably won’t end up taking.  Thursday is the Pro-seminar (on the mind body problem), and early next week are the first sessions of Declan Smithies’s “Consciousness” Seminar and Sigrun Svavarsdottir’s “Reasons” Seminar.  Looks like I’m doing straight up contemporary analytic philosophy, M&E, conceptual analysis etc. this semester.

Here goes…

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