Rick Santorum: Christian Nuclear Bombs are Better Than Islamic Ones

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is enthusiastically ready to go to war with Iran if they pursue attempts to go nuclear. According to him, at the Republican debate in Concord, N.H., an Islamic theocracy is more dangerous with a nuclear bomb than a Christian (US), atheist (former Soviet Union), or Jewish state (Israel). He does not explain it explicitly that way, but it is certainly implied. Robin Abcarian, in the January 8, 2012 Los Angeles Times writes:

Moderator David Gregory noted that the United States has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear North Korea. “Why is it we cannot not live with a nuclear Iran?” he asked. “And if not, are you prepared to take the country to war to disarm that country?”

Iran, said Santorum "is a “theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that the afterlife is better than this life . When your principal virtue is to die for Allah, then it’s not a deterrent to have a nuclear threat . It is in fact an encouragement for them to use their nuclear weapon.”

He is hinting that Iran has a suicide-bomber mentality: that Islam inclines the use of the nuclear bomb. It should be noted that the US, a mainly Christian state, is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs (killing over 200,000 civilians). [Updated:] There are debates about the actual reasons and reactions made by the US government during WWII against Japan. The US government's official reason for bombing Japan was because Japan started a war with the US. Japan used suicide bombers, though I don't recall that the Japanese religion promised virgins in the afterlife as a reward by Allah for their mission (side note: The Persian/Iranian word for God is Khoda, although Allah is used at times).

I usually never recommend Wikipedia as a source but its page on the history of suicide attacks gives an interesting perspective to this ignorant Islamophobic statement by Santorum. I would like to make it clear that I'm nuclear-bomb phobic and would like them all to be dismantled. I simply think it is really hypocritical that nuclear powers such as the US and Israel to tell Iran they can't have one. Every nation that attains a nuclear bomb is a "suicide attacker" state.

This video I'm posting, "History of U.S. Intervention in Iran - 1953 Until Present," is a must see. I don't believe there is one point made that is debated by historians.

The US, Iran, and Democracy

In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote a revolutionary tract titled "Common Sense." He hoped to arouse rebellion of American colonists against the British. The tract's thesis is essentially that a democratic-republic is far superior to a monarchy. He wrote, "The king is not to be trusted without being looked after , in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is that natural disease of monarchy." Ironically in 1953 the US, collaborating with the British that Americans once fought to be independent of,overthrew democracy in Iran. The US government replaced the Iranian government with a tyrannical monarchy.

The long term repercussions of US involvement in Iran arguably resulted in the anti-American Islamic Revolution of 1979. This short film produced during the George W. Bush presidency argues that a bombing campaign/war with Iran in the future may also produce undesirable results in the future. Presently US President Obama and Israel continue to articulate the possibility of such an aggressive scenario.