Yes. Consider; if an action that takes 1000 lives prevents the loss of 10,000, that's what it means.
How did you calculate that ratio?
I don't understand the basis. It could be religious. It could be lust for power on the part of the leaders...either keeping it or gaining it. All I understand is that they DO want war. Or rather, they want the ability to destroy Israel and anybody else they don't like. Their leaders have SAID so. For instance, Khamenei (you know who he is, right?) said this: #Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”
It's a stretch to say with certainty that means they want war.
Our politicians have said things which could be read that way.
Does it mean our country wants war?
(I do think that many here do want war with Iran.)
Supporting war correlates with re-election.
Bush started 2, & won re-election.
Obama campaigned on ending them, but continued them, & won re-election.
'almost gone to war accidentally' means we DID NOT GO TO WAR, "close" only counts in horseshoes. One either uses a nuclear weapon or one does not. "almost" means you do not.
I think you're missing the tremendous risk here.
Let's try an analogy....
You play Russian roulette a few times, & come up chamber empty.
Does this mean Russian roulette doesn't pose dangerous risks?
It was dumb luck that some individuals were able to stop the nukes
from being unleashed.
Do you know of these incidents?
See above quote. Took me, quite literally, five seconds to find on google, and if I were to search longer, I'd find a bunch more.
And on this basis, you'd wage total war against Iran & any allies they'ed enlist?
Do you imagine that it would be an easy war?
Or that massive death & destruction would be worth it?
What would you think of our simply leaving the mid-east
so we wouldn't have to be threatened by Iran?
The above tweet from Khamenei is scarey not only for what it actually states, but because it was made as a sort of retraction/apology for a previous quote where his political opponents thought that he was going soft on Israel, advocating a consortium of people from Palestine, Iran, Iraq and others 'who were here before Israel was established, He specifically omitted inviting the Jews to join said consortium...and he still got in trouble.
And yet, Iran has never attacked Israel.
What the heck more do you want?
Proof of a build up of offensive (as opposed to defensive) weapons.
Proof of actual intent, rather than what appears to be rhetoric.
This would be a good idea before killing hundreds of thousands of them again.
My dear debate opponent, I am not advocating OUR use of nukes.
I'm not claiming that.
But I thought your premise for attacking them was to prevent their
becoming a nuclear power.
As for N.Korea, he's imploding quite sufficiently without our interference. N.Korea is going to cost us a bloody fortune, but not in weapons. WE are going to be putting that nation back together after it finally destroys itself. Why? Because we've always done that. Because that's what we do.
So you oppose attacking N Korea only because of the high cost?
And therefore would allow them to remain a nuclear power,
threatening our ally to the south?
Israel...the only reason anybody considers them dangerous is because they object to the notion that their neighbors want to destroy them simply because they exist.
But this makes them a major threat in the area.
And they've a record of attacking their neighbors,
& taking land, resulting in continued hostilities.
Again...'almost' means 'didn't.'
I think you're dismissing a significant problem.
Something can be a very dangerous risk, even
if the worst possibility hasn't occurred yet.
If you shoot at me and I'm still standing, without any holes in me, afterwards, it doesn't matter how close you came. You didn't shoot me.
I don't know what this means.