Moral relativism alert: a professor appearing on this evening's Hardball has declared that a US attack to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons would be handing Iran "their very own 9-11." Jo-Anne Hart, of Lesley College and Brown University, was a guest on this evening's Hardball. Host Chris Matthews set us up the bomb with a leading question.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: What do you think were the lessons, the WMD lessons of Iraq? Going to war over WMD to a large extent. What did we learn?
View video here.
JO-ANNE HART: That it's all the more important that we shouldn't get pushed into this dangerous position about getting "tougher" on Iran. Because that's when we could get into a shooting war. There's this idea that we could have limited airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. But that's not some Nintendo war. That's we start a war, we start bombing and killing Iranians. We hand them their very own 9-11, and that's all kinds of trouble for us.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton was also a guest on the program. The author of the recently-released Surrender is Not an Option disagreed.
JOHN BOLTON: I give the Iranians more credit than you [addressing himself to Matthews] do. I think they're smart enough to understand that an attack against the nuclear program is not directed against them.
Without explicitly citing Hart's 9-11 theory, Matthews agreed with the thrust of her argument.
MATTHEWS: I do believe once your country's attacked, whether you're Cuban, you're Iraqi or Iranian, you turn against the invader, you turn against the attacker. It's called patriotism.
