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.
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.
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 do. I think they're smart enough to understand that an attack against the nuclear program is not directed against them.