N. Korea v. Iran

I've noticed that the media is all over the N. Korean nuclear tests. Please don't misunderstand I don't in any way welcome the notion of Kim Jong Il having a nuclear arsenal, but lets be honest he's probably not going to be around much longer. There is at least the possibility that after the passing of KJI N. Korea may get a more stable and open minded leader. There is also N. Koreas history of warfare which is pretty standard and straight forward. I don't see N. Korea as a nation prepared to sacrifice itself to destroy it's enemies. What everyone seems to be glossing over are the Iranian missle tests. Iran has a less clean cut history of warfare, as is illustrated in this excerpt of an article by writer Matthias Kuntzel:

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan - or "mobilization of the oppressed" - was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first."

This is a nation which believes paradise can come only through chaos and destruction. Do we really want them to have a nuclear arsenal? I don't know about you, but I would rather live through another cold war than a nuclear winter.

The Stranger