Obama and Sarkozy haven’t yet been fully won around to the military-Keynesian view on Iran.

From Y-Net:

According to a Monday report in the French website “Arret sur Images,” after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents [Obama & Sarkozy] retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day.

The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move.

The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

French President Barack Obama that he could not “stand” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he thinks the Israeli premier “is a liar.”

If only Netanyahu made the economic case for war against Iran more clearly! He could adopt the tones of, say, Paul Krugman and frame it in terms of the boost to aggregate demand that a new middle eastern war would give the cash-strapped American economy! 

Heck, maybe Netanyahu should go the whole hog and declare that the only thing that can save America from the horrors of the liquidity trap is World War 3! After all, the military-Keynesians say that World War 2 “brought us out of the Great Depression?”

I apologise for the sarcasm. I’m glad that the Western powers are fragmented, and that Netanyahu is as divisive a figure as ever, because it makes it significantly less likely that they will intervene and that this saga will end in some kind of middle eastern or global conflagration — because unlike the military-Keynesians, I recognise the destructive effects war has to infrastructure, to productivity, to capital and labour markets, and to economic confidence.

Further, I recognise that a nuclear-armed Iran will finally bring a counter-balance to a middle east overshadowed by a nuclear-armed Israel, forcing the Zionists and Muslims to achieve a lasting peace. Iran seeks nuclear arms as a counter-balance, not as an offensive force. The vast majority of middle easterners want iPads, cars, roads, Coca Cola and economic development, rather than nuclear conflagration. There does exist a tiny minority of religious fundamentalists — some of whom are Jewish, and some of whom are Muslim — who wish to exterminate the other side. But nuclear-armed nations including Israel, Pakistan and America have had governments led by religious fundamentalists without incident, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that a nuclear-armed Ahmadinejad would be any more threatening to world-peace than a nuclear-armed George W. Bush. Bush, lest we forget, was a former cocaine addict, alcoholic and religious fundamentalist who believed he could personally communicate with the Almighty.