Broadside Opinion

Brandon Minster, Broadside Correspondent

President Barack Obama has a lot on his plate. Between adjudicating misdemeanors in Cambridge, Mass., opining about the proceedings at the MTV Video Music Awards, demonizing a non-friendly news agency, and advocating for a college football playoff, no one can really blame the man if unemployment is on its way past 10 percent. Clearly he’s busy.

Not to fear. While our country is shedding high-wage technical jobs, others are growing in those very sectors. If you happen to enjoy sunny Mediterranean climes, pistachios that get your fingers all red, gasoline that costs less than 50 cents per gallon, and oppressive Islamic republics, scores of jobs await you in the promising field of nuclear technology.

According to Mark Hosenball in Newsweek, Iran followed its 2003 “halting” of its atomic weapons program by, well, immediately restarting its atomic weapons program.

In Iran’s defense, though, it should be noted that, since even Denny’s now closes for Christmas, every business can be said to “halt” every once in a while.

It’s the length of the halting that matters. One man’s halt is another’s dramatic pause.

The problem is the nature of diplomatic language, which doesn’t really differentiate between halting and catching one’s breath. This deficiency might need correction soon, as it seems every time the International Atomic Energy Agency secures promises of halting weapons programs, the promising nations start things back up pretty quickly.

To slightly exaggerate, on one particular trip to Iran, Hans Blix was shown the “halted” centrifuges and left to catch his plane back to Belgium (official name: Netherlands Junior).

When he got to the car he remembered he’d left his hat inside, whereupon he opened the door to find centrifuges spinning like a toked-up hippie girl at a Phish concert.

The world’s thugs have been of two minds about how to handle weapons inspectors. Some end their programs and say they didn’t, while some don’t end their programs and say they did. The first group was lead by Saddam Hussein, who thought the international community should be satisfied with a, “Come on, guys, you know me” level of verification.

Iran subscribes to the other school of thought. Hardly a month goes by that it isn’t halting its nuclear program. But don’t let that discourage you from applying for one of the technical jobs. Somehow the program has a way of starting itself back up every month.

I once had a radio like that. I gave it to GoodWill. Iran is not seriously considering doing the same.
Of course, we have nothing to worry about. Americans have a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in the Oval Office. Not so much for anything he’s actually done for peace, but more for the fact that, you know, he likes peace. And that should be worth a fancy dinner in Norway.

Unfortunately, some people aren’t swayed by fancy awards. I was a two-time geography bowl champion in high school, but not everyone wanted to be my friend as a result.

Peace prizes have a way of not bringing peace as effectively as strength. David Von Drahle of Time recognizes as much when he argues that the Nobel Prize should more rightly be given to nuclear weapons than to those seeking a nuclear-free world.

Perhaps the president’s lack of focus on the nuclear threat is really just a way to kill two birds with one stone.

If nuclear weapons make us safer, then handing them out like toasters with new checking accounts is the safest thing of all, and if our country isn’t going to make any more jobs on its own, allowing every tinhorn despot to start up an expensive weapons program is a great way to find work for unemployed scientists and technicians.

If he keeps coming up with ingenious employment schemes like this, he might find himself with the Nobel Prize in economics, an award that historically is more rewarding of actual results than grand intentions. And if his plan doesn’t work, it’s not like any of us will still be alive to say, “I told you so.”