REGARDING IRAN'S EARTHQUAKE
As I'm sure you're aware, an earthquake in Bam, Iran this week may have killed 40,000 people. If that number holds up it represents roughly half of the town's population, and something like two-thirds the number we lost in the entire Vietnam war.
Iranians deserve our prayers, and the support of the world. Their loss is staggering.
But while Iran's losses are momentous, 40,000 is less than the number Iran lost in another earthquake just 13 years ago. In 1990 a quake in northwest Iran killed 50,000 people.
Now, I'm not a big government kind of guy, but isn't this sequence of events a powerful argument that Iran needs a revolution to replace its government? The mullahs apparently learned diddly from the '90 quake, and building codes apparently didn't change in the years between that quake and this one. If building codes had changed--if Iran had learned a thing or two from countries like the US and Japan that suffer enough quakes in some areas to alter building codes accordingly--thousands of people might have survived this week's quake.
To put it in some perspective, the 1995 Kobe quake killed 5,000 Japanese. It was a 7.0. Japan has long engineered its buildings and elevated highways to better withstand quakes, because that country has a long history with quakes. The Kobe quake could potentially have killed tens of thousands if not for two things: a stroke of luck (the quake struck before rush hour) and solid quake-resistant engineering. The engineering obviously wasn't perfect, but it did help minimize the damage. In contrast a 1923 earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo, a terrible event perhaps echoed in the popular Godzilla films depicting Tokyo's demise under the feet of an unstoppable monster. One hundred thousand confirmed died in that quake, and an additional 40,000 went missing (meaning their remains were never found). Tokyo in 1923 was mostly made of wood, contributing to the fire that ravaged the city, and was very poorly engineered. Earthquake proofing was still in the distant future.
Iran's mullahs have no excuse. Iran has a long history with quakes--it sits across several major fault zones. Earthquake-hardened construction techniques have been around for 30 years or so, in countries that actually keep up with the modern world. The quake in Bam was a 6.5, but due probably to buildings not built to withstand even the slightest temblor, as many as 40,000 are dead. In Iran a weaker quake kills more, because of bad engineering, which itself is probably the result of a negligent government that failed to learn anything from a recent killer quake.
Iran needs a revolution. The mullahs cannot effectively protect Iran's citizens from anything they should be protected from, though they did manage to protect their subjects from the evils of billiards for the past few decades.
UPDATE: National Review's Clifford D. May sees it my way: The mullahs are medieval incompetents.
The leaders of a poor country could claim that they hadn’t the resources to do anything about that -- that they could not, for example, afford to reinforce existing structures or build new structures that could withstand temblors. But Iran is oil-rich and has had plenty of money to lavish on nuclear weapons programs and on such terrorist groups as Hezbollah. Were Iran a democracy, its mullahs would be held to account, at least at the ballot box.
It's long past time for a revolution in Iran.
MORE: Dennis Prager says Iran's refusal of Israeli help--and Israel's offer to help--tell us all we need to know about the Middle East. Israel is civilized enough to lend aid to a state dedicated to Israel's violent destruction, while the mullahs would rather watch their own people die than accept help from Jews.