The International Community is going to recognize that Iran is simply going to do what she wants:
Iran vowed on Monday to pursue nuclear research even if talks in Moscow lead to agreement on a Russian offer to enrich uranium for Iranian power plants — a plan aimed at calming fears Tehran wants atomic bombs.
“If we reach some compromise… (on the Russian proposal), we continue our preparation from where we are now. That is, the research department will continue its activity,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news briefing in Brussels.
I am not sure why this is so hard to understand. Their current leadership wants to blast Israel into the sea, or at the very least, have us think they are willing and capable of blasting Israel (and everyone else) into the sea. They aren’t going to be negotiated with, other than to agree to terms, get something from the negotiators, and then break the agreement.
At least, that is how I see it.
Anderson
Exactly right. Either we assume that Iran is crazy enough to nuke Israel and thus preemptively attack, or we assume deterrence will work.
The problems with the former is that we can’t invade Iran without the draft, and thus probably won’t; airstrikes will annoy Iran without solving the problem; and nukes will GUARANTEE that Israel will be destroyed sometime in the foreseeable future (pace Strunk & White).
So deterrence is the least-bad option, saith Anderson.
(Actually–that’s Cardinal Anderson. Bow down to Cardinal Anderson! Bow down to him NOOOOOOOWW!)
Krista
Let’s not forget that to much of the international community, it probably seems a bit rich for a nuclear state (that has actually used them against an enemy) to be telling another state that they can’t have nukes.
D. Mason
Israel has nukes, why are they dragging us into this?
SomeCallMeTim
Someone needs to explain to me why Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon is something other than wholly rational. Maybe that same person can explain to me how, after Iraq, any defense minister in a foreign country that acknowledges that its interests may, at some point, diverge dramatically from those of the US could not pursue a nuclear program without being a traitor to his own people.
Northman
Actually, I see it differently. More like Iran looking for deterrence against the US/Israel, both with overwhelming numbers of nukes and the means to deliver them, from blowing Iran into the sea, or wherever. For Iran to try and attack either country with a nuke would be suicide, and I’m sure they know it.
Doesn’t actually change much regarding negotiations, particularly since the parties they’re afraid of (mainly, the US) aren’t party to any of the negotiations. If they think they need nukes to ensue their safety vis a vis the US and Israel, talking to the Russians and Europeans isn’t going to convince them otherwise.
jg
Israel is too small to nuke. They’ll turn the holy land and Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and parts of Egypt into wasteland.
Mr Furious
Tim and Northman are seeing much as I do. I always find the anti-proliferation positions of nuclear powers more than a little ironic.
As far as Iran’s current bluster, it is all brinksmanship. They will not get an agreement with russia unless they abandon their research, so the whole statement is so much hot air—or, balloon juice, if you will.
Naturally they have to start at an extreme position.
The Other Steve
One thing I think some wingnuts keep forgetting is that the United States is no longer a good faith actor in these negotiations.
We broke the agreement we had with North Korea vis a vis their building nuclear weapons. In the past few years we also broke the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty we had with Russia.
treaties and agreements are worthless if you can’t be trusted to keep them.
Jorge
Perpetual war for perpetual peace.
We now officially have another open ended conflict through which to create our national identity and feed our economy for the next 50 to 70 years. Sweet.
Tony Alva
If there is any way to isolate Iran form the rest of the world it will have to be a complete oil embargo. I doubt there is any juice around this idea since China and Russia can’t survive without it and even so the U.N. would simply screw that up like they did with Iraq.
Nope, someone will be a war with Iran in the next five years or sooner. That’s all there is to it. Forget an invasion, bomb them into the stone age as soon as talks reach the total point of usefulness, European nations go first.
jg
The Cold War is over. The repyblicans have to find something for us to be afraid of so they can tell us only they can protet us becaue the dems want to appease them bad peoples. Give them hugs or something.
Anderson
Israel is too small to nuke. They’ll turn the holy land and Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and parts of Egypt into wasteland.
Respectfully disagree. Iran will start with producing relatively small bombs, one of which would take out Tel Aviv without a huge amount of collateral damage–I suspect people downwind of the blast would be at heightened risk of cancer, etc.
Btw, John Cole, please please read Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, on what happened when lawyers with integrity tried to stand up to Rumsfeld et al. & demand that U.S. troops not be delegated to abuse prisoners.
jg
I didn’t say it wasn’t possible, I said they wouldn’t be successful just bombing Israel. They’ll kill many muslims in the process too and I can’t wait to see how they explain that one to the masses.
CaseyL
Since everyone knows airstrikes are on the table, and since everyone knows regime change is the not-so-hidden agenda item, how about we look at the situation from the other side of the black box.
Let’s give the black box its Best Imaginable Outcome: let’s say airstrikes cripple Iran’s nuclear development program and usher in regime change.
What happens after that?
First, it is by no means certain the new bosses will be “better,” from the US/Israel pov, than the old bosses. Au contraire, I would say: there will not be a single Iranian political, social, religious or ethnic group that will not want revenge on the US and Israel. Any government that takes over on the premise of “mending fences with the West” will be ousted from power quicker than they got in – unless the government is a US puppet, in which case it will stay in power just as long as there’s a hundred thousand US soldiers to keep it there, and not one day longer.
Moreover, we have no idea what ripple effects attacking Iran will have on Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan had already been exporting nuclear weapons technology – until A Q Khan got caught at it, but because he got caught at it in a way that ended the investigation into his network, we really don’t know if his network is in any way still functioning.
So, contemplate this: Iran either has a new, even more anti-West government than it did before; or it has a US-backed satrap, hated by everyone else in the country. In either case, someone in Iran will make it known they’re interested in acquiring nuclear weapons technology – or, hell, a nuke or two.
Meanwhile, over in Pakistan, someone who once was part of A Q Khan’s network, or someone who wasn’t, but does have access to the same information and/or to the arsenal itself, has crossed their own personal Rubicon and figures the only way to get the US out of Iran, out of Iraq, and out of the War on Islam altogether, is to open up a can of nuclear whoopass on the US or Israel or both. So they get the makings of a nuke smuggled into Iran, via Iraq’s still-unsecured highways and freshly-reinvigorated insurgency.
What do you think happens then?
zzyzx
If you want to see something scary about the open ended War on Terror, check out this article in National Review where a columnist suggests that, “None of Camp Delta’s 490 enemy combatants shall be released until America wins the War on Terror.”
The article conflates the idea of the “War on Terror” (an open ended conflict where it’s unclear how it could be ever won) and WWII (a conflict that ended when people surrendered). A columnist in a leading conservative magazine calls for people to be held without any need for a trial or actual evidence for the rest of their lives. That’s chilling.
Skip
On whose authority do we conclude that Iran wants to nuke Israel? The same people that were so wrong about Iraq? Perhaps another artful MEMRI “translation”? And, in any case, isn’t this Israel’s problem?
Then too, I’m sorry but if we are talking another pre-emptive strike on an Islamic state it would be NICE if we were right.
Finally, as I read it, Iran has a legal right to develop nuclear power–and didn’t WE help Iran start the program?
D. Mason
zzyzx he is using a simple confusion tactic. He is suggesting they do something that they have already said they are doing in a roundabout way. I guess it’s so that when they end up doing exactly what it is that he is suggesting they do noone will be surprised. I think at this point most sane people couldn’t be shocked by anything this administration does.
jg
And yet I know so many who still blindly support whatever this administraton does. Ironically they only get their news from Rush or FOX. Two sources that only give you the side of the issue that supports the administration.
Pixie
And so I ask: Who CARES about Isreal and why??? First, I don’t want to see anyone hurt, but why does everything that we do in the middle east have to be motivated by the welfare of Isreal? What good is a democratic partner in the middle east if they need US to keep them on life support??? Isn’t it more of a liability? And for us to sit on a mountain of nuclear weapons then preach to other countries that they aren’t allowed to have them is absurd. We are also have a role in the non-proliferation agreements….we’re actually supposed to be getting RID of our nukes, but are we doing that???? Hell no, in fact, we’re spending billions to research a new generation of nuclear weaponry. It’s so f*ckin’ hypocritical it makes me want to barf.
Anderson
and didn’t WE help Iran start the program?
We supposedly gave them the blueprints, if James Risen is to be credited.
I didn’t say it wasn’t possible, I said they wouldn’t be successful just bombing Israel. They’ll kill many muslims in the process too
Well yes, but not Farsi-speaking Shiite Muslims … actually I have no idea how nationalism plays in, but I’m sure that anyone wicked enough to nuke Israel could rationalize the collateral deaths of Muslims. Maybe they’d all become glorious martyrs.
zzyzx, see that Jane Mayer article I tried to foist on Cole, above. Nuts like that are running the freakin’ show.
ppGaz
But Iran would have to be insane not to know that the day we think that they can and will blast Israel into the sea is the day that we will blast them into the sea.
Are they suidical on a national scale? Don’t they know that the first rule of mutual destruction games is not to destroy anything, lest ye be destroyed? Do they not understand that we have the means to turn all of Iran into a smoking hole in one day, and would have the will to do so on the day that they tried to blast Israel into the sea?
So who is on crack here? Really. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
tb
Maybe the are a pack of screeching, bug-eyed lunatics bent on committing national suicide by nuking the US or Israel. Or maybe it’s that they’ve noticed the nation being bloodily disassembled at their border and they see nuclear weapons as their only guarantee for long-term security. Hmmmmmm.
jg
Or just like Saddam they are talking tough to play to the west hatred in their country. Nukes give them instant legitimacy, a seat at the big table. They want that. The Soviets always talked about striking first too. The Soviets and Iranians talk tough to stay in power. The repbulicans use their tough talk to scare us into relecting them to protect us. Around we go.
Bob In Pacifica
D. Mason’s point about Israel’s nukes is the elephant in the room that no one discusses in our glorious mainstream media. 200 nukes is enough for the entire Middle East to glow. That will make a big run on virgins at 70 per.
Still, Pakistan to the east has atomic weapons. So do India and China. So does Russia to the north. The U.S., having invaded two of its neighbors, also has nuclear weapons.
Now why should Iran not think it prudent to have nuclear weapons?
On the other hand, the current leadership in Iran is childlike in its belligerence. Maybe in the time it will take to develop a bomb Iranians will dump the current regime for someone in the 21st Century. Or maybe not.
Tony Alva’s choice, to bomb them now almost assuredly guarantees a return volley sometime in the future, and bombing them now probably won’t be much more than a hindrance in developing nuclear weapons. Plus, military action against Iran will guarantee a world oil crisis and worldwide depression. It will also probably ratchet up the warfare in Iraq, threaten the supply lines to our troops, and cause a retreat that would have made Saigon 1975 look like a victory parade out of Vietnam.
Sometimes the best wars are the ones you don’t fight.
JohnTh
What tb and SomeCallMe Tim said.
The Iranian government is very unpleasant, and it would be a Bad Thing if they got nukes, but the attempt makes sense, and might well be pursued even the country was ruled by ultra-democratic super-rational Vulcans. The Iranians have been told repeatedly by hundreds of Western commentators that they on the verge of being massively attacked by the US and/or Israel for doing things which have not yet definitively been shown to be illegal. They were put on the Axis of Evil list BEFORE they started seriously misbehaving on the nuclear front. If they own a couple of nuclear warheads all talk of invasion will be postponed indefinitely (see N Korea). We might not like it but it does make sense.
VidaLoca
Yeah, this is the “rational actors” argument. And I’m very willing to give it a lot of weight, espcially since the alternatives are not at all pretty.
The worrisome part of it all is that the least rational actors in the bunch may not be their clowns in Teheran, but our own in Washington DC.
CaseyL
Bush’s policies in the ME have thus far had negative consequences: Afghanistan (the one war he ordered that I approved of, wholeheartedly) is a basket case, with the Taliban making a comeback; Iraq is an ongoing wreck and what’s most likely to come out of it is a theocratic Islamic state allied with Iran; the Palestinians just freely and democratically elected Hamas, a terrorist group sponsored by Iran.
Even if you think an attack against Iran is a good idea, how can you possibly reconcile that with the really, incredibly, lousy record Bush has amassed thus far? Everything he’s done has strengthened the anti-US, anti-Western cause. And I say again, Pakistan is a factor. Musharaf is hanging on by his fingernails:
Toppling Musharraf: Heat rises on Pakistani leader
Do the people advocating airstrikes against Iran want to risk Islamic fundamentalists taking power in a country that already has nuclear weapons?
RonB
Agree 100%. Until the Islamic Revolution, we were getting ready to build the Shah’s reactors. What seems to be poisoning the debate is the implicit assumption that Iran actually does want nuclear weapons. It would seem to me that the only way to increase transparency of their program would be to(shudder) talk to them. Since we refuse to do that, we are reduced to guessing. I think Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic remarks are part and parcel of Mideast politics and to believe their resolve to do what they say is misleading as to the nature of their intent vis a vis nuclear weaponry.
Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear power under the Non Proliferation Treaty, regardless of what idiots like Krauthammer are saying(he also is advancing the lie that Iran is months away from a bomb too).
An excellent history of US involvement in Iranian nuclear aqcusition, plus details on their environmental/economic reasons for the desire for atomic energy can be found on a link here.
GOP4Me
Why can’t we just nuke them now and get it over with? You know it’s only a matter of time before some Democratic President lets them sneak a suitcase nuke into New York City, and then we’d have to nuke them anyway and have lost a major American city in the bargain.
Worried about killing innocent Iranians? Nuke an uninhabited desert in their country. Call it a warning shot. But just nuke them now, and if they don’t take the warning nuke their nuke sites.
stickler
This GOP4ME guy has to be a troll:
A nuclear weapon is not a “warning shot.” Let’s say, for giggles, that the USA just threw a few conventional bombs at ’em.
What would the Iranians do? Well, they might just decide to close the Straits of Hormuz. That would take Iranian, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, and most Saudi oil off the world market overnight. Consider it the Iranian economic nuclear weapon.
Oh, and I’d be willing to bet that nothing good would happen to our forces in Iraq if we bombed Iran.
But those are just old-fashioned, pre-9/11 kinds of fears, I suppose. On to Teheran!
RonB
Sadly, Stickler, it’s what they say when no one else is looking-GOP4me just isn’t shy about sounding like a crackhead.
There’s a reason DougJ exists. This is it.
GOP4Me
Nope.
Sounds good.
Then we nuke Tehran. Nukes are an effective leverage.
Then we pull out and nuke them, too.
Sure. Be cynical about it. We could always sit back and wait for them to kill us. Typical proactive liberal solution.
VidaLoca
Aside from the general preposterousness of this, there’s the whole question of whether it would even work as conceived. Are the Iranians only in the process of developing enriched uranium capability? Do they already have warheads on hand, purchased through the Russians or AQ Khan’s shop? Are they somewhere on the continuum in between? If it’s more toward the latter pole, bet that they’re keeping the warheads well out of harms’s way. In the wake of a pre-emptive strike they’d be wanting to get that suitcase bomb on the way.
ppGaz
Well, I think you are not that far off.
Where do we think the Potatoheads are taking us, wrt Iran?
Does anyone doubt that they are planning scenarios right now that are going to essentially fit GOP4’s cartoonish version? Don’t underestimate the capacity of these idiots to fuck this up. Don’t even.
Anderson
The problem, GOP4Me, is that you would be *guaranteeing* the nuclear destruction of (1) Tel Aviv and (2) one or more American cities.
If we break the post-Nagasaki taboo on nukes, it’s not just going to be the crazies who think it’s okay to use them on us.
Besides which: How many women and children would be incinerated in a nuclear attack on Tehran? How many babies? We have lied ourselves blue on this over the past 60 years, but *deliberately targeting civilian populations is a war crime*. It’s gratuitous murder—terrorism, in other words. We specifically set out to terrorize the Germans and Japanese into losing the will to fight.
If we didn’t have this notion that nothing the U.S. does can be a crime, then maybe we wouldn’t be torturing prisoners today and telling ourselves it’s legal.
StupidityRules
The economic impact on the US would be catastrophic if Iran would be nuked without a really good justfication. There would be major boycotts on US goods all over the world. But I guess the thread troll would advocate more nukes to solve this…
VidaLoca
By summer. Fall at the latest, right in time for the elections. Just watch it go down; you can see them buiding the hype now, just like they did in the runup to Iraq.
GOP4Me
Well, if we start talking about nuking them now, and they realize it’s on the table, hopefully we won’t have to nuke anyone. But really, at this point why SHOULDN’T they nuke us? After all, it’s not like we’d EVER nuke them back. Look at all the stuff those wackos got away with under Clinton, and scarcely even a Tomahawk missile in reply.
I think we probably know where the nukes are. If they’re in cities, we give civilians one week to evacuate, and then we monitor the city with satellites to see if they try and smuggle any warheads out. If we just do a demonstration-nuke in the desert, we don’t really care if there are nukes there or not anyway.
GOP4Me
Plans?
Don’t be silly. We probably have PLANS in place to nuke Mexico. Or invade Puerto Rico. Or send space commandoes to the Moon to do battle with the dastardly Martians. PLANS are nothing. We’ve probably had plans to nuke Iran since 1950. What we need to do now is to start advertising those plans a little better.
RonB
Let me guess, east, west, south and north somewhat?
GOP4Me
No one would nuke Tel Aviv, for reasons listed above. Too close to major sources of Muslim population. Too much fallout. We’re far enough away that that isn’t a problem, but we DO have border security and port security, so there’s that. They could be better, but they are a deterrent factor. And if we happened to find a suitcase nuke someone was trying to smuggle in…
We only have to worry about the crazies; everyone else will be too afraid.
That’s why we give them time to evacuate. Problem solved.
You should ask the Germans or Japanese a thing or two about terrorizing civilian areas.
A handful of soldiers does not a national rationalization strategy make.
I think suitcase nukes are a pretty good excuse to nuke them, and most of the world will agree. Funny, though, how the loony left would rather let the Iranians nuke us than even THINK about maybe talking, just talking, about using ours. That’s because the loony left’s priorities are always everywhere besides America’s national interests. Time and time again, you prove this point for me.
GOP4Me
Well, I wouldn’t want them to give me SPECIFICS, otherwise the Iranians would just move them.
ppGaz
Yeah, it’s hard getting established on their political blogs though.
Barry
D. Mason Says:
“Israel has nukes, why are they dragging us into this?”
Because there are too many Americans who are Likudniks – primarily the religious right, eager for the Apocalypse.
Barry
Tony Alva Says:
“If there is any way to isolate Iran form the rest of the world it will have to be a complete oil embargo. I doubt there is any juice around this idea since China and Russia can’t survive without it and even so the U.N. would simply screw that up like they did with Iraq.”
Yes, the UN really screwed up Iraq. If there had been Americans in charge, by God, we would have had plans and troops at hand, ready to deal with the situation after Saddam’s statue had been toppled. But nooooooooooo, we had to let that UN guy, Rumsfield, screw it up. Why the h*ck is Bush still in charge of the UN? Kerry should have vetoed his appointment.
GOP4Me
I’m sure most of them speak English. English speakers have dominated the world since the Battle of Waterloo, so it’s not like the rest of the world hasn’t had time to take ESL courses and learn to understand the tourists and businessmen and soldiers passing through.
LITBMueller
“Nukes Iran!” — a great shortcut around thinking.
:(
ppGaz
Gemutlich!
Joey
GOP, you make me weep for the human race.
VidaLoca
because at that point, we really would turn their sand into glass. I would venture to speculate that many people holding opinions similar to yours would do it in a heartbeat, and furthermore that you’d get little (probably zero effective) opposition from people holding opinions similar to mine.
RonB
Dude, there’s more than a handful,ok? My own platoon sergeant actually told people he was training that it was ok to treat detainees recklessly because they don’t have the protections of Geneva, a point I must say the right partisans hammer home relentlessly. The average numbskull Joe doesn’t know the rules, and given the anxiety of soldiers out there on a daily basis they don’t really care. A bad situation, to be sure, but the Iraqis have had it with us, and we’ve had it with the situation. Every time we kick in a door and detain a family member, every errant bomb, every shooting at a checkpoint we continue the vicious cycle of creating several enemies every time we stop one.
The errors of idea, judgment and planning at the beginning of the occupation are the foundations of our imminent failure.
GOP4Me
Sorry. Ich kann nicht Deutschen, or however you spell it.
The Surgeon General has consistently warned against chopping onions and pondering your belly button at the same time.
And that’s why you guys were so on board with the Iraq war, right? Never hamstrung a Republican President trying to keep America safe, have you?
ppGaz
Wait a minute …. Iran is a woman?
Oh shit.
ppGaz
Yeah, that was kinda my point.
GOP4Me
My Dad said the same stuff went on in Vietnam. He told me he once met a guy who said, “I’ve killed 12 people, and only 1 of them was an enemy soldier,” and he had a “friend” in his platoon who used to cut the ears off of NVAs and string them up in his bunker. He also said his unit never took a prisoner during his entire tour in Vietnam, whatever that implies given that he spent 8 months fighting in the jungle.
The errors of idea, judgment and planning at the beginning of the occupation are the foundations of our imminent failure. I’ve never been to war, and you have, so you’d obviously know a lot more about it than I do; but it sounds to me like worse than this went on in Vietnam. I think we’re all freaking out over a naked pyramid and a dog leash, but nobody talks about LBJ’s war anymore when we’d go in and slaughter whole villages. And the Iraqis are bitching because we kick in a door or shoot up a vehicle rushing a checkpoint? How can we win hearts and minds with people who whine like this about these minor mishaps? I hear they get P.O.ed when we touch their women, too. Not rape them, touch them! Is that true? You can’t win over people like that. All you can do is frighten them. Kill the ones who fight, and frighten the rest into not fighting.
God, I hope not. I don’t want Operation Iraqi Freedom to go down in the history books as a failure. I’m sure historians will try to pin the blame for that one on Bush, instead of on people like Michael Moore who poisoned the American people against this noble struggle for safety and freedom.
GOP4Me
Well, not much of one.
Agreed.
I still don’t speak enough German to get the reference. You want to know the extent of my German? “Mit unser bannen ist der Sieg!” “Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!” “Schnell!” “Panzer” “Achtung Juden/Minen/Waffen.” “schwimmerwagen” “unterseebooten”
That’s about it, really. All the German you’d expect to pick up from reading books about WWII. I don’t know what “Gemutlich” means, though. Sorry.
Joey
Fucking wow, did you seriously just try to say that if Iraq is a failure it’s Michael Moore’s fault? Christ, you can’t be for real. There is no way that anybody with a fully functioning and chemically-balanced brain would honestly say and believe that. I’m fairly certain you aren’t a troll, so I hope that was just a joke.
Joey
And people still talk about Vietnam and the horrors that happened there (Both perpetrated by us and done to us) all the time. Cut the partisan bullshit. A fuck up is a fuck up.
LITBMueller
Oh, man….you really had me goin’ there, until I read this line!!!!
Oops! Wait! Just took a look at your blog. Guess I was wrong. You ARE a fool.
So, one loan filmaker who obviously has eaten wayyyy too many Big Macs in his day is the reaon why our Noble Struggle has been a complete mess? Man, and here I thought you GOP folk had yer shit together! I guess controlling all three branches is just not enough!
But, I’m sure your plan conerning treating the Iraqis like shit so they get scared, and dropping nukes on Iran, will be incredibly successful!
Best of luck! Your “team” is calling the shots, now, and you get to live with whatever mess you make.
RonB
Over 1000 pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib. I think you are minimizing that a little. Go look at the new pictures and you tell me that isnt one of the reasons the Iraqis think we are, um, less than friendly at times. There are several other incidents publicized, not to mention the Shi’a death squads and prisons that we are either ignoring or not putting an end to. It is safe to assume that not every little incident of abuse gets publicized.
Yes, they are bitching about it, those are their families dying in those “mishaps”. And the type of cavalier attitude you have towards their customs and their frame of mind against occupation, detention and searches is exactly what is wrong in Washington, what was wrong in Washington.
I hesitate to use an opinion that you find silly or unreal, but our failure to understand the Iraqis and what was going to happen there when we showed up to stay for a little while is what keeps this occupation in the downward spiral it is in.
No one does/did. You must believe that or you will not be able to understand the people who do not support this war. You may not want to, and choose to believe what you are told about anti-war people. You would be doing a disservice to yourself intellectually, though. Take my advice, I’m an ex-hardcore conservative myself.
Listen first. Then decide.
ppGaz
Oh, don’t give the righties too much credit. They think Michael Moore is Satan. When in fact, he’s just a fat actor in a Mephistopheles costume, while his buds are picking your pocket.
GOP4Me
I’m not even sure what you mean by “troll” anymore, so now I’m confused. Anyway, Michael Moore and the other leftist liars have turned the American public against the War. We had to fight this war to stop Saddam from getting WMDs, and then either using them or handing them over to Al Qaeda. No one seriously, in their heart of hearts, can dispute this. The only issue for historians will be the lack of post-war planning on the Administration’s part (a minor flaw, but one which they’ve been trying to overcome since summer 2003 so give them some credit, folks), and the fact that leftist historians will try to blame Bush personally for this as well as the fact that Americans turned against this war. But the turning against the war was really the fault of leftist kooks in the media, and rabble-rousing swine like Michael Moore. And that’s the true history of the last 3 years, without letting the loons revise it.
GOP4Me
Except when Clinton does it, then it’s just a human error, and aren’t we all human? Who among us HASN’T spoken to a foreign leader while being fellated, almost causing a nuclear conflagration in the process?
GOP4Me
Same to you, buddy.
We don’t control the 4th estate, the media. You guys do, and you’ve consistently proven it’s by far the most powerful branch of government of all.
Sure will. Just stay out of our way and stop trying to make the American people lose hope, and it’ll save the world.
p.lukasiak
GOP4ME kinda had me until I read this…
G
this is pure DougJ people….
RonB
Why not? It was a bullshit reason. He didn’t have diddly. The real reasons were purely ideological and idealistic in nature, and 9/11 provided the thrust. It all sounded good until we tried to act on it.
Ask any ‘lefty’ here and they will tell you that Bush himself is just an incurious, easily led bozo who has succembed to more ‘knowledgeable’ policymakers in the executive branch. His failure to lead and judge properly has been the big sticking point.
RonB
It’s quite possible. He’s got some new good tricks, I guess, usually he is so much more flat and ironic.
LITBMueller
Don’t feed the loonie trolls! :)
Makes me wish for more cut-and-paste Cornyn takling points from Darrell – at least they were coherent! ;)
ppGaz
Two things, Paul L:
GOP4 is not DougJ, and he is every bit as far out there as he looks.
RonB
Might be young, PPGaz?
ppGaz
Everybody around here is young, to me.
Steve
I cannot believe you people are actually wasting your day arguing with a guy who wants to nuke another country, and who thinks a Democratic president would not retaliate if a nuclear attack occurred. Give me one good reason why you bother?
RonB
I’m just putting off homework.
GOP4Me
Darn, I just wrote a lengthy reply to this email and then my laptop crashed. Gone forever. I think I said something about how this incident, while horrible, is not the worst thing ever to happen in world history, Iraqi history, or American history, and then I said how we need to train our troops better. But if I said anything else, it’s gone. Sorry.
Are you saying Shiite death squads are our fault now, too?
We’re fighting over there so we don’t have to fight AQ over here. If the Iraqis don’t like it there, they can go somewhere else. We could probably take some of them in here, as long as we screen out the criminals and crazies first. If their families wouldn’t drive 60 mph into checkpoints, they probably wouldn’t get shot. To use a domestic law enforcement example: I know everyone blames the cop when he shoots the crazy man waving a knife around, but would the cop have shot the man if he hadn’t been waving a knife around? We’re not talking about unprovoked killings here.
I hesitate to use an opinion that you find silly or unreal, but our failure to understand the Iraqis and what was going to happen there when we showed up to stay for a little while is what keeps this occupation in the downward spiral it is in.
And I know some liberals who do/did, so I’ll reserve judgment on the anti-war movement thank you very much. I know all I’d ever have to know about the American Left, my family is mostly liberal. My father is an unrepentant trade unionist Communist. You’d probably like him, but we don’t talk much anymore.
Best thing you’ve said all day, peepee. I particularly agree with the second half.
F-ck you, I AM NOT!!!!! Why can’t you people have a discussion without accusing your opponents of being DougJ?
Now you’re speculating after the fact. At the time, you and 70% of your fellow Americans supported it vocally; the 30% in opposition were lying to themselves or WANTED America to fail.
Yet he won two elections in a row. My guess is that either you’re wrong about the lefties here and their secret opinion of him, or else they’re just some focus group that Bush doesn’t have to pay attention to- as he himself said of them in the run-up to the war, I might add. So, how does it feel, being a member of a focus group?
See above.
This is confusing, peepee. Thanks for the first part, f-ck you for the second part. I guess.
GOP4Me
Darn it, Steve, this would’ve been a perfect chance for you to try that thing I told you to do the other day: test your fellow lefties. But you blew it. Darn. There’s always tomorrow, though.
As always, though, the point is that blogs exist for entertainment, not enlightenment. I’m not going to convince you, you’re not going to convince me, so let’s have at it and keep things light-hearted. You kooks will never understand that, but RonB seems to grasp it quite well.
VidaLoca
GOP,
I don’t know if you’ll find this persuasive, or even very moving, or not — but check this out. She’s one of those Iraqi women you mentioned. Her family got raided the other night.
Look at it this way: you’re right. When your country is occupied by an army of people who care less whether you live or die, who are willing to kill you for the least reason, you have a choice: fight back, or submit out of fear. In the latter case, you then have to go on to rationalize your cowardice. But when it gets to that point, pretty much all hope of winning hearts and minds is gone and it’s not soon coming back.
If a gang of heavily armed masked men broke into your house at gunpoint; if you knew for a fact that chances were that they were there to take your son, nephew, father or husband; that if they did so you’d never see that person again — would that be a “minor mishap” in your otherwise jolly daily routine?
To try to transfer the responsibilty of this onto Michael Moore is just silly. This is yours. You own it.
Steve
I might buy your line that you’re being deliberately over-the-top to “keep things light-hearted” if I hadn’t taken a look or two at your blog.
The Other Steve
This GOP4Me is annoying. Ever since John started trolling for NRA freaks, we’ve been getting a lot of whackos commenting over here.
DougJ
I wouldn’t say NRA freak. The NRA people aren’t that pleased with the White House right now, after all the lies the White House told about hunting. Think about it: if you were pro-gun would you be happy to hear the White House say that hunting accidents happen all the time?
VidaLoca
OtherSteve,
Actually, I think this started a couple of weeks ago when John said something (IIRC, about religious fundamentalists) that got the Scrutator folks all riled up. They were about ready to throw him under the ideological bus, but didn’t since he’d redeemed himself (they’re big into redemption) with a couple of choice rants against Cindy Sheehan. However, some people over there think he’s a pagan, and there is at least one other who thinks he’s a Trotskyist.
Anyhow, my point is we can’t blame this on John.
RonB
GOP, if you widen the sphere that much, youre going to lose sight of the discussion at hand. Anything can be minimized with improper context.
I believe I did. Who is supposed to be providing security in Iraq? Please do not answer Iraqi police, because they number amongst the death squads.
Not so fast. Plenty of people at the UN, like Scott Ritter, said hold the phone here, we got rid of everything. Our own intelligence analysts had conflicting data that was ignored at high levels.
Once again, the liberals will be happy to tell you that Democrats don’t have a clue who and how to run. The GOP is pretty good at tarnishing candidates as well. Add to that the fear and smoldering from 9/11 and it’s a snap to run on security. If only they were any good at delivering it.
Houstonboy
I wonder when “the-Israel-is-the-root-of-all-evil” crowd will say the US could align itself with Israel because it’s the right thing to do from a moral stand point?
“Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” — Winston Churchill
Anderson
Peter Galbraith over at NYRB
Anderson
Peter Galbraith over at NYRB is reviewing Paul Bremer and George Packer (in that great “oh yes by the way the books” NYRB manner). Here’s a relevant bit:
The Other Steve
Interesting, another similarity between Vietnam and Iraq. Vietnam weakened our country in so many ways. I don’t think this Iraq debacle is quite as bad, but it’s going to have lasting repercussions for the next 20-30 years.
DougJ
How come we never hear the good news about being overextended in Iraq? What about all the countries that aren’t using this opportunity to start up a nuclear program without fear of reprisal? How come we never hear about them?
DougJ
Why can’t the NYRB write an article about how Syria isn’t trying to get nukes? Or how United Arab Emirates, which now has the responsibility for protecting our ports, isn’t trying to get nukes? There’s plenty of Arab countries that aren’t trying to get nukes right now. By the NYRB would never write about that, because it’s good news for the president.
stickler
Peter Galbraith is spot-on, except for this part:
We bear some responsibility for that, too, actually. There was this guy, Mossadegh, who the CIA overthrew back in 1953. We propped up the Shah as the ruler of Iran thereafter. He stayed in power by using repression, torture, a massive secret police force, and bribes.
When the revolutionaries in Iran demanded that we hand over the Shah for a public trial, we refused. Thus, the hostage-taking.
Anderson
I don’t think this Iraq debacle is quite as bad
See, I think it’s potentially worse, because SE Asia never mattered a rat’s ass to our national interests. But let’s hope you’re right.
RonB
Stickler, wasn’t that a response to oil nationalization? Pretty much the same shit that pissed us off in Cuba.
Pb
I think GOP4Me thinks he’s serious, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking he’s hilarious too.
Comedy gold–the tinkerbell defense at its best, with a hint of wookie for good measure. Now if it weren’t for those darn leftist facts…
a guy called larry
For some reason, I seem to see GOP sitting in front of the monitor wearing a clown nose…
FWIW, though, I like having a plan for invading Puerto Rico at the ready.
Steve
This is more the spirit I was talking about. You can’t meaningfully engage with someone who thinks preemptively nuking another country is a serious foreign policy option, any more than you would conduct an intellectual debate on the topic of whether slavery should be brought back. Ridicule of such extreme and un-American views is the only worthwhile response.
ppGaz
I think of you as the spawn of Darrell and Stormy, on crack.
The Other Steve
I heard an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, and that wasn’t his explanation.
Basically what happened is things were going fine. Then in the 1970s the evangelical Islamists started getting riled up and threatening revolution. In response to this threat the Shah started clamping down hard. Is it wrong to put down a revolution? I think it depends. The problem the Shah faced was that he favored a secular state, and the islamists wanted a religious state. There was no compromise in this situation.
The reason why the US was caught off guard is because we were too friendly with the Shah. Our CIA people went to all his fine parties, etc. instead of paying attention to what was happening on the streets. One of the people in the program, I don’t recall if it was Brzezinski or not, said what was interesting is that the first word he got of things were going to go to hell was from an Israeli agent. Even though the Israelis had no embassy there, they had people on the ground just watching. Since they weren’t part of the party circuit, they were more in touch with the general feelings of the people.
It’s hard for me personally to have any bad feelings for the Shah. No matter how bad he might have been, the Islamists have been worse for the people of Iran. The only way they came to power, and the only way they stay in power is repression, torture, a massive secret police force, and bribes.
RonB
Having spent much time as a fool myself(although I never went as far as to say preemptive nuking et al was a good idea, I just ignored it when others said it), I have a tendency to suffer them.
Krista
But with that “ting!” touch of inanity that makes his comments so unintentionally hillarious.
ppGaz
Exactly. He thinks he is being cute, and has no clue that we are laughing at him.
stickler
Mr. Other Steve:
You might want to take anything Zbig says regarding the Shah with a great huge bucket of salt. He was the Carter admin’s original hawk, and he’s partially responsible for missing the signs of impending revolution in the first place.
The Shah wanted a secular state all right, but he destroyed all the secular opposition parties. By the late ’60s he had crushed them all and the only opposition left was found in the mosques.
And though I’d probably admit that the Islamists have been at least as bad as the Shah was, let’s remember that the Shah was really, really bad.
From FAS.org, regarding the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK:
And, yes, the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh was sparked by Mossadegh’s nationalization of the British-run oil fields. The Brits convinced us that the fellow was a Communist, you see, and had to go. So go, he did.
ppGaz
I worked with a woman who grew up under the Shah.
All I can say is, according to her, the Shah made Hussein look like Barney the Dinosaur.
He was one mean, sociopathic sumbitch, and he dined regularly in the White House East Room.
Yes, I am easily swayed by the Middle East policy that comes out of Washington, DC. The track record is amazing.
skip
“Is it wrong to put down a revolution? I think it depends. ”
Quite a question. But I think it depends on people who lie to us.
stickler
It depends? For guys like the Shah, it’s a matter of life and death (or, at least, exile).
For us, it’s a damned sight wronger if we attempt to put down a revolution in somebody else’s country — and we fail.
Another example might be our intervention in the Chinese Civil War. We intervened on the losing side. Our relations with China since 1949 have been sub-optimal because of that.
LITBMueller
This got me thinking about how there seems to be a general rule to the Middle East: the more the West tries to tinker/adjust/interfere, the more things get fucked up.
Barry
The Other Steve (no, not him. *that* Steve) said:
“The reason why the US was caught off guard is because we were too friendly with the Shah. Our CIA people went to all his fine parties, etc. instead of paying attention to what was happening on the streets. One of the people in the program, I don’t recall if it was Brzezinski or not, said what was interesting is that the first word he got of things were going to go to hell was from an Israeli agent. Even though the Israelis had no embassy there, they had people on the ground just watching. Since they weren’t part of the party circuit, they were more in touch with the general feelings of the people.”
One of the things that I had heard a while back was that the CIA was kept on a tight leash there. The Shah didn’t want the US in touch with any opposition groups, for fear that the US might decide to replace the Shah. So the CIA was ordered to have no contact with Iranian opposition to the Shah.
Theseus
From everything I’ve read about Persia and Iran, compared to today and the rule of the Mullocracy, the years of the Shah are looked upon quite favorably, especially by many of those who once supported the Revolution, nevermind Iranian youths who tend to despise the Mullahs. Even among those who can’t bring themselves to say anything bad about Khomeini, they tend to blame the greedy, corrupt, hypocritical clerics rather than Khomeini himself for the pathetic state their country finds itself in.
The Shah was an authoritarian dictator to be sure and deserves the condemnation, but at least he tried to bring his country forward rather than backwards. And unlike his succesors, he wasn’t busy spreading a perveted, puritanical, jihadi, misogynistic and hate-filled version of Islam to the rest of the world. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk was also a quasi-totalitarian tyrant, yet he is also revered today in Turkey.
With all due respect, Mossadegh was no Jefforsian democrat, even by ME standards. As soon as he was in a position of power, he wasted no time in consolidating as much of that power in his own hands. In doing so, he alianated key Iranian constituencies and supporters that were instrumental in his achieving power in the first place. With their loss of support, the US-backed overthrow was nails in the coffin. Had he not been overthrown, would he have ushered in some kind of democratic revolution in Iran? Who knows? But odds are and judging from past failures, he just as well could have wound up as civilian version of Nasser.
The US made a judgement call, based on its national security concerns at the time. It bit them in the ass 20 years later. The US also made a judgement call when they decided to support Stalin against Hitler, or the Mujahideen against the Soviets; they got bit in the ass later on as well. Live and learn.
What I find the most amusing though is the mock outrage that Iranians and mostly their left-of center sympathisers exhibit re: the whole Mossadegh thing. Here you have the Iranian people, whose history goes back over thousands of years, much of which they spent as an “IMPERIAL” (regional and world) power. How many people, nations, cultures etc were subdued and/or slaughtered in the name of Iranian/Persian expansion and hegemony? To this day, they are significant minorities in Iran (ie Kurds, Azeris, etc) that are governed by the ruling Iranians. Are Iranias offended today as their government ruthlessly interferes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, etc? Probably not. No, what probably offends them is their own, (as well as general Muslim) self-inflicted, impotence in the face of the West’s enormous achievements the past couple of centuries combined with their own superiority complexes (Islamic supremacy and/or plain old nationalism). It’s not that the West interferes in the ME, it’s that ME states are too weak, politically, economically, socially, militarily, to do anything about it, like they used to be able to do in the past, when they were, at least, able to compete to a draw.