Well, since John Yoo is on vacation this week or something waterboarding herds of unicorns and John Bolton’s Mustache is busy with trying to adapt drone controls for use by facial hair (hard to fly straight and hit the red button at the same time when you’re only a mustache) to bomb Syria, it’s up to Niall Ferguson at the Daily Beast to yell LET’S BOMB IRAN as loudly as possible at the Village today.
The single biggest danger in the Middle East today is not the risk of a six-day Israeli war against Iran. It is the risk that Western wishful nonthinking allows the mullahs of Tehran to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Because I am in no doubt that they would take full advantage of such a lethal lever. We would have acquiesced in the creation of an empire of extortion.
War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.
It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.
And really, Ferguson’s entire argument is “We could so take Iran because our aircraft carriers have more hit points.” Also, the whole “Oil at $160 a barrel if war breaks out” thing is so 2008 because the Saudis can just make more, or something. It’s like the last 11 years never happened, and he’s just expecting us to buy the argument and go “LET’S DO IT!” like we’re playing Team Fortress 2. Our bombs are filled with awesome cartoon sound effects and FREEDOM, so it’s cool anyway because AMERICA!
Meanwhile, the really awesome part is 49% of Americans are already on board with Operation Here We Go Again, so before you have a good laugh at Niall here, understand that the universe has spotted him a hell of a spread.
Villago Delenda Est
I nominate Niall Ferguson to be the on site observer to give us real time reports of the effect of the bombings.
Yutsano
Were the gerbils just on strike or was it just me?
And there’s a huge gulf in between bombing a few sites in Iran and bootondaground type stuff. Understanding that difference is well beyond the capabilities of most neocons. And I advocate neither.
schrodinger's cat
While his wife has penned a screed in Newsweek about the persecution Christians suffer in muslim countries. Isn’t it great how nepotism works. Tina Brown takes over Newsweek/Daily Beast, her fellow Brit and his wife get to write for the Newsweek and Daily Beast.
Bulworth
Win!
Also, too: appeasement!
Villago Delenda Est
Let’s do this! Leeeeeeeeroy Jenkins!
schrodinger's cat
It is always 1939 in wingnuttia.
Martin
Aircraft carriers? What happened to Operation Sea of Glass?
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: I second your nomination. How will these people understand that fire is hot if they themselves are never burned?
Davis X. Machina
Doubling the price of oil would just about guarantee Republican control of the White House, and the Senate turning over…
They wouldn’t even need Angela Merkel to blow up the euro then….
pseudonymous in nc
Clearly, hitching himself to the austerity wagon hasn’t worked so well for Fergie, and his excursion into “Chimerica” was equally unsuccessful, so it’s back to the neocon charabang and celebrating Jolly Old American Empire, which is what propelled him across the pond to where the money is better.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: Except that if our wingnuts were alive in 1939 they would most certainly be admirers of teh Evil One on account of his “good ideas” and ability to stick it to the Left.
dnfree
I have been getting facebook comments from right-wing friends about a secret Iranian video that is being distributed widely and proves that we had better act now, because otherwise Iran is going to attack Israel so as to bring back the Islamic Messiah. For example, “The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.”
Now here’s my question. When I google this to try to find out what they are talking about, I get page after page of the exact same hysteria from various right-wing blogs and websites. I have tried sources like factcheck.org and I see nothing. How do you go about finding out if such a video actually exists, what is in it, how widely it is believed, etc.?
Steve M.
Neocon bellicosity, a fuck-you to the 60s, and a shout-out to Saint Capitalism — all in nine words.
Bet Niall needed a cigarette after that one.
West of the Cascades
North Korea has become a superpoweresque juggernaut of extortionate imperialism since it got The Bomb. How can we not cower in terror and shit our bombs all over the next Nuclear Empire after we let Kim something something get nuclear weapons?
Oh, right, George W. Bush was president when we “let” N. Korea get nukes. Was Niall Ferguson screaming back then to bomb the living shit out of Pyongyang?
Lit3Bolt
Currently framing this argument on my wall.
ldrks
A serious question: Does Niall Ferguson know anything about anything?
redshirt
Who will be the Iranian Chalabi?
Martin
@dnfree:
Wait, I thought they promised us Obama was the Islamic Messiah? I hope I didn’t vote for the wrong guy in 2008.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
The Poles are always, always about to attack Gleiwitz, and we have to do something about that, jawohl!
Mark S.
So at one point he says the US will help Israel because otherwise oil will shoot up to $200, and then a couple of paragraphs later he says oil prices won’t go up much because Saudi Arabia will pump more oil. Which is it?
Culture of Truth
You mean the years when Bill Clinton let terrorists attack us on 9/11 and Obama caused a recession and Democrats lost Iraq and Afghanistan?
Calming Influence
Yeah, well we let Kim Jong Il get the bomb, and what did he do with it right off the bat? Blowed up South Korea, that’s what! Oh wait…
Yeah, but the difference is that Kim Jong Il wasn’t a crazy fucking wack-job megalomaniac! Oh wait…
Yeah, but shutthefuckupIwin!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Here’s the kicker: Niall Ferguson is an economic historian, with a focus on the colonial (ie imperial) era.
Like all the little shits who lied us into Iraq, he has absolutely no training, experience or authority on matters military.
Someone please explain to me how this worthless lump of haggis gets a paying gig to spout his BS? And why anyone should take him seriously on anything outside of his actual field?
beltane
@dnfree: It sounds like this video has similarities to Michelle Obama’s “Whitey” video, namely in that neither of them exist except in the wingnut imagination.
ABL
well-done, sir.
Villago Delenda Est
@dnfree:
The video is SO secret that those who have received it from Mossad agents have been warned, upon pain of death or at least a serious whupping, not to post it on YouTube and make it known to everyone that those terrible Persians (cue up clip of the villain of 300 here) are up to something.
Samara Morgan
When Imran Khan gets Zardari’s job in 2013 he will have over a hundred nukes at his disposal.
He can just give some to Iran to defend itself from AmerIsrael.
its simply not possible to stop Iran from getting nukes eventually.
One of the enrichment facilities is buried under Qom, the second holiest city to the Shi’ia. Every shi’ia muslim in the world would become an instant jihaadi sympathizer.
So why is Israel doing this? To drag America into WWIII while they still can, before Obama gets a second term and the demographic timer goes off.
Blacks, browns and youth dont give a shit about Israel.
We are gunna cut their holocaust guilt card up in their faces and kick AIPAC to the kerb.
Culture of Truth
@redshirt: Who will be the Iranian Chalabi?
Chalabi. He’s experienced, tanned, rested and ready.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Which is kind of odd when you think about how all this dreck is coming from a historian who built his popular reputation on an opus which argued that the British should have stood aside and let the Germans conquer all of Europe in August 1914, because hey, it wouldn’t have mattered all that much anyway.
Has anybody checked for a body-double?
Davis X. Machina
@Mark S.: That’s explained by Schrödinger’s spot oil price, which can be $80/bbl and $200/bbl at the same time.
Every quantum-macroeconomics class covers it.
srv
Apparently David Broder’s work is only appreciated after his death.
Dave
Let’s see how those aircraft carriers fare against a few dozen SS-N-22 Sunburns flying in from the coast.
You’d think none of these idiots ever heard of “asymmetrical warfare”.
daveNYC
@Villago Delenda Est: The phrase you’re looking for is, “Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Dave:
Cripes, the US Navy repeatedly holds wargames in which submarines routinely ‘sink’ carriers, and the admirals just ‘refloat’ the carriers and continue on as if nothing had ever happened.
When they wargame this stuff out, and the opfor commander uses unconventional tactics, they toss out the results because they’re bad and conflict with the conventional wisdom.
Martin
@West of the Cascades:
Well, we couldn’t. Kim Jong Il maxed out his missiles with +4 Imperial Smiting, and our carriers, while with high hitpoints, only have +2 Blood of Jesus Armor and are vulnerable to anti-capitalistic attack. We’re strong against the religious psi-warriors, but not against the communist hive.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Time for some nerfing and buffing, I think.
Dave
@Villago Delenda Est: I remember that happening when they wargamed out Iraq and the Marine general playing OpFor sank half the fleet with explosive-laden suicide boats. Then they just refloated them. Good thing Hussein wasn’t paying attention…
Rusty
And don’t forget, we’ll be greeted with kisses and flowers as liberators.
Bill Murray
@Davis X. Machina: I think you mean the EPR paradox
slag
I thought the 236th anniversary was traditionally Syria. Now, you’re telling me it’s Iran? Shit. I’m so going to be in the doghouse with Real America this year. If only FTD delivered surface-to-air!
Samara Morgan
why do y’all suppose we have to GTFO A-stan by 2013?
Imran Khan is running on anti-American platform.
Mnemosyne
I guess the wingnuts didn’t like this Reuters story over the weekend:
Obama says risky to attack Iran, wants diplomatic fix
Daddy said they couldn’t have their war and now they’re promising to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get their way.
Raven
@Samara Morgan:
We are gunna cut their holocaust guilt card up in their faces and kick AIPAC to the kerb.
you hope
daveNYC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Didn’t they have that one wargame where the opfor dude loaded up a bunch of PT type boats with explosives and just rammed the shit out of things? I think they lost a carrier to that tactic.
And the issue isn’t a bunch of SS-Ns going after a carrier task force. Chances are that they’d be able to weather that. Now striking at the Saudi pumping stations for the tankers, that would be a problem.
Svensker
@dnfree:
Propaganda. It’s being used and it works. Be interesting to find the start point, but I have no idea how to do that.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: Like he would win if he ran on a PRO American platform.
Dave
@daveNYC: They lost more than a carrier. And it made the entire naval staging area unusable.
They could weather losing a carrier. Even two…hell, we have more than the rest of the world combined. But the optics…how many people would want to keep fighting if, God forbid, you got to watch the Abraham Lincoln sinking over and over again on CNN.
jeff
Niall is one of the most optimistic racists ever.
Raven
@Dave: It would take one hell of a charge to sink a fucking carrier.
Villago Delenda Est
@daveNYC:
Fixed targets are always vulnerable, and the Iranians have made it clear that they’ll do things that are “unthinkable”.
Unless you can get the USS Enterprise to project a deflector shield from orbit around those oil pumping platforms, they’re going to be vulnerable to aerial attack.
Yutsano
@Raven: It would also give the military a convenient excuse to take back over. Which they will since they lurves them some Washington dollars.
THE
All the same though, the rapid decline of the Iranian rial since October (IRRUSD) is an intriguing thing to watch.
DAN
HARVARD PROFESSOR Niall Ferguson.
The Moar You Know
The firewall: Obama and the JCS, who have made it known to Israel in no uncertain terms that if they decide to do this on their own, they won’t be getting our help, and, oh, by the way, we’re not going to start the ass-kicking for you.
I don’t know what kind of stranglehold AIPAC and the Israelis have on our media, but it is truly formidable. If you did nothing but get you news from the MSM, you’d think Iran already has multiple weapons and is foaming at the mouth to use them. Neither “fact” is remotely true.
Dave
@Raven: I know…but the Sunburn is capable. A 320 KG warhead delivered at Mach 3. Get five or six of those to hit a carrier and it’ll go down.
God forbid the Iranians get a Chinese Dong Feng DF21-D. Those come straight down out of the sky.
schrodinger's cat
@Samara Morgan: Pakistan is majority Sunni, I don’t think this move will go over will the Pakistani electorate.
Raven
@The Moar You Know: Been hangin over a Pat’s huh?
Amir Khalid
For a historian, Niall Ferguson doesn’t get a lot of things.
Point one, he doesn’t get that while ordinary Iranians resent the old mullahs for the joylessness of the pious life in post-shah Iran, they are Iranians first and last; make war on Iran, and they will indeed unite against you, just like people in any country would (and should) against an outside enemy.
Point two, while taking out Iran’s nuclear weapons capability might gladden the heart of Arab leaders, it would also enrage their people in a way they cannot afford to ignore. That would have to be reflected the level of cooperation they can afford to give the US on anything, let alone other regional security issues.
Point three, Saudi oil is not unlimited. In recent years it has been suspected that they simply don’t have any more spare extraction capacity to keep oil prices from spiking. Attack Iran and you might end up confirming that suspicion.
Point four, Ferguson argues that Iran’s mullah regime will go down when they lose a war with Israel and the US. But remember: Saddam Hussein was deposed not in 1991, but after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We all remember how well that worked out afterwards. If the mullahs did go down, who would go up? Some BFF of America’s? Not bloody likely.
Point five, would the mullahs really fire nuclear weapons at Israel? For all the low-level mischief they get up to, they have never started a war with anyone; it was Saddam who started the war in the 1980s. When Ferguson says the mullahs might be that rash, he’s assuming facts not in evidence.
Chris
@dnfree:
Back when I was taking classes on this kind of stuff, I remember getting a little background about different political factions in our foreign policy scene. One of them was the neocons.
Basic background: they’re the children of World War Two, and their foreign policy outlook is essentially that they view every new adversary as the new Hitler. Which is to say, not only total evil but incurably aggressive and irrational, to such an extent that our absolute priority must be to stop him by any means necessary before he has a chance to really become the new Hitler.
That mode of thinking’s been applied time and time again against enemies as wildly differing as the Soviets, the Chinese, the North Vietnamese, post-revolution Iran, Saddam’s Iraq and Noriega’s Panama – more or less regardless of the facts. Sadly, it’s a narrative that really catches on with the American public.
What you’re talking about seems like just the latest campaign of that nature. The Iranians are fucking mad, they’re going to destroy Jerusalem unless we bomb them, so let’s get bombing, assholes!
Raven
@Dave: I thought we were talking about PT boats, sorry.
Raven
JERUSALEM — An Israeli official says the country’s prime minister has told his Cabinet to quit the “chitchat” about Iran.
scav
Wouldn’t be a neocon assembly without a war drum circle.
Dave
@Amir Khalid:
This. Getting a nuke isn’t about attacking Israel, all their bluster to the contrary. As if they don’t know Israel has nuclear armed subs that could glass Tehran in that event.
It’s about not getting attacked. Whether or not you think they thought this through (and I don’t think they have), Iran wants the nuke for defensive purposes, not offensive.
Samara Morgan
@Raven: watch the video i linked.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Sounds like the Navy views its aircraft carriers the same way the Air Force views its fighter corps – they’re the elite, they’re what the service is all about, they can handle whatever we throw at them and if the facts don’t agree with that, fuck the facts, sir!
Culture of Truth
There’s a lot of WWII nostaligia out there; many regard it as the U.S. finest hour.
So why not re-create it, albeit by starting wars ourselves?
pseudonymous in nc
@ldrks:
He knows a lot about making money.
Samara Morgan
@schrodinger’s cat: bulshytt dumbass.
the taliban for example are deobandi sufi.
sufis are much more closely aligned with the shi’ia than the sunni.
where does this bulshytt about the taliban being sunni come from?
you should watch the video.
a hundred thousand people chanting death to america.
some ally.
Chris
@Dave:
This exactly.
And once again, why wouldn’t they want nukes? They’ve got nuclear Israel to the west, nuclear Pakistan to the east, nuclear Russia to the north and the nuclear U.S. Navy to the south. That, and the example of 2003, when nuclear Iraq was invaded and torn to shreds by the U.S. (despite its cooperation with UN inspections) while nuclear North Korea remained safe and independent.
daveNYC
@Raven: I suspect it wouldn’t take as much boom as one would think to drop a carrier. Especially if you were able to deliver it at (or even better, below) the waterline.
Boats really want to sink, and will take any excuse to do so. Plus, you don’t actually need to sink the thing. Just damage it so that it can no longer move fast enough for combat flight operations.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Not only would this not sit well with his Sunni countrymen, as has been noted above, it would also spoil his negotiating position with respect to Prime Minister Tendulkar of India.
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
Of course. All true. What’s that go to do with anything? They want to get a war on. Facts just make it harder for them to do that. Fuckers.
Cacti
The greatest threat to neocon designs on the middle east is not that Iran might get a nuke and use it.
It’s that Iran might get a nuke and do nothing with it. Like every other country that’s possessed them except for the United States.
Susanna K.
Zandar gets the headline WIN for today. Let loose the dogs of war!
Mino
Maybe Obama is playing a long game, hoping for a hat trick. If Iran is settled semi-peacefully, Syria’s Assad will probably fail and Russia will lose much influence in the region. Israel’s northern border will be more secure from rocket attacks, Hamas will be weakened, and peace will be more possible to the Israelis.
War with Iran will escalate all of Israel’s problems with her neighbors.
Rafer Janders
War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.
I just have the weirdest feeling I’ve seen this play before…
My god, I’ve got it! The man’s a plagiarist! He just took a bunch of circa 2002-2003 essays that were lying around, substituted the letter “n” for the letter “q” in the country’s name, and submitted them as his own!
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: you know that green is the color of Islam. green is the color of hamas and hizb’.
the Green Wave wasnt about replacing islamic government with secular government. it was about two competing versions of Islam.
Its the same as america….Nejad and Khameini have the support of the rural, ostentatiously pious, older, less educated iranians, Mousavi and Rafsanjani have the support of the younger, more educated, urban, liberal Iranians.
But they are all muslims, and all Iranians.
Iran is 99.6 % muslim.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
He’s projecting his own bloodlust onto them.
schrodinger's cat
@Samara Morgan: I am not talking about Taliban at all, which you would have figured out if you had read my comment. Pakistan is majority Sunni, and calling me names is not going to change that fact.
Tone In DC
The JCS/Military Industrial Complex already collectively soiled themselves after the Iranians downed that stupid drone.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
The Deobandi are very conservative Sunni. The Taliban regard Shia Hazaras as apostates.
Yutsano has already tried to explain it to you. The Taliban are definitely Sunni.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
I have no idea what you are trying to argue.
Gravenstone
@dnfree: You might ask them how this is any different than “Christian” apocalyptic nutbags who insist that Israel has to be destroyed so the Israelis can have their chance to “get right” with Gawd.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Samara Morgan:
Huh?
The Taliban have been attacking Sufi shrines in Pakistan since at least 2009. (If you don’t like that source, there are others).
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
I think you forgot a word in there, so I fixed it for you. Iran is looking at the very clear lesson of 2003: no nuke, you get invaded and ruined; nuke, and you get left alone except for some harsh language.
It’s weird how people on the right keep talking about Iran’s nuke program as though it’s some kind of crazy plot on their part when the simplest explanation is that Iraq wants a nuke to prevent other countries from attacking them. It’s perfectly rational on their part, and the only true deterrent would be some kind of unbreakable pledge on the part of their enemies to never, ever attack them.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: his countrymen are not sunni. Barelvis and Deobandis are sufi, not sunni, although the schools descend from sunni thought.
and Khan would love to form a new islamic crescent for more power over Kashmir.
Pakistan also has the largest number of shi’ia after Iran.
Lit3Bolt
@pseudonymous in nc:
And cashing AIPAC checks.
The Moar You Know
@Raven: You got it.
srv
The point of the Iranian effort is not an offensive or even a true defensive capacity. It is to re-orient the balance of power in the ME.
If I wanted to isolate a particular state, and neutralize their tactical and strategic influence, I’d want to render their offensive capabilities ineffective and come with ideas that drive a wedge between their allies.
For KSM, a weapons program does not work as they can buy some (if they haven’t already). But a long-term effort to cause sectarian strife forces them to focus on internal matters and impact their 900lb gorilla influence. Rattle as necessary.
For Iraq, Iran has already achieved its goal. A compliant, non-threatening neighbor.
Iran is probably not really developing a weapon. They are gradually building the infrastructure to have the capacity. But that is IMO, an effort to troll Israel into doing something stupid and isolate it.
The only way to change this goal is regime change. And that is not going to happen.
Culture of Truth
As Tom Lehrer once observed, I’ll try to remain serene and calm… when Alabama gets the bomb…
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Even Wikipedia says that Deobandis are Hanafi School Sunni.
Yutsano
@srv:
Not from the outside anyway. But Ahmadinejad does not have a strong mandate right now, and Khatami is seen in the eyes of several clerics (led by Rafsanjani) as being ill-suited for Supreme Leader. The Green Revolution is back to simmering under the surface, but it could emerge again. But it will backfire on us mightily if we try to intervene.
burnspbesq
I’m not unsympathetic to arguments that reduce to ” that fucking whack-job Khamenei can’t be deterred.”
The problems are (1) short of turning the entire country into rubble, there’s no way to permanently keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability and (2) there is no assurance that the next guy won’t be worse.
liberal
@srv:
Well, not really. We achieved their goal for them.
Suffern ACE
@liberal: All the better. Unfortunately, there doesn’t look like anyone we can turn Iran over to that won’t look suspicious. The Russians used to invade Persia and the Ottoman Empire quite frequently before that revoluation thing. Maybe we can trick them into doing the hard work for us.
Rafer Janders
@Chris:
And once again, why wouldn’t they want nukes? They’ve got nuclear Israel to the west, nuclear Pakistan to the east, nuclear Russia to the north and the nuclear U.S. Navy to the south. That, and the example of 2003, when nuclear Iraq was invaded and torn to shreds by the U.S. (despite its cooperation with UN inspections) while nuclear North Korea remained safe and independent.
Not to mention that their other immediate neighbor Afghanistan, which was also invaded and occupied by the nuclear-armed US. Iran is about the only major actor in the region WITHOUT nuclear weapons.
From a strategic self-interest point of view, acquiring nukes is, for them, simply a matter of survival.
srv
@Yutsano: I don’t think Khamenei is threatened, and even if he was, any successor would follow the same policy and just put more lipstick on the pig. The greens are a tiny urban minority, just like the ‘progressives’ in Cairo.
burnspbesq
Charles Pierce is a Spurs fan?
C’MON YOU REDS!
Jamie
So is it some people won’t learn or some people can’t learn?
Amir Khalid
@liberal:
So much the better for Iran. All they had to do was stand by and watch, while George W. Bush made the world safer for them. They must be praying every day for more American enemies like him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
And, in turn, she has no idea what she’s trying to argue, either. It’s just more display of her tendency to assert in the face of confrontation with fact.
catclub
@West of the Cascades: “Was Niall Ferguson screaming back then to bomb the living shit out of Pyongyang?”
Probably
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“sufis are much more closely aligned with the shi’ia than the sunni.”
Ummm, balls. There are Sunni sufis, and there are Shi’ite sufis.
The Deobandis might have had Sufi roots, but they’re increasingly being influenced by Wahabi thinking. Which is why (as well as due to local power struggles) they’re going after Sufi sects in Pakistan.
pragmatism
this is good news for john mccain.
now he can reprise his cover of Barbara Ann where he wittily replaces Barbara Ann with Bomb Iran.
but he may be too busy yelling at kids to get off of his lawn.
pragmatism
@burnspbesq: that is the best news i’ve heard all day that pierce supports spurs. the match today was uneven.
Bruce S
Wow – chalk me up as naive, but I expected to read something better than a snarky rant that actually sounded more idiotic and tendentious than a piece of crap written by Dick Cheney’s daughter. I guess Ferguson thinks his academic credentials allow him to jerk off for us and consider it evidence of his genius. This piece was – for starters – so steeped in puerile partisan snark it doesn’t pass the smell test outside of FOX Nation borders. What a moron! A moron with a colossal ego, obviously, but a moron nonetheless. Also, nice of Tina to put Fergie’s wife’s “War on Christmas” feature on the cover, to provide proper emotional context for killin’ Mooslims.
Bruce S
Honestly, I think that guys like Ferguson would love another 9/11 attack because it would provide the juice for their preferred policies – like last time around. It’s taken ten years of the fruits of their manias to sink in and burn our asses for folks at home to return to some remnants of sanity about just kicking down all the doors in the Middle East, telling the locals to “Suck on this!” Ferguson wants to use our troops as canon fodder for his resentments and paranoia. In reality, guys like this and Al Qaeda are each others Best Friends, in the sense that they justify each other’s pre-fabbed ideologies.
Lojasmo
@Davis X. Machina:
Everything means a democratic loss.
#whiteguyinasuit
Shut the fuck up, already.
Debbie(aussie)
Please don’t hate for me for asking the following questions :)
Why can’t you guys get as disgusted by all this Iran war stuff as you have with the PP/Komen shit storm?
Heliopause
It’s incredible that only 49% will say this when you consider that the left-left-left-most position allowed in our discourse, as exemplified by Obama and Clinton, is “Iran must do exactly what we tell them and if they don’t all options are on the table.” This is what passes for “diplomacy” and “liberalism” in the USA.
Mnemosyne
@Debbie(aussie):
Probably because we know that the odds that the Obama administration would go along with an attack by Israel are very, very low. So there’s not a lot of point in getting worked up about it since all of Ferguson et al’s whining isn’t going to go anywhere.
The Komen/Planned Parenthood shit storm will lead to actual, real women being denied necessary health care in the very near future. That’s more important IMO than drum-pounding by righties that’s never gonna go anywhere.
Samara Morgan
@THE: lol wikipedia.
sunni descent from the Hanafi school to militant sufism. and barelvis are also sufi.
does the BJ retard contingent actually believe any islamic country will side with the US?
Pakistan has 100 nukes. Imran Khan is going to show the US the door in 2013.
Samara Morgan
@Debbie(aussie): because the juicers still think Our Glorious Missionary Democracy would be “better” for those poor benighted muslims.
and a lot of them are greys.
they still believe in Israel uber alles.
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: the republicans tried to vote in a mutual defense pact last year, so that if Israel is attacked, the US is treaty bound to defend it.
the measure failed.
Panetta has been very publically warning Israel against unilaterally attacking Iran with the hopes of dragging the US in.
It would certainly mess with Obamas re-election.
Bombing Qom would simply lead directly to WWIII. Dar ul Islam vs AmerIsrael.
KSA will be forced to side with dar ul Islam. The constitution of KSA is the Quran and House Saud is the titular defender of the faithful and of Mecca and Medina.
half of those crazie evangelical fuckers want this in order to bring on the Rapture.
and just think what would happen to the price of oil.
Samara Morgan
again, the BJ contingent is quite mad if they think sunni muslims are gunna prefer amerisrael to shi’ia muslims. The House of Saud will fall if they give Israel a flyover.
Anti- American fervor in Pak is at a fever pitch,
that is why Imran Khan is going to get Zardaris job in 2013.
and that is why Panetta moved up the end of combat in A-stan to 2013.
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: sufism is the mystical branch of al-Islam. There are also militant schools of sufism. Deobandi and Barelvi are different Sufi schools, like Hanafi and Salafi are different schools. Wahabbism is a school of Arab nationalism.
Sunni and Shi’ia are different sects. Sects are different than schools.
Historically the Deobandi have always been Afghan nationalists. They built maddrassas for the express purpose of training young men to fight the British Raj.
Historically the Sunni have been rulers oppressing the Shi’ia.
Historically Sufis are oppressed by both sects.
Samara Morgan
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: to be more precise, the Taliban are Afghan nationalists, as opposed to wahabbists, who are pan-Arab nationalists.
Yutsano
@Samara Morgan:
Yeah. Nothing says unity after a 1300 year old civil war like forgetting all your theological differences to battle the infidels! Do you EVER think before you answer a question?
This is impossible. The Deobandi school was founded in India. You’re welcome to explain to me how Indian Muslims are Afghan nationalists. Which you will. And get wrong. Again.
The Deobandi school is NOT native to Afghanistan. It came with Saudi money and Pakistani evangelists.
And yet you think by bombing a Shi’a holy site that enmity suddenly vanishes?
THE
@Samara Morgan: I agree that the Barelvis are Sufi.
But the extremists, groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi(LeJ), are derived from Deobandi movements and have been waging a war in Pakistan against Shi’ia particularly in Baluchistan. Here is an example. Notice the following direct quote in the linked article:
Please read this article Samara.
THE
Also from that article:
(my emphasis for your clarity)
THE
OMGosh, Yutsano, don’t tell her the Deobandi came from Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, India, her little head will explode.
Samara Morgan
@Yutsano: i think all ME muslims hate america and israel enough at this point to unite.
indian deobandi were indian nationalists and fought the british raj. that is where the maddrassas were built to fight the brits.
that is the tradition of nationalism carried on to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
to return to my POINT the reason the US has to GTFO A-stan in 2013 is that is when Imran Khan gets Zardaris job. Khan hates America, and he is running on a populist platform of anti-american sentiment. He led the Arab spring sit-in last year to shut down the NATO supply routes. His party, the Peace and Justice party, is suing America in the International Courts over droning civilians.
there ARE deobandi sufis. Deoband was not a mystic himself, but mysticism can arise in any school. It just means spiritualism.
im sry if im smug about this but i LIKE using Open Source to see what is really happening. Its like I read the iraqi dinar traders to see what was really happening about the US withdrawal. I predicted last year Imran Khan would get Zardaris job. And it sure looks like im right. But you dont hear anything about Khan in the western media. Why?
Now Pakistan is the first islamic state, and has over 100 nukes. If Israel starts a war whose side will they be on?
You know the answer.
Samara Morgan
@THE: also at Exums i read about a symposium where the US and Karzais government briefed the results of using the Barelvis to fight the Taliban (deobandi) . They concluded the operation was a failure because “it just led to Barelvis getting killed”. If the Taliban are attacking Barelvis its because of that bulshytt.
Juicers are as stupid as conservatives on this.
there is no “shining city on the hill” you dumb cudlips.
Samara Morgan
@Yutsano: WHAT I SAID….is that the sunni shi’ia enmity is not going to prevent AfPak from being drawn into WWIII on Iran’s side.
Khan is America’s worst nightmare. A secular cricket hero that hates America.
He will make common cause with the “islamists” in a heartbeat to give America the bums rush out of Pak.
the sunni shi’ia enmity wont prevent KSA from taking sides either.
THE
Samara, The US isn’t getting out of Afghanistan in 2013.
I wish you’d accept my offer to give you access to my research website. You would have all this information. Why do I have to keep linking you to simple stuff?
US is planning to withdraw from active combat in 2013 but trainers will remain with the ANA and final withdrawal will not be until 2014.
IMHO Panetta didn’t express himself very well.
Actually the US has been saying the same thing since December.
THE
@Samara:
More here about US plans for mid-2013 to end-of-2014
US is planning for a transitional phase.
THE
Perhaps because you aren’t reading the right sources. If you were reading my sources you would have heaps of information about Imran Khan.
For instance this interview.
Samara Morgan
@Yutsano: i think it was just white people mischief Yut.
the US was trying to use the Barelvis against the Taliban and wound up gettin a bunch of them dead.