Mean old man McCain starts the prepwork for the invasion of Iran the next time the GOP gets control of the WH again:
My friends: I believe that when we consider the many threats and crimes of Iran’s government, we are led to one inescapable conclusion: It is the character of this Iranian regime – not just its behavior – that is the deeper threat to peace and freedom in our world, and in Iran. Furthermore, I believe that it will only be a change in the Iranian regime itself – a peaceful change, chosen by and led by the people of Iran – that could finally produce the changes we seek in Iran’s policies.
The world dodged a bullet when that crazy prick and his idiot sidekick lost.
kdaug
As Sully said yesterday, AIPAC and the neo-cons are keeping their powder dry, making plans, and drawing maps for Palin’s election in 2012.
Feel safer?
somethingblue
Whatever Obama’s sins, the thought of having to put up with four years of the “My friends” thing …
licensed to kill time
“Change that dang regime!”
Because that last regime change worked out so well.
edit: I think someone ought to bang the gong on Walnuts, and drag him off the stage.
(Gong Show ref, you young’uns might have to google that)
And Another Thing...
The term “regime change” is an expression that guarantees that the speaker/writer should be considered for quarantine. They’re dangerous and might get somebody killed.
Ruckus
@kdaug:
Feel safer?
Marginally. Better, but marginally.
There are still too many ignorant asses in the world who want to seize power and righteousness at any cost.
demkat620
It’s like he thinks he’s running for president again.
beltane
Ugh. He even does his “my friends” thing. “My friends, we must blow up the world in order to save it. It will be a peaceful, democratic blowing up the world that will demonstrate our strength, resolve, and commitment to freedom to the soon to be dead inhabitants of the earth.”
Elisabeth
@somethingblue:
Yep.
I think the Obama Administration is wrong to keep pushing new sanctions for Iran but at least they aren’t pushing “regime change.” I guess the Republicans haven’t learned anything about nation building and/or the Middle East.
El Cid
I’m sure that all the Republican young bloggers will immediately begin signing up for military service so that they will have the training and the field experience needed when it comes time to
bomb the hell out ofinvade Iran.Waynski
Isn’t this exactly what Rumsfeld and the other neocon pricks were doing during the Clinton years re: Iraq? I guess complete and utter FAIL isn’t enough to get them to rethink their strategy. Plus, where do they think the money for another war is going to come from? FSM? They’re the ones reminding the American people everyday that we’re broke. It all makes you want to bang your head against the wall.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
That’s putting it mildly.
And they aren’t just crazy, they are say-anything-totally-self-serving crazy. Totally, always, unfailingly, looking out for their own self interests. Can you imagine those two having policy discussions in the White House? Can you imagine them even speaking to each other after a short time in office?
Here’s a fun game: Track down McCain’s “positions” of about four years ago, and try to find the ones that he still holds today.
srv
Obama will bomb Iran or “lose it.”
General Patrick Bateman, aka McChrystal, is banging his drum.
With “Saddam’s WMDs are in Syria” Clapper as DNI, I’m sure we’ll get an objective view of the threat Iran poses.
strandedvandal
I’m sorry, someone remind me why we care what Johnny Walnuts has to say. Didn’t this crazy old fuck pick Palin as his running mate? That sums up all I need to know about this fossil’s thought process and whether or not I should pay attention to it.
Calouste
I believe that when we consider the many threats and crimes of
Iran’sAmerica’s government, we are led to one inescapable conclusion: It is the character of thisIranianAmerican regime – not just its behavior – that is the deeper threat to peace and freedom in our world, and inIranAmerica. Furthermore, I believe that it will only be a change in theIranianAmerican regime itself – a peaceful change, chosen by and led by the people ofIranAmerica – that could finally produce the changes we seek inIran’sAmerica’s policies.I guess it would have been shrill to have said things like that about two years ago.
Violet
Uh huh. I guess that’s just like the peaceful change, chosen by and led by the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re so good at helping people choose and lead their own change.
The “My friends” thing….shudder. I’m so glad we don’t have to listen to that all the time.
The very thought of this man as President makes me want to hide under the desk.
kdaug
(And yes, I’m going to continue Portal endgame song references.)
Redshirt
I want to know more about what Johnny Mac thinks about Snooki and the general concept of tanning beds. Cuz lord knows, the one politician on this planet who should be sticking up for the powerful Tanning Bed Lobby is John “Not ever a Maverick” McCain.
Cervantes
@And Another Thing…: Reminds me of Jens, a right-wing academic of my acquaintance years ago who never failed to refer to foreign governments as “regimes.” In response I started referring to the (then-incumbent) Reagan Administration as a regime. Jens did not like it one bit.
Allan
Remember, if McCain would have won, Sarah Palin’s followers would already have assassinated him to complete her ascendance to her rightful place as Queen of the Rapture.
And I’m not joking.
eemom
he still hasn’t got it through his head that I am NOT his fucking FRIEND?
Joshua Norton
What the hell happened to McCain? I recall actually liking him at one time, but damned if I can remember why.
QuaintIrene
My mind’s spinning over who he would have chosen for his cabinet.
ruemara
@Allan:
You know, I’ve always believed he would have had a terrible, horrible fatal shaving accident January 21, 2009. Or an unforeseen stumble over a railing by March 2009.
Citizen Alan
It’s incredible. It’s just incredible. I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could have lived through the last 10 years and honestly suggest that we will be greeted as liberators if we invaded Iran.
licensed to kill time
McCain would probably have shown the appropriate amount of anger over the oil spill only no one would have known because he’s angry all the time anyway. He’s like Botox Anger Face Guy.
cleek
pop quiz:
which of the two countries has started more wars in the past 100 years:
[ ] USA
[ ] Iran
kdaug
@Allan: As the Men’s Warehouse guy says – “I Guarantee it.”
Stillwater
The man has gone politically insane.
bkny
@Joshua Norton:
he’s no longer able to control the meanness. there’s an insanely nasty vibe to him; and the stories of his verbal attacks on his wife — he’s a nasty mean old prick.
Violet
@Cervantes:
Rush Limbaugh calls the Obama administration “the regime.”
Sheila
Cain and Unable have closed out that possibility for many years to come.
David Hunt
He used to be better at lying about who he was and he came under greater scrutiny because he ran for president. Also, I think that he’s gotten more bitter and cranky because of his losses in said presidential elections.
Cat Lady
Is it wrong to be rooting for Hayworth to win? Any chance he might? He would be less dangerous cuz everyone knows he’s a whackaloon, and McCain would cease to have any relevancy for the Village. I just want him to STFU. Could someone tweet Megan McCain to tell her old man to go DIAF already? kthx.
Zach
A peaceful revolution in Iran is impossible before McCain kicks the bucket. Way too much popular support for the current power structure. Perhaps if the country did something really stupid like go get in a dumb war, Iranians might take action, but I don’t see that happening.
bkny
reading that statement, all that came to me was:
search: iran
replace with: united states
i am thoroughly astonished at how casually an attack on iran is talked about.
And Another Thing...
@ruemara: Does laughing at this make me a bad person?
asiangrrlMN
#Thunk, thunk, thunk#
That is the sound of my head being repeatedly bashed against my desk as I contemplate this idiot’s words and how close he was to being president, with “Call Me” La Palina as his sidekick.
@cleek: USA! USA! USA! We’re #1!
Damn, but our politicians is not learning.
Danton
Does McCain say “My friends” all the time because he doesn’t have any?
It’s really an annoying habit. I think it’s one of the reasons he lost.
Brandon
Step 1: Sanctions because of weapons (imposed by Democratic POTUS) – check
Step 2: Neocons beat the drum for regime change – check
Step 3: Neocons find a Chalabi (note that McCain put out a call for CVs with his “chosen by and led by the people of Iran” line) – in process
Step 4: Cultivate a Judy Miller – probably already done
Step 5: Falsify intelligence on weapons – done (they’ve already got diagrams of sites, time estimates of when a nuke will arrive at your front door are forthcoming)
Step 6: ‘Very Serious People’ all agree that war is both necessary & inevitable, only DFHers would disagree – in process
Step 7: Attack
Step 8: Surge
Step 9: hoocoodanode
Step 10: Find new enemy and repeat
Steps 1 and 2 are complete. Quite sadly, it would be hard to find someone to believe that there is a serious impediment to realizing 3-6. It is really getting to be like a broken record, but it is impossible to see how it can be avoided at this point.
cat48
Interesting, Walnuts wants O to go to war w/Iran today and Mittens orders O to the Gulf to coordinate and lead the cleanup effort Figures he thought of O for the cleanup…..
Brandon
@Zach: Actually, it is more likely that war would incite more nationalism causing Iranians to support the government even more. Either their economy or political system need to suddenly collapse or at least be severely compromised. Since they have oil, the economic issue is not as likely, more likely would be a Mullah gay sex scandal.
joe from Lowell
Threat to world peace?
Quick, name the last time Iran launched an aggressive war.
Trick question! Iran has NEVER, in its entire existence, launched an aggressive war.
Persia, on the other hand, last launched an aggressive war in the 1700s. The 1700s!
Look, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work, but they’ve demonstrated that they are quite content to squat on their own little patch. They’re not a threat to world peace.
John McCain is a threat to world peace. Let’s bomb him instead.
Comrade Dread
As I recall, our last adventure into regime change in Iran was on behalf of British Petroleum to overthrow their democratically elected government and the subsequent two and a half decades of brutality inspired the Iranian people to install the current government.
The main lesson being that I believe we need to install regime change in BP.
Cacti
Sometimes I think Obama’s election merely pushed back the fall of the American Empire, rather than reversed its course.
If any of the current crop of Repubs wins the WH, our Super Power status will be shoved off into the abyss.
Chad N Freude
Now, now, to be fair to McCain, he did say
But I suppose the only way to bring about the peaceful change is to invade them or bomb-bomb-bomb bomb-bomb Iran, because of THIS.
Chad N Freude
@Cacti:
Logically impossible, because we are
athe Super Power and therefore cannot be shoved anywhere by anybody. QED.I also think that the fall of Our Empire has so much momentum now it can’t be stopped or even significantly delayed.
kdaug
@Comrade Dread: Oh, I love this… cognitive tie-in between “regime change in Iran” and BP. And you’re absolutely right on the facts.
Folks, I think this is a meme we can run with.
Dave
nspired the Iranian people to install the current government.
The Mullahs were NOT installed by the Iranian people.
They murdered hundreds of thousands of people on their way to seizing power.
Speak to any Iranian (I have) and they will tell you that the Mullahs are nothing but a curse upon Iran.
Masochism over past misbehaviour by the US Government is no reason to give the Mullahs a free pass.
Bill Section 147
@cleek: I am picking Iran ’cause they started it with their provocative looks. That country needs to wear a hijab. Won’t they think of the children?
merl
if they had been elected mccain would be dead now or palin would have already resigned.
Comrade Dread
Perhaps not.
But, at the least, it should give any would be ‘liberator’ pause to reflect that our actions have unintended consequences, and that overthrowing the government of another nation for our own perceived interests often reaps nothing but misery and more problems for us in the long run.
Ideally, it should inspire people not to go about mucking around in the affairs of other nations or bombing the bejeezus out of them unless they happened to attack our nation first, because we have no idea what the f*** is going to happen a few years or decades down the road.
Bill Section 147
And then after the bombing and the presentation of the cakes and flowers and the people of Iran elect Hamas Al Qua’ida von Ho Chi Min our next move will be…???
McCain is thinking outside the box on this one.
Svensker
@cleek:
Well, yeah, Mr. Smartypants, but only because they MADE us! How can you not GET THAT? Sheez.
KevinNYC
McCain would have been a terrible president. Remember that the neocons at the Weekly Standard were very big McCain fans before they were in Bush’s camp. McCain’s foreign policy guy Randy Scheunemann, was basically a lobbyist for Ahmed Chalabi for years. He now, god help him, instructs Palin. The idiots who drove the Iraq war are going to be the idiots who try for an Iran war and McCain’s goes back with all of them.
Comrade Dread
@Bill Section 147:
Simple silly, a blockade, occupation, or more sanctions. Democracy only counts if we get the pre-approved results our leaders expect.
Chad N Freude
@merl: Both. (Inclusive or).
maus
Does that manchild still think anyone sees him as Reagan-like figure?
maus
@Dave: Oh Dave, it’s people like you that allowed the Shah to be instilled, and because of him the Islamic Revolution.
So what did they respond with when you told them the solution was to (helpfully) curse them with another dictator?
LD50
@Dave:
Translated: whatever we do, we must NEVER LEARN ANY LESSONS about our previous history in Iran, or Iraq for that matter!
LD50
I’m sure Dave has given lots of thought to his “bomb the Iranian people into democracy” theory.
PanAmerican
President McCain. A war and a self promotion to six star “Maximum” Admiral. take THAT dad… He would have paraded around in a uniform of his own design, with a high hat and lots of gold fringe.
It would have been a glorious end to the Empire. But NOOOO, you fucks had to screw it all up with analytical Barack. “Let’s think about the consequences of our actions….” Fuck that noise! Let’s bomb somebody! USA! USA! USA!
Dave
Oh Dave, it’s people like you that allowed the Shah to be instilled, and because of him the Islamic Revolution.
And that’s reason to leave the Mullahs alone, how?
You’re just regurgitating a sucky argument based upon Original Sin.
Again, its this strange masochism that keeps coming to the for.
So what did they respond with when you told them the solution was to (helpfully) curse them with another dictator?
Who is talking about cursing them with another dictator?
The lesson to learn from the past is that we should not pimp for, nor tolerate any dictator anywhere.
And us (i.e. the West) having shamefully done so in the past does not mean that we are suddenly forbidden from acting against them now or in the future.
Or do brown people not deserve democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech and not being shot and murdered by fascist theocratic goons?
Because, reading Balloon Juice, at times you all appear not to give a fuck about brown people, so consumed are you with self-hatred.
Allan
@ruemara: It was probably a mistake for President McCain to join Todd and Sarah on that fishing trip shortly after the Inauguration.
Dave
I’m sure Dave has given lots of thought to his “bomb the Iranian people into democracy” theory.
As if you have LD50 – let’s face facts here, the only use you have for brown people is for their suffering to fuel your own out of control solipism.
Comrade Dread
As I’ve told many neocons in the past, it is not the moral imperative of the United States to go about spreading and fomenting revolution.
Because we don’t know what they want. Most of us don’t understand the history or the culture, and none of us can truly predict what will happen if we do intervene and ‘spread that democracy’ via killing tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of their citizens and destroy their infrastructure.
So, I wish them well, and I’d be happy to change the immigration laws to let in more dissenters from other countries, but if those people want freedom, they can fight to implement it themselves.
joe from Lowell
Either Dave just called us all “brown people,” or this does not make any fucking sense.
joe from Lowell
A hundred bucks says Dave the Democracy Spreader spent the Bush administration insisting that we had to back the military dictator Musharrif because democracy in Pakistan would mean the Taliban being elected and al Qaeda getting their nukes.
Which has been proven completely wrong – a common experience for Iraq War supporters – by subsequent events, but I digress.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when someone like Dave plays a race card, he’s not actually motivated by a concern for social justice, but has an agenda. When people like Dave use the term “democracy,” they don’t mean anything other than domination of client state by the United States. They don’t give a crap about democracy at home, they don’t give a crap about democracy overseas, and they sure as hell don’t give a crap about the well being of Muslims in the Middle East.
arguingwithsignposts
@Dave:
What is that smell? It’s neo-con in the evening, coming to give us another round of “shining city on a hill” manifest destiny crap straight out of the Kristol playbook.
I find this suggestion laughable. Because the Bush Regime sure cared about the hundreds of thousands of brown people they killed while invading two countries, or the brown people who live in Cuba and have suffered under a US economic boycott for over 40 years. Or the brown people in Gaza, whom they pushed to have an election in 2007 even though Liz Cheney now says they “weren’t ready.”
Guess you gotta break some
eggsbrown people to bring democracy to the world, eh?maus
@Dave:
I’d rather have a solution that doesn’t involve them alternately getting murdered by a fascist secular puppet. We did not go into Iraq or Afghanistan for the benefit of the Iraqis and Afghani, so you have no point to argue here.
I don’t hate myself, I hate neocons and those that enable their destructive policies. I’m not the one crying out for the US to immediately invade and install in another clusterfuck of a failure, as you seem to be suggesting.
I mean, you’re trying to mock those who look to our past and current failures, and offering the same pathetic “solutions” that the Iranians already rejected. Keep offering shitty suggestions that nobody wants, no matter how they desperately want to (and need to) purge the Mullahs.
Also FYI “brown people” just love it when you infantalize them, it’s a shame that you’d never have the balls to talk to your “friends” like this in person, if you’ve ever met them.
Citizen Alan
@Dave:
I suspect you are, though you don’t have the guts to admit it. The United States is, as we speak, propping up a narco-capitalist in Afghanistan whose regime will not last a week past our departure date. Whatever sham democracy we impose on Iraq in the interests of “declaring victory and coming home” will not last to 2012 and will almost certainly fall to mullahs indistinguishable from the ones who rule Iran unless the United States, as a parting gesture, installs a dictator every bit as oppressive as the Shah.
Speaking for myself, I’m not consumed by self-hatred. I’m consumed by hatred for the filthy, degenerate warmongers in my own country who are bay for the blood of people they don’t even know in countries on the other side of the planet because they want cheap gas and who have the gall to accuse those who advocate for peace of being motivated by racism against brown people.
Virtually the only thing that allows me to still believe in God is the likely futile hope that He has prepared a Hell bad enough for people like George Bush, John McCain, and you.
El Cid
@arguingwithsignposts: I keep hearing how we got to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but I can’t find any of these omelets.
Chad N Freude
A question for Dave: What means should the US use to to assist or support the replacement of the mullahs with a genuine popular democracy? I don’t think you have explicitly advocated war on Iran to bring this about (I may have missed it in the flood of text), and I’d like to know if you do advocate war or just what you envision as the way to do it.
asiangrrlMN
@joe from Lowell: Bad writing on his part. He is saying that we are consumed with self-hatred as Americans, thus, we are unwilling to kill Iranians in order to free them from the Mullahs. Or something. Why do you hate America so much?
maus
@Chad N Freude: Also, how would you guarantee a power transfer preferable to the current regime? How would you do this without creating a SAVAK?
@asiangrrlMN: STOP LOOKING BACK. STOP LOOKING AT TODAY. TOMORROW EVERYTHING WILL WORK DIFFERENT, PROMISE.
So are all LibDems this level of Palinesque thought? I’m not huge on UK politics, but I thought they were slightly less masturbatory on trying to fix every societal problem through firepower (with no alternative suggestion offered.)
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: We bombed the hell out of Cambodia because they were being penetrated by Communists from Vietnam, and after all we did to carpet bomb rural villages and destroy their agricultural production, they went and ignored our good faith efforts and got themselves that Khmer Rouge government. Why won’t people ever accept our favors with grace?
Chad N Freude
@maus: I assume “you” is Dave, not me. (I’m compulsive about possibly ambiguous messages.)
Tom
This is a good point. No matter what you may think of Obama as a president so far (and I happen to think he’s getting a pretty bad rap so far — more on this in a moment), who knows what the fuck would have happened if Bush/Cheney were followed by McCain/Palin. I don’t have the courage or the imagination to try and envision that world.
What I find funny about the right-winger’s attacks on Obama as the worst president ever and incompetent, blah blah blah, is that they essential echo the left’s attacks on Bush. It’s like kids emulating their parents behavior. They aren’t really judging Obama, they just want to make him look as bad a Bush… never mind that Obama hasn’t started an idiotic, elective war that costs trillions in cash and thousands in lives. Or that every Obama “problem” is the result of lax government oversight during the Bush administration.
The gulf spill is a perfect example. Obama’s response has been decent. Not perfect, but decent. But the right wants it to be his Katrina, so they mold the facts to fit that narrative. Katrina was Katrina because there were people dying in the streets of NOLA while Bush was fishing and the federal government assistance was no where to be seen. That’s why there was such a large backlash against Bush.
The situation with the gulf is completely different. There really isn’t much Obama can do except supervise.
Whatever, I’m +2 and can’t think of a good way to wrap this rant up.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: No kidding! The ungratefulness of some people. This makes me think that we should never bomb another country again, just to show them that we’re mad at them. Oh, wait….
LD50
@Dave:
Should we flatten them into pancakes, Dave? You seemed to get quite a thrill out of it the last time that happened.
Mnemosyne
Apropos of nothing, it drives me nuts when people talk about how craaaazeee it is of Iran to want a nuclear weapon after the US invaded and took over two of their neighbors. If I was Iran, I sure as fuck would want something to deter the US from trying to do the same thing to me.
When Bush declares you part of the “axis of evil” and invades only the part of that axis that doesn’t have a nuke, I, too, would be trying to get one PDQ.
LD50
@Dave:
Wow. We don’t hate Palestinians and don’t think we should bomb Iranians, and according to Dave that means ‘we don’t give a fuck about brown people’ and are ‘consumed with self-hatred’.
Quite a masterful logical leap, Dave.
maus
@Chad N Freude: Yes, I was adding onto your questions for Dave.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: We wouldn’t have to bomb them if they would just listen and not make us so mad. It’s not our fault. Sometimes when we get angry we lose control And we don’t like seeing them flirt with other countries.
El Cid
@LD50: Brown could just mean ‘really tan rich people’.
LD50
@Dave:
Translated: “just because we forcibly changed Iran’s govt. in the 50s and made them hate us forever, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t just LOVE us to pieces if we bombed and invaded them now!”
How many bombs would it take to prove to the Iranians that we love them, Dave?
LD50
@Dave:
You’re right. And bombing and invading will certainly bring that about.
Gosh. I never realized how much I hated brown people, Dave.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Dread:
Just ask the Iranians.
Oh, wait, we’re not supposed to talk about that whole overthrowing-their-elected-government and installing-the-dictatorial-Shah thing because it kinda ruins our righteous buzz of complaining how mean they were to overthrow the Shah after we were nice enough to put him in power over them. My bad.
Maus
Today, we are all antipersia-ites.
scav
Send the Marines
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: Only rich people can afford to be tan because of Obama’s tax on tanning. Warning: That link may cause head explosion. Read with care.
LD50
@Maus: And no doubt Iranians who DON’T want us to bomb them are self-hating Persians.
And Another Thing...
@Mnemosyne: That’s apropos everything. BushCo & the neocons call them the axis of evil and blather about regime change. Plus, the US is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iranians, just like everybody else don’t know what the hell kind of govt the Iraqis will get over the next couple of years. IIRC the Iraq-Iran war lasted about 10 years and took about a million lives. Israel and it’s neo-cons are bellicose about Iran. If I were Thomas Jefferson Ayatollah, and knowing what a neighborhood I live in, I’d want a bomb. It’s a rational – sort of – decision on their part.
Too be clear, the idea of the cruel, medieval, fundamentalist thugs running Iraq having the bomb IS REALLY SCARY.
Recent Israeli behaviour makes it much harder to hold any anti-Iranian nuke coalition together. Could this be deliberate?
Mnemosyne
@And Another Thing…:
Actually, I’m more frightened at Pakistan having it. Iran has medieval fundamentalist thugs running things, but they’re not batshit insane fundamentalist thugs like the Taliban. At least Iran realized that if you didn’t want women seeing male doctors, the solution was to have female doctors, not to tell women that it’s better for them to die than to be defiled by medical care.
Saudi Arabia is #1 on my list of Fucking Insane Islamist Regimes Who Shouldn’t Get Nukes now that Pakistan has theirs. Iran is merely #2 on that nightmare list.
Is the Pope Catholic?
BC
@Dave: Well, Dave, yes the Mullahs were installed by the people. I well remember that time (I’m old), when the Ayatolla Khomeini sent cassette tapes into the country and spearheaded the revolution that caused the Shah and his family to flee. My understanding of the current situation is that the people of Iran are content with the Mullahs, they just want more transparency in the elections. But the Iranian revolution, along with the Philippines overthrow of the Marcos regime, gave me insight into how people even in very repressive countries can make a change in their country. And the people of Iran can do that now if they really want to – after all, they already have done it in the 1970s when they got rid of the Shah.
joe from Lowell
@El Cid:
You know what’s even more disgusting than the neocons’ little pretense that they cared about democracy and their opponents were racists?
They claim that the killing fields happened because we left Southeast Asia.
We “abandoned” the Cambodians to the communists, you see. That’s how it happened.
UPDATE: I am joe from Lowell, and I should not have had to go back and fix the spelling of “Cambodians.”
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: The CIA at the time was continually warning the Pentagon and the Administration (starting with Johnson) that the US’ rural bombing campaign was driving peasants into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
You don’t have to look back. You don’t have to layer analysis retrospectively. You just look at what the CIA was saying — due to the freaking obvious — and use common sense.
Also, no one ever mentions that somewhere around half the deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge — they did their fair share of genocidal slaughter — was actually the result of starvation because there was just no magic way to rebuild quickly the agricultural system that Nixon turned into a moonscape.
We loved Laos too.
maus
@El Cid:
I think we solved the issue of CIA warnings by neutering and minimizing our intelligence-gathering agencies and promoting national security through a national psy-ops/pr effort.
LD50
Indochina was the case study of the ‘bomb them til they start agreeing with us’ school of foreign policy.
grumpy realist
Also, has even a single one of the neocons thought seriously about what happens if we attack (or worse, Israel attacks) Iran?
1. Straits of Hormuz.
2. Mines, several sunken ships cross-wise
3. Whatever else the Iranians come up with. (Considering that they managed (via Chalabi etc.) to get the US to take out Iraq I wonder where else they’re going to lead us around by the nose to.)
Result: $250 or higher bbl oil price spikes.
Somehow I don’t think the US economy (or the world economy, at that), is going to like that very well.
handy
I swear I’m back in 2001-2002 reading Dave’s comments. Deja vu all over again. Except for the whole “we’re totally f’ing broke” part.
maus
@grumpy realist:
It’s all “heh liberals, how liberal are you when you don’t bomb the ‘brown people’ enough to win ‘hearts and minds’ ”
*Puts on smugface*
*Puts on sunglasses*
*Is a worthless douchebag*
Man, Dave really disappears in any topic when he doesn’t have the Likud skirts to run under.
Dave
Dave really disappears in any topic when he doesn’t have the Likud skirts to run under.
Ever stop to realise I’m in a different fucking timezone, gobshite?
If you guys put as much effort into helping the people of Iran escape from the Mullahs (and to claim the people of Iran are content with the Mullahs is a complete fucking joke and shows that you know sod-all Iranians, but then heh, who cares about the Iranians as long as you can bitch about John McCain, eh?) as you do mocking and patronising Iranians, then the world would be a better place.
Rainy Day
Just watched Obama’s 8-minute clip about Iran on C-Span. I don’t think he and McCain are too far apart.
If the body language experts are correct, Obama…
1. Did believe a breakdown in diplomacy was inevitable (contrary to
his words — all statements below are contrary to his words)
2. Does not believe Iran will have economic integration
3. Does not believe Iran is enriching up to 20% of their uranium
4. Doesn’t believe nations will be held accountable for fostering
nuclear proliferation
5. Doesn’t believe June 9 vote is going to do anything substantial
to alter Iran’s behavior
6. Does believe sanctions will close the door on diplomacy with Iran
7. Not looking forward to the day when sanctions are lifted
8. Doesn’t believe in the greatness of an Iranian nation
9. A little gleeful that Iranian government has chosen to be
prisoners of the past
Obama believes that what he’s doing is right. But, he’s eyeballing
Iran. And, I think he’s eyeballing Iran because he’s got a lot of
allies if he goes after them. Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have that
same level of international support. I’m wondering if Obama is gonna try to have a ‘good’ invasion to counteract the yucky ones.
I don’t know, but something’s amiss. Maybe he’s been brainwashed by his military advisors. I don’t know. But I feel like he’s ‘gettin’
his war on.’ Like now he’s itching to attack. And, I feel like these
sanctions are meant to give him (our military) the opportunity to move in that direction.
Anyway, here’s the clip — you can decide for yourself:
cspan.org/Watch/Media/2010/06/09/HP/A/33985/Pres+Obama+Remarks+on+Iran+Sanctions.aspx
Paris
It is the character of John McCain – not just his behavior – that is the deeper threat to peace and freedom in our world
elmo
@Dave:
which is why we shouldn’t send any army staffed by Republicans over there…
maus
@Dave: It seems that you’ve yet again refused to offer any alternative option other than your passive endorsements of bombing the bejeesus out of them and/or installing a CIA-approved puppet.
So what are you doing, changing your Twitter location “in solidarity” and feeling smug?
@elmo: Don’t worry, there are plenty of fascistic-theocratic Dems to go around.
maus
Just to reiterate, the relative nothing that Obama has done (so far) has done more to delegitimize the Mullahs than the rest of all the actions of your social conservative set. Better still would be to get out of Afghanistan, Iraq, stop supporting “ally” theocracies in the ME, and your favorite, stop supporting Israel over all.
None of which you seem to be advocating. Instead, you offer an idiot’s series of emotional pleas and enough vagueness to dance your way out of the specifics. Your undocumented ideas are always superior to our choice to distance ourselves from Iranian internal politics. Oh wait, I forgot that we can’t mention that using our intelligence-agencies to meddle leads to failure, because being a negative nancy gets in the way of your magical thinking.
Jared
Go easy on McCain, guys, or he’ll dump Mark Salter into this thread to call you all dirty hippies.
(I’m alluding, sarcastically, to the incident at the New School during which Salter took to the printed page to rip a just-graduated student who exposed McCain for giving the same speech he’d given at two other schools. It got so heated that concern troll/New School president Bob Kerrey stepped in to defend his student, but much too late. When we put McCain out to pasture, can we take space-cadet Bob with him?)