This is not intended as flame-bait, I didn’t think Jane Hamsher was completely wrong about this at the time, but (Steve M.):
Ah, remember the innocent days of, say, early 2010, when Jane Hamsher could write this (emphasis added)?
… Granted, the tea party messaging can be pretty schizophrenic and has often served as a grab bag of anti-Obama sentiment. But their primary message has always been economic, and they have their roots in the libertarian-leaning, anti-interventionist conservatism of Ron Paul.
Well, now it appears that somebody forgot to tell the members of Congress who’ve taken up the tea party banner that they’re supposed to be anti-interventionist:
Tea Party Caucus members endorse Israeli attack on Iran
… Almost two dozen Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers cosponsored a new resolution late last week that expresses their support for Israel “to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.”
The lead sponsor of the resolution was Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, one of four congressmen to announce the formation of the 44-member Tea Party caucus at a press conference on July 21. The other three Tea Party Caucus leaders, Michele Bachmann, R-MN, Steve King, R-IA, and John Culberson, R-TX, are also sponsors of the resolution. In total, 21 Tea Party Caucus members have signed on….
Last week, a Tea Party-affiliated grassroots organization launched a nationwide campaign to build popular opposition to the administration’s nuclear reductions treaty with Russia, called New START. The group is led by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginny and it dovetails with similar efforts by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney….
The notion that teatards are anything other than the right wing of the Republican party is simply wrong. Also too, the notion that libertarians are anything other than Republicans who smoke dope like pink Himalayan salt. I’m not saying that there was no libertarian opposition to the Iraq War (e.g. Jesse Walker), but the reaction was generally a mix of WOLVERINES and “meh, it’s not as bad as outlawing guns in churches”.
toujoursdan
Ok. I’ll say it. If we went to war with Iran and didn’t drop nukes, they’d kick our sorry arses. Iran has 8 times the population of Iraq, more rugged terrain, more spread out population and religious fundamentalism to rile up the population.
That would be the end of the American experiment, IMHO.
me
I favor sending the Tea Party Caucus to personally attack Iran by themselves.
NickM
@toujoursdan: I agree that it would be extremely foolish to start a war with Iran, but it does not have 8 times the population of Iraq – more like a little more than double (70 million vs. 30 million).
Bobby Thomson
It comes down to the failure to distinguish between Ron Paul (who at least ostensibly is isolationist) and his followers, many of whom have no problem with blowing shit up and killing brown people.
It would make sense that at least some of the Pauline Republicans would be trying to take over the Teabagger movement. But I haven’t seen any hard evidence that this is in fact the case.
And of course, Pauline Republicans are still Republicans.
ETA: And now, having read the linked article, I see Steve M. says many of the same things in the concluding paragraph.
licensed to kill time
@me:
Then they could put all those tri-cornered hats, ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags and blunderbusses of their troops to good use.
KG
I’ll admit to be a libertarian who got swept up in the Iraq War bullshit. I thought, at the time, that there was enough evidence to show that Iraq was in violation of international law and that the use of force was justified. I also had taken the position early on that it would take a generation and a very large occupation force to secure the peace. And I soured on it when it became clear that the Bush Administration was not serious about the nation building aspect of the endeavor.
I have a bit of a Wilsonian streak when it comes to foreign policy and honestly believe that the spread of liberalism (in the broad sense of the word), capitalism, and democracy (in that order) is in the long term interests of the US. But imposing those things on other peoples is nearly impossible. And that is what the Bush Administration did rather than trying to create a situation where those things could actually take hold.
I do, in retrospect, regret my support and think war with Iran would be so incredibly stupid that opposition is the only rational position to take.
Tom Hilton
I did. I was fairly certain that poor idiot Jane was, as usual, completely full of shit. And I was right.
beltane
A libertarian is nothing more than a non-church going wingnut. Those on the left who put them on a pedestal are doing nothing more than revealing their own sense of impotence. Sorry to break it to Jane but the crazy men with the guns are really not on our side.
Zifnab
Oh crap. He’s mine.
jl
This will all be done on the cheap, of course, and the troops who actually put themselves at risk will be stiffed in countless overt and covert ways, so we can keep taxes low, and reduce the debt. Right? It will be a quick and easy win, consistent with small government and very low taxes.
It will be just like any other military action ever contemplated, over before you know it, victorious, and neat. Because, America and Freedom!
beltane
@me: Oh yes, that is the best idea I’ve heard of in a long time. My only condition would be that someone follow the teabagger army around with a good camera so that we can all witness their fate.
joe from Lowell
Jane Hamsher also managed to convince herself that the Tea Party – that is, the astroturf group founded by Dick Armey – was “anti-corporate.”
Mike in NC
Only if we can have Field Marshal Krauthammer leading the charge and waving his sabre.
joe from Lowell
There were some real anti-Iraq War libertarians out there. Justin Raimondo, for instance, founded antiwar.com.
This was mainly the position of the paleo-libertarians, many of whom are neo-confederates, and presumably, quite gung-ho about the anti-Obama Tea Party.
Zandar
Living here in Rand Paul country, I knew Hamsher’s analysis was complete and utter hogwash from the second I saw it, and I said as much.
Teabaggers are just Republicans with four Go-Fast Racing Stripes on their Hatemobiles as opposed to just three.
Tom65
Wrong on both counts, Jane.
Zifnab
@toujoursdan:
Only if the American Experiment involves carpet-bombing Middle Eastern nations. What’s more, even in WW2 we proved that you don’t need a nuclear weapon to win a war of attrition. A number of bombing runs against Japan involved carpet firebombs. There’s not a whole lot of difference between dropping one 1000 ton bomb and a thousand 1 ton bombs, except maybe gas efficiency.
All that said, I imagine invading Iran would go just as quickly and painlessly as invading Iraq. Even as we marched into the country, Iraq had the largest army in the Middle East and some of the most (comparatively) advanced hardware. We rolled right over them.
I don’t really think we would ever invade Iran, though. I think we’d just stand on the border and drop ammo on the nation until we went broke. It would be long range genocide. It would cost a fucking fortune. It would serve absolutely no strategic purpose. The wingers would love it.
Back at home, we’d probably end up defaulting on the Social Security Trust to throw more money into the war. We’d tank the economy paying for guns and ammo. And that’s what would end the American Experiment.
sven
If you needed another reason to hate credit-card companies, here it is:
modeledbehavior.com/2010/07/27/are-credit-cards-regressive/
(h/t Kevin Drum)
Master Card and Visa make money by charging businesses 1-2% for any transaction. Businesses like the convenience of credit cards and worry about alienating credit card users (who tend to be wealthier) so instead of charging the fee up front, they just raise their prices across the board to offset the expense. The net effect is that people who pay in cash pay higher prices for a service they don’t use and people who use credit cards don’t pay all of the cost for the service they do use.
Now here is where things get ugly…
The Boston Fed tried to quantify these effects, their conclusion:
Svensker
@Zifnab:
Zif, are you smoking crack? Not that I disagree with the rest of your post but Iran would be much tougher than Iraq.
El Cid
@KG:
It would have been even more in ‘our’ interests — presuming the interests of we citizens count — to have encouraged the independence of 3rd world nations, along with popular soshullist movements, because then we’d have had much stronger and healthier allies than generations of miserable tyranny and suffering.
Dave
If we actually invaded Iran, unless we went in with 1,000,000 combat troops and 24/7 aerial attacks we would get hammered. The terrain in Iraq favored the armored assault we used. Now look at Iran; the entire western third of the country is mountainous except for a small chunk on the south-eastern Iraq/Iran border…which is bordered by mountains. There is no land path that leads to Tehran that doesn’t pass through a mountain range.
There is no way we could bring enough force to neutralize Iran’s local manpower advantage AND keep supply lines open. And all bombing will do is piss them off. But when did facts ever stop a Republican?
me
@Mike in NC: Into the valley of death rode the, oh, few dozen.
Seitz
I think this give Libertarians too much credit. With a few exceptions, Libertarians are simply Republicans who use to be too cool to admit they were Republicans. Now they’re Republicans who are too embarrassed to admit they’re Republicans.
toujoursdan
My mistake on the population. But no way in hell do I think the invasion of Iran would be as easy as Iraq.
I think our failure there would bring down whatever government we had (or turn it into something authoritarian to stay in power.)
ETA: What Dave said.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@sven:
It sounds like a MC commercial:
Designer jeans: $75
Cinnamon Dolce Crème Frappuccino: $8
Health club membership: $360
Fucking over the poorest members of our society without even thinking about it: priceless
Keith G
@Zifnab:
And mine. Pitiful.
Aidan
DougJ, it might help you in the future to remember that Jane Hamsher is always completely wrong about every possible thing. Always.
Zam
@Seitz: I agree with this, almost all the libertarians I’ve had contact with basically drop the most unpopular aspect of republicans. They only do this after the policy’s has tank in public opinion, then claim to be enlightened conservatives. They claim this despite having defended policies such as the invasion of Iraq with all the energy they could muster. I have yet to meet a self proclaimed libertarian who is alright with all of the issues libertarians claim differentiates them from republicans (i.e gay rights, separation of church and state, and non-intervention).
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
You’re forgetting that the Iraqi army had pretty much zero reason to support Saddam Hussein, so they folded quickly. Iranians have been battling Americans since 1980 (in their propaganda, anyway) so they’re primed for a fight.
Trust me, the Iranian army would not fold the way the Iraqis did. Not by a long shot.
ETA: Also, too, don’t forget who won the Iran/Iraq War by successfully repelling the foreign invaders:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_iraq_war
eemom
The concept that anyone, anywhere, at anytime — even friggin Hamsher — ever seriously attributed ideological coherence of any kind to the Tea Party, is to me most wondrous to behold.
maus
@me:
Bay of Chauvinist Pigs.
Zam
@Dave: Some of the same people who think that we could invade and pacify Iran (or Iraq for that matter) also think that the U.S actually faces the threat of being invaded and occupied by foreign enemies. The sheer size of the U.S makes it impossible for any nation to hold on to a large chunk of our territory. China might have a lot of people but they could never be protected as a country and field an army big enough to occupy us. The people who think various middle eastern countries will attempt to turn us to Sharia law are even more delusional.
Chuck Butcher
The first mistake is anyone taking Libertarianism seriously, either as an ideology or as politics. Once you get past Fuck You I Got Mine, there’s nothing coherent left of it. Those putative stances the “left” approves of are held by a handful who get MSM attention reflecting nothing of the so-called movement’s general views.
Cripes, the word libertarianism has become some kind of catch-all for opposing meaningless governmental interference in private life, which it ain’t. Hell, preaching to the choir here…
Sharl
Check out this post, and the accompanying comments, to see the serious factionalism with the leadership of the Libertarian Party. (I’ll grant here that a lot of self-described “small ‘l’ libertarians” don’t get involved with the formal LP.)
From those comments alone, it looks like the LP activists are every bit as strife-ridden as the Tea Party movement. (As an example of the latter, see this account from the Code Pink folks, who did some solid-looking journalism.)
From these two snapshots, the LP and the TP seem to be cut from the same cloth.
Zifnab
@Svensker: We’ve got a military budget greater than the entire rest of the world combined. If we want to put boots on the ground in Tehran next week, we can do it. If we want to level Iran’s ten biggest cities inside a month, we can do it (without nukes even!).
We’ve got better hardware, better trained soldiers, more money… we’d win no problem. It would be ultimately Pyrrhic because we could never actually hold anything. But if we wanted to play the 21st Century Roman Legion hear to sack an Empire, we could salt their fields better than anybody.
Dave
@Zam:
Don’t get me started on THAT tomfoolery. Never mind the physical impossibility of occupying the United States… how are they getting here?? China couldn’t transport enough soldiers over the Pacific to occupy California, let alone the US. So how is al-Qaeda setting up a Caliphate in Washington??
Teh Stoopid, it burns…
BTD
True – there is no Tea Party independent of Republicanism.
Jane Hamsher confused Ron Paul supporters with Tea Partiers. Not the same thing.
Brachiator
@Svensker:
Did somebody start a Fantasy War League? I suppose that somebody in the Army War College and Sarah Palin’s Facebook page is responsible for coming up with Iran invasion scenarios, but apart from that it’s nuts to guess how tough or how easy it would be. Might as well talk about something more sensible, like how many championships the Miami Heat are gonna win now that they have LeBron James.
Crashman
@Dave: They’re gonna come streaming in through the unguarded Mexican border disguised as day laborers… Like, duh.
maus
@BTD: Willfully, of course. She’s not stupid, she’s trying to gain fame by conflating the conservative grassroots with astroturf and giving her “movement” a greater status within the conservative-dominated media.
They’ll give tons of free press to anyone who will suck up to the teabaggers. “EVEN KNOWN LIBERAL JANE HAMSHER SAYS WE ARE A LEGITIMATE MOVEMENT”
Zam
@Crashman: Shit I totally forgot about the millions of Mexicans pouring over our borders daily and conquering our ranches.
Dave
@Zifnab:
I would agree with your second statement. If the US wanted to raze the largest Iranian cities through non-stop air strikes, we could likely do it. We’d take some punishment early on wiping out their air defenses, but we could do it. Of course, as you point out, that is an empty victory.
But I have to disagree with your insistence that we could occupy Tehran with little effort. The topography and location of Iran make that a difficult task. The mountain ranges limit the effectiveness of our armor and allow for numerous ambushes. The two ports that we could most likely occupy (Bandar-e-Bushehr and Bandar-e-Abbas) lead immediately into mountainous terrain. Both roads from there lead to Esfahan through the Zagros Mountains, which are massive. And Esfahan sits more than 300 kilometers from Tehran…which sits in the foothills of the Elburz Mountains. The entire physical geography of Iran plays to the defender’s advantage.
Also consider the massive supply lines we’d have to maintain through hostile territory and the lack of NATO support. We simply do not have the manpower to fight a war like that.
Sloegin
Pffht.
Yeah we did a real number on North Vietnam didn’t we. Better hardware, better trained soldiers, more money… one country’s soldiers aren’t necessarily like anothers are they?
Would Iranian soldiers roll over and play dead like the Iraqis, or would they fight like hell?
I suspect not only would we get stuck in Iran, but it’d be cake for them to cut off our seaborne supply lines in southern Iraq. Them’s all Shia down there if you bother to check your Iraqi demographics.
Comrade Dread
That’s a rather ridiculous statement. Libertarians vary pretty significantly from person to person.
You’ve got the liberaltarians, the civil libertarians, the paleo-cons (Paulbots), the party supporters who are just one shade to the left of the Republicans, the minarchists, and then the truly batshit lunacy of the Anarcho-capitalists and the Randians. Plus probably a dozen or two more shades that I’m forgetting.
An old joke in libertarian circles used to be that if you got three or more of them trapped in an elevator at the start of a three day holiday, the maintenance staff would find three dead libertarians on Monday morning each having written open letters to the other two about why their plan to get out of the elevator was wrong and how much of a moron they are and each starting their own party to try and get out.
Dick Hertz
The point was to try to divert people who were joining a popular movement because they were pissed into something that would enhance the power of the FDL folks, not necessarily I think to turn the libertarians to the light side of the Force. There’s a fundamental Christian theme to FDL of redemption, and a bit of confessionalism in the comments. Similar themes in the libertarian world about trusting neither side, the old “In Montana the men are men, the women are men and the sheep don’t know who to trust” sense. Not so much the Clint Eastwood “Now I’m working for the Rojos” kind of thing (as stolen by the Italians from Kurosawa and subsequently ruined by Bruce Willis and others).
Mnemosyne
@Sloegin:
They would fight like hell. It would not be pretty. Why do you think every single proposed war on Iran begins with “so first we bomb them …” ?
Not to mention that Iran has been preparing for this possibility since 2003. It would be the least surprising surprise attack in the history of warfare and I seriously doubt we would catch them unready to fight back.
maus
@Comrade Dread:
These are the great mass of the self-ascribed Libertarians/”independents” after Fox started pretending that it wasn’t cool to be “Republican” anymore and all Republicans fell into line. You and beltane are both right in that regard.
I mean, there weren’t THAT many to begin with. It wasn’t hard for every single ashamed Republican post-Bush to outnumber them.
El Cid
@Dave:
We’ll never see all those kayaks coming ’til it’s too late.
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
We really can’t. We’re short on personnel (hence the whole “stop loss” and “reserve” charade where we’re using National Guardsmen as ground troops) and we’re short on materiel. We could put maybe 20K boots on the ground, but that would do jack shit against Iran’s 545K active troops and 350K reserves.
If we didn’t have any troops tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea, we might be able to get a couple hundred K boots on the ground, but there’s also the problem of clothing them, transporting them, and feeding them. We could do a draft, but anyone who thinks Obama would authorize a large enough draft to invade Iran for any action of theirs short of them doing an actual nuclear strike on NYC is higher than a fucking kite.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Also, too, if you think a foreign power would have no trouble at all occupying Chicago, that may be why you think we could easily occupy Tehran, a city that has twice the population of Baghdad and at least 3 million more inhabitants than Chicago.
DonkeyKong
Doug, can we change the title on these posts. Instead of “Burkean Bells” how about “Burkean Glory Hole”
As in, “David Brooks had his angry frozen peanut in the Burkean Glory Hole for this latest column.”
Andy K
Is Ron Paul even a libertarian?
I’ve confronted his fanboys at other sites and shown them H.R. 300, Paul’s piece of legislation from the 110th Congress, which looks to me like an encroachment on the rights of individuals, albeit an encroachment by governments from the state level on down. Not very libertarian, imo.
Tom Hilton
For the glibertarians, it’s a choice between torturing illegal detainees and living under shariah. Posed that way, of course the pro-individual-rights position is to choose torture.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
So the take I’m getting from this is that a Tea-libertarian is somebody who wants to shrink other people’s governments by dropping bombs on them which are the size of bathtubs.
Andy K
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
And shrinking their own federal government by shrieking shrilly, to the point where there are no federal mechanisms left to protect the rights of minorities of any stripe from their state or local governments.
Uloborus
@Mnemosyne: @Zifnab:
I think @Brachiator: has a point. We can armchair general over whether or not the initial ground war is winnable and how we’d do. It’s kind of fun. But we all agree that A) the Iranian army would fight where the Iraqi army rolled over, B) the insurgency there would be an absolute nightmare…
And C) and most importantly, it would be The Stupidest Fucking Thing We Could Possibly Do no matter how the details turned out.
ed drone
The point isn’t an invasion of Iran — it’s a ‘surgical strike’ on their (supposed) nuclear weaponry centers. By Israel!
If you thought the backlash by the Sunnis in Iraq was bad, just think when all of Shia joins their brother Sunnis in attacking any and all US forces within reach. Even those who were ‘neutral’ would come pouring out of their cities and the country-side, with women and children suicide attackers and essentially mobs overrunning our bases.
It would isolate every American (and other westerners as well) and turn what hasn’t yet been a crusade into a real crusade, with the ‘infidel’ West as the target. We would automatically become the REAL ‘Great Satan,’ not just to the already-crazed, but to the moderate and even non-religious.
And it wouldn’t help Israel one freaking bit, either — Intifada? Hah! You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
If you thought Iraq was a mistake, wait till they go after Iran!
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Ed
wheaton pat
They are not deficit hawks and they are not repubs. They are just old people that are scared out of their minds and are hiding their fear in patriotic talk. They are afraid of being bankrupt by health costs. The tea partiers don’t want to give up any of their benefits, but are willing to give up everyone else’s benefits. Now I find it crazier that the tea parties thru Dick Armey support free and open international markets.
The more jingoistic they can be the more they can try to convince themselves that they are not tea party members because they are physically old weak and vulnerable.
Mark S.
@Andy K:
That idea is pretty common around libertarian “thinkers.” The 10th Amendment is probably their favorite after the 2nd.
As for whether Paul is much of a libertarian, he does make sure that pork flows to his district. He’s also extremely anti-abortion, but a lot of libertarians don’t have too big of a problem with that because they are 98% white guys.
maus
@Andy K: By their all-inclusive fanboy definition, yes. Even if he refuses to call himself that.
STATES RAHTS, if you don’t like that, just get your abortion done in another state (and get arrested for murder when you get back to your state.)
Cain
@Zifnab:
If they encouraged Israel to do it I don’t see how they would do it without dropping nukes. You start doing that and you’ve changed the game completely. The blow back both political and environmental would set everybody in that part of the world against them. I don’t think India, China and the Soviet Union would appreciate having nukes set off in their backyards.
If it was a land war, the whole place would be one big honeypot get them all to wage war in their home turf and they can bleed them forever.
These people don’t think. I don’t know what the hell they are trying to do with manipulating the rubes like this. It will only destroy us. We are accelerating our own destruction.
cain
Cain
Aren’t we also looking to go after the brown people in our country (not sure if I’m included in “brown” but whatever) so we’ll be going after muslims and mexicans in our own country and then go on the rampage on the mexican border. War is just an excuse to cause fear, and to make people behave because that’s when we have force nationality down everybodys throat.. like they did when W was doing Iraq they tried to stop everyone from talking cuz of patriotism. (funny they don’t have the same respect for the president now that W is out) Imagine what conservatives would have said if a dem caucus without and asked some foreign country to declare war on someone.
cain
Mnemosyne
@Uloborus:
My point is that I’m not really getting where this fear is coming from that Obama is going to attack Iran. I’m really not. I know the right wing is howling for it and former Bush officials are pontificating about the “necessity” of it, but anyone who thinks that Barack Obama is going to authorize American airstrikes on Iran for anything short of an actual, overt attack on the US by Iran is higher than a fucking kite.
I won’t speak to what Israel might do because they’re run by a bunch of fucking paranoid lunatics right now, but the US is not going to attack Iran. Nah. Guh. Happen.
Brachiator
@ed drone:
Here, we’re getting somewhere in terms of something worth commenting on. The tea baggers are essentially saying that their official position is, and that of the US government should be to support Israeli government hardliners without considering the ramifications of an Israeli attack on Iran.
Has anyone asked them what support the US should provide if this came to pass?
Is the official tea bagger position that should Israel choose to attack Iran, the US should be willing to commit its own troops to support the effort?
Uloborus
@Mnemosyne:
…there are people who honestly think Obama would attack Iran? Who believes that? Does someone believe that? Can we get them medical assistance for their traumatic head injury?
VidaLoca
The Isreali hardliners are chomping at the bit to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities like they did the Iraqui facilities at Osirak in 1981. They need the US at their back, though, and Obama has emphatically refused to do endorse their plan. So the same playbook that was used in the early stages of the Iraq adventure in 2003 is being trotted out again, with the intent of forcing Obama to cave while at the same time suggesting to the Isreali hawks that public support exists in the US for air strikes.
By enlisting as accompices in this effort the Teabag front for the Republican party is trying to write its own foreign policy as it undercuts the official policy of the government. That’s borderline treasonous; it’s also completely insane. As soon as the Isrealis bomb Natanz the Iranians can cut off the supply lines to Baghdad (as noted above); they can also cut the oil supply lines through the Straits of Hormuz and attack US civilian and military shipping there. Once that happens the US is in the war, whether Obama wants it or not.
NobodySpecial
Iran’s army would fold like Iraq’s? Someone’s smoking WAY too much crack.
Start with the premise that Iran’s army hasn’t been under punishing sanctions for 15 years like Iraq’s was. Then add in the fact that in the LAST war they fought, they didn’t have enough guns for all the troops, so they famously armed some of them with KEYS.
Keys, you say? Why keys? Well, to remind them that dying in battle would open the gates of Paradise. And the fuckers went in without arms, clearing out minefields and shit.
Now imagine an army with that level of morale which outnumbers yours on the ground 10 to 1 that’s defending their homeland against an attack. Bloodbath wouldn’t BEGIN to describe it. And they’re not just armed with keys anymore, and what they’ve got for armor isn’t the laughable ‘light gun on a 4×4’ that we counted as armor in Saddam’s ‘army’.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Aidan:
> remember that Jane Hamsher is always completely
> wrong about every possible thing. Always.
She said you weren’t a distended sphincter.
But I disagree, and find your non-factual statement amusing — in that typical balloonbagger kind of way — in light of this forum, where the proprietor’s main claim to fame was being so wrong about Iraq. He recovered; perhaps you and Jane can too.
Mnemosyne
@Uloborus:
Some of ’em were shrieking their heads off about it yesterday, but I didn’t recognize most of the names. (Well, except for Corner Stone, but he likes to shriek his damn fool head off about anything that comes to his attention.)
I’m still not quite sure if it was because the military/industrial complex can somehow hypnotize Obama into it or because Obama is a warmongering warmonger who loves war, as demonstrated by his failure to bug out of Iraq and Afghanistan toot sweet, so therefore he must be champing at the bit for the Middle East Disaster Trifecta, but they all seemed pretty convinced that Obama was going to call airstrikes on Iran within short order.
Honus
@Zifnab: where you gonna get those 400-500 thousand boots Shinseki correctly said it would take in Iraq, to invade a country twice as large? You sound like Don Rumsfeld, talking about how easy it would be to invade Iran. Fire bombing Iran’s major cities in a genocidal attack might also give even our UK allies pause.
I also find it interesting that everybody here is talking about the US invading Iran, when the resolution was an endorsement of Israel attacking Iran. I guess there’s just no practical difference in people’s minds now.
S. cerevisiae
Iran has very nasty supersonic anti-ship missiles that could take out a carrier or cut off the oil from the gulf. Hello $200 oil and a global depression.
Uloborus
@Mnemosyne:
…well, I’m with you. I find it baffling that anyone could believe Obama would.
I will try to be fair and say that after the Bush years it’s hard to get used to absurd paranoid fantasies being absurd paranoid fantasies and not SOP.
Mnemosyne
@Uloborus:
I’m more worried about a General Ripper scenario than that the current administration would actually, upon full reflection, decide to do something as insane as trying to invade Iran when we’re already ass-deep in alligators with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lisa
Teabaggers are just Republicans with four Go-Fast Racing Stripes on their Hatemobiles as opposed to just three.
Best. Description. Ever.
KXB
My own thinking is that the Tea Party is just the re-incarnation of the Christian Coalition. The Christian Coalition was discredited through its ties to Jack Abramoff, and the fact that it could not mobilize any votes outside the South.
By contrast, the superficial appeal of the Tea Party is that religion is pushed into the background (but it is still there). Instead, they focus on government spending, which can appeal to a struggling small business owner in California or a overtaxed homeowner in New York.
Then again, such illusions are shattered when you see a guy holding a poster of Obama with a bone in his nose, and the substantial number of birthers.