The Administration’s plan to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group should not surprise anyone. The move appears to be part of an effort to ratchet up pressure on the Iranian regime in order to force it to accede to western demands that it stop trying to build a nuclear bomb as well as halt its meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.
I don’t think there is much doubt that this Administration has decided that if they can’t get satisfaction on Iraq and the nukes, then there will be some kind of military action taken against the Iranian regime. It appears that there has been a concerted effort over the last couple of months to point the finger at Iranian interference in Iraq. It has all the earmarks of a public relations campaign to sell the idea that the Iranians are killing Americans by supporting some Shia militias with arms and explosive devices.
If this were true, it might be reason enough to support a strike – at the very least against bases used by the Qods Force, the elite group of IRGC operatives who operate extra-territorially. In addition to their bases, I’m sure we’ve identified some other targets involving their economic interests that could be hit.
But nagging at the back of my mind is the question, “Are the Iranians that stupid?” Greg Djerjian:
So let us not, as proud Americans who care about the future of our country (or other concerned individuals besides), let us dare not allow again a growing drum-beat of vague allegations to gather momentum, with the attendant formation of a new consensus among group-thinking Beltway agitators whose strategic lens have proven disastrously faulty, but nonetheless still have the President’s ear (mostly via Cheney), so that launching of attacks on Iran gains traction as a plausible policy option. And even if you were to be tempted by some of these gung-ho chest-beaters on the Potomac, do you genuinely believe this grossly incompetent national security team would be able to handle the potential fall-out of such an operation…[snip]
The real danger we face as this criminally incompetent Administration winds through its final days is compounding the Iraq imbroglio by a catastrophic intervention in Iran. Any American concerned about this possibility needs to remind their representatives of the possible ramifications thereto and suggest to the Democratic Presidential candidates (on the Republican side, all but Ron Paul and Chuck Hagel on the side-lines have evinced a smidgen of sanity on foreign policy matters of late) that they cease their petty internecine skirmishing (at least occasionally, if possible) and focus on the danger of the Iraq conflict spreading to Iran (it is quite clear Shi’a-U.S. relations are set to deteriorate significantly in Iraq in the coming months, adding more fuel to the fire, and margin for error leading to a wider conflagration). Meantime, all of us must demand unimpeachable evidence about Iranian activity in Iraq rather than relatively thin gruel, to include summoning journalists to, if they are capable of it at least, digging into this story as genuine truth-seekers who skeptically monitor MNF claims rather than report them as undisputed fact. We’re tired of lackadaisical hoodwinking, aren’t we?
Djerjian (who is becoming unreadable as the above paragraph shows) nevertheless offers up a little sanity to inject in what appears to me to be nothing less than a march to war with Iran. For make no mistake, we won’t be able to stop by simply punishing the Rev Guards or the Qods Force for their meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once the die is cast, it will be tit for tat, response and counter response. We bomb them. They fire at our ships or close the straits of Hormuz. We bomb their refineries. They unleash the Mahdi in Iraq.
Before you know it, the only way to stop it is to either not respond to a serious provocation or invade and overthrow the regime. Classic escalation scenario that perhaps the Administration is fully aware of and is seeking to implement.
I’ve discussed many times my opposition to either bombing Iran or invasion. Especially since the real problem is not with what Iran is doing in Iraq but what they are doing at Nantanz – working like hell to perfect the large scale nuclear enrichment program that will allow them to build the bomb. The only bright spot in this entire mess is that we still have some time to pressure the Iranians to accept stringent international safeguards on their nuclear program – perhaps even convince them to forgo it altogether although that seems unlikely at this point. Sanctions have been in place only a few months. And despite China and Russia’s foot dragging, patient and insistent diplomacy can almost certainly win them over to the idea that it would be better if Iran did not achieve the capability to construct nuclear weapons and that therefore, even tougher sanctions are necessary.
Even the paltry, fig leaf sanctions that we’ve imposed so far have had a big effect on the Iranian economy (due to concerns that stricter sanctions are on the way) and caused President Ahmadinejad’s popularity numbers to plummet to levels even below Bush territory. The people are chafing under the recent crackdown on western dress and manners by Ahmadinejad and actually rioted when gas rationing was announced.
The corruption of the regime’s leaders, who have their fingers in every economic pie in the country not to mention the incredible graft and kickbacks that are killing domestic oil production, is building a towering resentment in the middle class. And the economic minister just announced that 13% of the Iranian people live below the poverty line – surely understating the number by a factor of 4 according to some experts what with massive unemployment approaching 25% of all working age Iranians.
There is constant violence in the hinterlands where the non-Persian minorities are agitating for more autonomy or outright separation for the regime. And on top of all this, Iran is spending an enormous amount of money to keep their proxies in Lebanon (Hizbullah) and the West Bank (Hamas) armed and dangerous to western interests and Israel. This support is draining the treasury and causing even more resentment among the Iranian people who feel that money would be better spent at home.
All of these problems disappear with the first bomb dropped on Iran by the United States.
At this point, there is so little upside and such a huge downside to taking military action against Iran that for the life of me, I can’t understand why we are even discussing it. To my mind, it borders on madness. We are heavily engaged in Iraq and losing – more slowly than before but we are still losing. We and NATO are heavily engaged in Afghanistan and are losing there as well.
Does the Administration want to try for 3 straight? A perfect record of incompetence and futility? It simply boggles my mind the way many on the right are so cavalier about attacking Iran and getting ourselves embroiled in yet another conflict. As I said, it won’t stop with a bombing campaign. We will eventually be forced to go in and effect regime change.
I would hope that there are enough sane people left in Washington to prevent this catastrophe in the making. The Gordian Knot of war is beginning to tighten. And no one in the Administration seems willing or able to stop it.
1:16 pm
U.S. to move on Iran?s Revolutionary Guard…
The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-s…
1:58 pm
How does labeling their Revolutionary Guards qualify as a prelude to military action? As you say, this is ratcheting up the economic pressure on the regime, maximizing the discontent of the Iranian people with their leaders. This seems like the best way to achieve regime change in Iran without military action, because we will need regime change to stop their nuclear program. Russia and China don’t care about the Iranian nuclear program, as evidence by their past actions. They only signed onto this weak sanctions package in order to suck up to the West a little. Does anyone believe that Russia and China feel threatened by a regime that they do a brisk business with?
I also don’t see why we should fear Iranian threats of terrorism. What are they going to do that they aren’t already doing? Arm Hezbollah and encourage them to attack the Israelis? Arm and train terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan? Unleash the Shia militias that we are already hunting? It doesn’t make much sense to fear that an enemy will do more of what he is already doing in order to hurt us.
I’m sorry, but I think this is exactly the type of action we should be taking, and not only against the Iranians, but the Syrians too. We have a tremendous advantage over our enemies and their allies (Russia, China) in the worlds’ largest economy, and we should be using it as a weapon against them. This is the kind of asymmetrical warfare we excel at, crushing the competition economically.
Frankly, we’re probably taking a larger risk by setting a precedent in labeling a branch of a nation’s military a terrorist organization, but that’s a different argument.
2:09 pm
It’s not just the right wing that’s pushing this (although they may be the loudest). When you have liberal publications like the NYT saying that Iran must not be allowed to get the Bomb, the die is cast.
We either accept them as a member of the nuclear club or take action, because they’re not backing down.
2:21 pm
[...] Rick Moran doesn’t find it surprising and believes it’s yet another step towards the Bush Administration’s intended goal of military action against Iran: I don’t think there is much doubt that this Administration has decided that if they can’t get satisfaction on Iraq and the nukes, then there will be some kind of military action taken against the Iranian regime. It appears that there has been a concerted effort over the last couple of months to point the finger at Iranian interference in Iraq. It has all the earmarks of a public relations campaign to sell the idea that the Iranians are killing Americans by supporting some Shia militias with arms and explosive devices. [...]
3:06 pm
[...] Others covering this include Right Truth, Gateway Pundit, Right Wing Nut House (even though I don’t agree with their analysis, it is well written), Captain’s Quarters, and Hot Air. [...]
3:51 pm
Rick Moran said: The Gordian Knot of war is beginning to tighten. And no one in the Administration seems willing or able to stop it.
speaking of readability, i don’t get WHY you use the Gordian Knot metaphor but, as you have, i suggest “seems willing or able to cut it” in place of your language.
the Administration does NOT want to “stop it”. instead it wants to build a case for war. and this designation of the IRGC as terrorist is another lame attempt to do so.
i’ve seen the prequel to this movie and i didn’t like the “ending” at all.
4:05 pm
Why are we even discussing it?
Because they want to overthrow the Iranian regeime. Its that simple.
Sure the consequesces will be Biblical in their horrors, but so what? When have these maniacs demonstrated a concern for the consequences of their actions.
They get to say they took out the regeime, and they get to blame the next Prez for the Holocaust to follow (because, if W and Cheney were still in charge, all the bad results would never have happened. Prove them wrong).
6:01 pm
maybe some of the cowardly asshats who visit this site and recite their history lessons like they’re middle east experts would actually fight it might make a difference.
Not me.
Nope. Ricky Dickey Moran makes his stand behind a laptop. And please excuse me that I can’t spell “Dicky” right. That’s because I’m not really Rick Moran. I am a sick, psychotic internet troll who comments using Rick’s name.
And the reason your comments don’t appear right away because I’ve been known to have one of my “episodes” and spout obscenities like someone suffering from Tourettes. So Rick has to have comments moderated lest I pollute his site with my insane drivel.
5:33 am
[...] Moran, writing at Rightwing Nuthouse in a post titled “Tightening The Gordian Knot of War,” says that the administration’s plan to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization should come as no surprise: “Does the Administration want to try for 3 straight? A perfect record of incompetence and futility? It simply boggles my mind the way many on the right are so cavalier about attacking Iran and getting ourselves embroiled in yet another conflict. As I said, it won’t stop with a bombing campaign. We will eventually be forced to go in and effect regime change. [...]
6:12 am
I agree with you entirely, which should probably concern you
Of course, the diplomatic tack is fruitless in the current configuration as well, primarily because it is set up to fail. It is obvious to all that accomodating and coming to terms with the Iranian regieme is simply not an option for the US. The Iranians can object until they are blue in the face that they are not developing nuclear weapons, they can protest until the cows come home that they need the electricity in order to provide power to their people in a world where oil is rapidly becoming too expensive to use at home. It makes no difference. They are developing nukes, and they are basically at war with the US already, in the eyes of the US administration.
Possibly the alternative route to take would be to be more friendly with them rather than more opposed. Without the useful “Great Satan” whacking post the Iranian leadership would be even more distanced from their population. Hell, you want to monitor their nuclear facilities? Maybe you should help build them. You want to stop them interfering in Iraq? Maybe co-operate with them. Whack them with the best message that you have “If your leaders are so great, how come you haven’t all got iPods and decent TV?”.
It isn’t going to fix the world but at least it might not smash it up.
Still, if things go the Cheney way, we’ll get some more great guncam shots at least.
8:05 am
Rick: so many points on which to take issue, where shall I start?
1 – How can you say that what Iran is doing in Iraq is not a ‘real’ problem? I sure consider it a real problem that they are helping (if not doing the work themselves) kill American soldiers? It may not be as big a problem as Iran’s pursuit of nukes, but it sure as heck is a real problem.
2 – Your claim (belief?) that we can convince China and Russia to go along with our efforts to keep Iran from getting nukes. Do you have any evidence that, despite our inability to get Russia and China to go along with anything we’ve wanted (look at the big help they were with Iraq), we can get them in on this? Or are you just grasping at straws in hope of avoiding making the tough call on how to proceed once we admit that China and Russia will not play nice.
3 – I presume from your comment that ‘sanctions have been in place for only a few months’ that you believe that sanctions will yield the desired end result, if only we give them more time. Again, are you basing this on anything more than wishful thinking? Sanctions did nothing to force Hussein (who was much more pragmatic than the Mad Mullahs) to comply with what we wanted, why should much weaker sanctions get us what we want with Iran?
4 – your implication that the Mad Mullahs are all but set on losing power when the masses rise up in protest. But why assume the Mad Mullahs are going to go quietly? They hold power through terror and force and you expect (hope?) that a few student protests and some shortages of gas or food are going to make the Mad Mullahs decide to pack it in for retirement in France? Dictators don’t give up power easily, especially when they are as fanatical as the Mad Mullahs. Sure, the good people of Iran could rise up, but so too could the sun rise in the west. And to the extent the good people of Iran would rise up, wouldn’t it be over domestic issues, as opposed to their great unhappiness with the Mad Mullahs’ foreign policy? Did I miss something or was there in fact no rioting over the Mad Mullahs support of the insurgency in Iraq?
5 – Although you don’t come out and say it straightaway, your belief that our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow prevent us from taking on Iran. If we were to list the three (Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan) in order of the threat to America, how can you (or anyone) not put keeping Iran from getting nukes at the top of the list? Given my druthers, I’d let the Taliban have Afghanistan and I’d let the Iraqis carve each other up in order to have the military resources to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Do you disagree?
6 – your statement that we’d have to go in and effect regime change. yes, if our goal was to have in place an Iranian government that was peaceful and not interested in nukes, then, yes, you need regime change. But if our (short term) goal is to keep the Iranians from having nukes, then bombing and tactical strikes would accomplish that goal quite nicely.
7 – implicit in your writing is the premise that Iran’s Mad Mullahs are rational people who can be made to go along with the much-vaunted ‘international community’. Yet at the same time, you portray them as not only willing to get into a shooting match with the US, but to persist to the point where invasion and regime change takes place. The two don’t seem to work together: if they’re rational, then they saber-rattle a bit, get spanked and then back off (see: Milosevic). but if they’re not rational, to the point of engaging in suicide, then why think they’d back off their pursuit of nukes because the likes of Russia and China ask them nicely to do so?
8:26 am
Master Mo says “…first clarify terms…â€
Stupid: Doing the same thing over and over and over and hoping for a different result.
While repetition has its uses in science (to verify results), repeating foreign policy blunders is useless –and threatens your survival as a nation.
“The only bright spot in this entire mess is that we still have some time to pressure the Iranians to accept stringent international safeguards on their nuclear program – perhaps even convince them to forgo it altogether although that seems unlikely at this point. Sanctions have been in place only a few months. And despite China and Russia’s foot dragging, patient and insistent diplomacy can almost certainly win them over to the idea that it would be better if Iran did not achieve the capability to construct nuclear weapons and that therefore, even tougher sanctions are necessary.â€
The fact that Rick Moran wrote this demonstrates conclusively that he is delusional.
What makes it stupid is the inclusion of: “…patient and insistent diplomacy can almost certainly win them over to the idea that it would be better if Iran did not achieve the capability to construct nuclear weapons and that therefore, even tougher sanctions are necessary.â€
I would argue that “patient and insistent†diplomacy with the Russians or the Chinese, or any other authoritarian government is “stupid.â€
Why? Because negotiating with tyrants doesn’t work—period.
Need some examples? North Korea: 55 years of diplomacy and now we’re at war with an “alleged†nuclear power. Zimbabwe, and any other 12 African countries you can name. Iraq: We negotiated with Saddam Hussein for 12 years while he consistently skirted UN Sanctions. There are many more examples of course, look them up yourself.
The North Korea example should stop any argument, in any context, for “more time for diplomacy and negotiation†dead in its tracks and scare reasonable people everywhere enough to demand decisive military action early when there is even the remote possibility of some whack-job like Amadinejad developing or obtaining nuclear weapons.
Think I’m stupid? The UN and the IAEA have been negotiating with the Iranians since at least 2002 to stop their nuclear development activities. How’s that worked out so far?
Rick needs to quit peeing down his leg and get angry enough to demand, or take, action.
8:58 am
There will be no attack by the US on Iran. Congress would never allow it and the American people would not be behind it. The Army can only maintain its troop level in Iraq for another year, at best. Based on most estimates the Army is nearing the breaking point. Without a significant increase in man power the Army cannot maintain the current level in Iraq. As it stands right now, the American people and Congress will not support an increase to the size of the Army.
A small troop contingent as some people wish to leave behind will be worse than useless. It would be to small to actually do anything and it would be under constant attack.
Given the current political and military realities, the US will begin completely withdrawing from Iraq within the next couple of months and the withdrawl will be complete by this time next year. In other words, by this time next year there will be no US or allied military personnel within Iraq.
What we are seeing now is likely the final attempt to contain Iran through the use of economic sanctions. This is unlikely to be successful.
As Rick points out the Iranian government seems to be very unpopular right now. Rick writes: “all of these problems disappear with the first bomb dropped on Iran by the United States.” This is what the Iranian government needs to stay in power. They need a war to rally their citizens. The bomb will not be dropped by the United States. It will be delivered by Iran to the United States.
Instead of thinking about an American attack on Iran that will not happen analyists need to be thinking about the coming attack on the United States by Iran or its terrorist proxies. The Iranian attack on the US may or may not involve Iranian military personnel. It could take the form of terrorist proxies operating on behalf of Iran. The analyists should be thinking about how they are going to thwart this attack and what will our response be.
Also, what about Pakistan? What about Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the resurgent Taliban, Russia, China, and a host of other threats? The enemy is far larger and far more dangerous than most pundits and military planners seem willing to face up to. If these threats are to be handled militarily, the country will have to be placed on a war footing and it will have to be handled in much the same way we handled WWII. Even then we the Western Europeans and other allies would have to go on a war footing as well. It is unlikely we could handle all of this ourselves.
The political will is lacking to place the country or the entire free world on a war foooting. As such, we must find some other way to defend the US. I suggest the following: 1.) withdraw all military forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, 2.)redeploy those troops the northern and southern borders, 3.)place a moratorium on immigration from muslim countries, 4.)develop all of our oil and natrual gas reserves and build more refineries. This should give us some leverage when negotiating with OPEC nations. These are policies we can implement. Military action against Iran or anyone else cannot be implemented right now.
9:59 am
@Steve Sturm:
#3)”Sanctions did nothing to force Hussein (who was much more pragmatic than the Mad Mullahs) to comply with what we wanted, why should much weaker sanctions get us what we want with Iran?”
Depends on what you thought the sanctions were supposed to do. If you were expecting Saddam to renounce his dictatorship and give all Iraqis a free Hersheys Bar, then no, they didn’t work. If they were to keep him from developing WMDs and/or nukes and/or re-invading his neighbors, then they worked perfectly.
5 – “Although you don’t come out and say it straightaway, your belief that our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow prevent us from taking on Iran. If we were to list the three (Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan) in order of the threat to America, how can you (or anyone) not put keeping Iran from getting nukes at the top of the list? ”
Kinda why us hippies were wondering why they hell we invaded Iraq. Afganistan made sense—Bin Laden was(is) there, and we want his head on a stick in Times Square. Saddam was a contained threat (we were still flying fighter jets in his airspace and bombing him at will).
You suggest abandoning Afganistan. Putting aside the moral consequnces of creating a giantic turd pile then leaving someone else to deal with the smell, what makes you think the small force we have in Afganistsan would be enough to invade Iran (and not get slaughtered?). We’d have to bail on Iraq as well to even come close to an effective force. You willing to walk away from there? Remeber, if you do, the terrorists win.
7) “. . . but if they’re [the Mad Mullahs] not rational, to the point of engaging in suicide, then why think they’d back off their pursuit of nukes because the likes of Russia and China ask them nicely to do so?”
Because the Mullahs aren’t the ones commiting suicide—their followers are. The MM are power hungry sociopaths, and they tend not to risk their own lives. Now if your argument is “once they provoke us to invade, we’ll line up the MMs and execute them.” Then you may have a point. I don’t think murdering relegious clerics will have the desired effect, but thats just my opinion.
1:57 pm
Opinion:
Unless something happens this year to force our hand, we will not attack Iran until 2008, as I have predicted for some time. The probable month is February, and the latest is March. I look for the rhetoric to heat up significantly next month, with “revelations” coming fast and furiously about the Iranian activities in and for Iraq, and the progress of their nuclear efforts.
By Feb 08 we will have replenished our precision and heavy bomb arsenal, built up our ammo supplies, furnished new vehicles to Iraq and Kuwait, moved troops from Baghdad and elsewhere to Kuwait and the border of Iran, and will have given sanctions a chance to work. The chance for Iranians to revolt will have either matured or not by Feb 08, and our diplomatic pressures will have succeeded or not to stop their nuclear weapons program. With no give on the part of Iran, we will see US action.
As I have said before, any air attack will be a comprehensive one to knock out the Iranian air defenses, command and control and communications facilities, aircraft and missile sites, and then the many sites associated with their nuclear program. Since many of these sites are embedded in their civilian built up areas, there will be substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties in the raids, despite our use of precision weapons. Of course, the Iranians will report massive civilian casualties, on the order of tens of thousands, and offer up pictures of many horrible events as proof.
It is the next scene that everyone worries about. Will the Iranians unite to meet the US threat? Or, will the revolutionaries seize the moment to strike for freedom? Will the Iranians move into Iraq to attack our forces? Will they try to close the Straits? Perhaps all of these possibilities and more. I suggest that these possible actions will have been gamed out in advance
and counter actions defined and prepared.
I do agree that at some point we will have to go into Iran to perform regime change.
Yes, it will be a threesome: perhaps the kingpin is Iran.
Are we living in interesting times yet?
2:07 pm
Ah, the blessed sinecure of ‘competence’! As we have shown zero competence in responding to anything that has been done to the US by Iran and its Foreign Legion, plus its agents, lets just give up to them, shall we?
We did nothing in reprisal to 1979 and couldn’t even stage a rescue with competence.
We did nothing after their Foreign Legion called Hezbollah led by Imad Mugniyah bombed our Beirut Embassy in 1983… well, we gave them a bunch of Marines to get blown up by those same folks, Mugniyah and Hezbollah, and then we ran in less than 6 months. Then, in 1984, they bombed our Embassy again. No competence there on our part, tons on that of Iran, Mugniyah and Co.
Then the Khobar Towers attack, well we were so blessedly incompetent after the OPM-SANG attack that we really did deserve to have US soldiers die. Yes, rank incompetence all the way around.
Let us not forget that Imad Mugniyah has actually run terror support operations in the US, with the NC to Detroit cigarette smuggling ring to help finance Hezbollah. In fact we have run across multiple funding operations using credit card fraud, gray/black market goods sales and the movement of pseudoephedrine to Mexico to have it made into Meth by, yes, Hezbollah’s operatives here in the US. So, since we can’t really figure out the extend of their operations for support and INTEL here, well, we must be damned incompetent, to say the least. Time to close up shop, the US is done for… not a speck of competence to be found.
Remember that letting competent terrorists and pirates attack us is far preferable to incompetent warfare waged by us. Until we are PERFECT at it, we should not do one damned thing, anywhere, ever. Because we are the height of incompetence.
Don’t mind the death toll that comes with our incompetence.
And, unless you have a much better way to competently and perfectly stop it, then you, too, are incompetent. America the Incompetent!
Unless, of course, you believe in the incompetence that our Founders did when they put forth that we must make a MORE PERFECT UNION. They recognized our inability to do things well, so we set high goal and fail to meet them, but do try to do them BETTER. We will never reach perfect competence, but we can strive to do things BETTER. And calling for Americans to be killed and not respond, which is what asking for things to be done competently is, is not making a more perfect union or providing for the common defence or getting us domestic tranquility and is damned sure not passing on the blessings of liberty to our posterity. Lessening it by quite some amount, in fact.
Remember that we always have the worst record for school children in the world. And we always get the most productive and capable citizens in the world, because we learn from our mistakes and do things ever better. America is built on mistakes, learning from them, then continuing on towards our goals in a better fashion.
The death toll of incompetence is bad enough.
The loss of liberty by stopping in our opposition to tyranny and despotism is fatal.
We did not start this conflict, did not ask for it and do not want it. But it has been handed to us. And we will damned well win it or die trying, because not doing so is on the road to losing liberty and freedom forever. That decision was made in 1776 and we must fight in large ways and small each and every day to maintain that revolution. And, strange to say, it is opposed, this revolution in human affairs, and is damned well still revolutionary to this day. And the incompetence of the Founders was manifest with 10% of America dead and nearly losing the Nation under the Articles to internal revolt. They failed and picked themselves up to try again. America is ALWAYS failing… it never stops… until it succeeds. The moment we stop failing, then we stop succeeding.
You want ‘competence’?
Offer a damned well better way forward to end this with sustaining our goals of freedom and liberty which are Universal. Because the moment we stop the revolution is over.
2:25 pm
busboy33 said:
“#3)’Sanctions did nothing to force Hussein (who was much more pragmatic than the Mad Mullahs) to comply with what we wanted, why should much weaker sanctions get us what we want with Iran?â€
Depends on what you thought the sanctions were supposed to do. If you were expecting Saddam to renounce his dictatorship and give all Iraqis a free Hersheys Bar, then no, they didn’t work. If they were to keep him from developing WMDs and/or nukes and/or re-invading his neighbors, then they worked perfectly.’”
Um, not exactly. Even the Iraq Survey Group said his weapons development programs were in place, and that was while ignoring all the thousands of gallons of pesticide (WMD precursors) he had hidden in camouflaged, guarded bunkers in the desert. In addition, sanctions were being evaded by Saddam and his allies in France and Russia.
“5 – ‘Although you don’t come out and say it straightaway, your belief that our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow prevent us from taking on Iran. If we were to list the three (Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan) in order of the threat to America, how can you (or anyone) not put keeping Iran from getting nukes at the top of the list? ’
Kinda why us hippies were wondering why they hell we invaded Iraq. Afganistan made sense—Bin Laden was(is) there, and we want his head on a stick in Times Square. Saddam was a contained threat (we were still flying fighter jets in his airspace and bombing him at will).
“You suggest abandoning Afganistan. Putting aside the moral consequnces of creating a giantic turd pile then leaving someone else to deal with the smell, what makes you think the small force we have in Afganistsan would be enough to invade Iran (and not get slaughtered?). We’d have to bail on Iraq as well to even come close to an effective force. You willing to walk away from there? Remeber, if you do, the terrorists win.”
Wrong again on your history of the invasion of Iraq. Saddam was not contained by sanctions. He was contained by the presence of 150,000 US troops in Kuwait, whose presence could not be maintained indefinitely. Again, the sanctions were ineffective. Ever heard of “Oil-for-Food”?
And don’t get me started on Saddam’s connections to terrorists, including al Qaida, which were confirmed by the Senate Committee on Intelligence.
What I would suggest, however, is that you look at a map. Assume we, as you seem to wish, had no presence in Iraq. From where exactly, would we strike Iran (a proposition in which I must disagree with your esteemed host in supporting)? We cannot strike from Afghanistan. We do not have enough manpower there to do the trick, nor can we ever—Afghanistan is landlocked, so we are dependent on its neighbors for deployment there, guaranteeing a small presence at best.
Nor could we strike from Kuwait—Kuwait shares no border with Iran; it is separated from Iran by the strip of Iraq that borders the Shatt al-Arab waterway. That strip is a limited area, which could be easily sealed off by Iran. So special forces operations would be severely limited, if not impossible.
We could strike from carriers, but that limits our hopes to air strikes, and puts the carriers in harms way. Teh loss of even one, a very real possibility given Iran’s missile capabilities, gravely impacts our power projection capabilities and hurts the US on the world stage.
Note that all this would be takling place with Saddam still in Iraq and trying to complicate any action against Iran as much as he could. He hates us more than he hates them.
In other words, if not for our presence in Iraq, our ability to take any military action against Iran would be severely limited. That’s probably what you want, but it is not a good prescription for protecting our security.
Because we are in Iraq, Iran is just as vulnerable as we are in Iraq. BTW —don’t get me started on how we can walk and chew gum at the same time, too. We’d be better able to handle Iran with our Iraq and Afghan commitments if Donald Rumsfeld hadn’t been an idiot with the size of the military, but we can manage it.
The fact remains that negiotiations with Iran have been fruitless, used merely as a delaying tactic by them to continue to develop nuclear weapons. We have gained absolutely nothing from the negotiations and even look like idiots in the process.
The Iranian government has no incentive to negotiate with us without the very real threat of force. The US has never used such force on the Iranian regime since its 1979 inception, despite provocations too numerous to mention.
It is time that changed.
7:46 am
Rick, such defeatism…
If we do nothing, we look weak, and Iran gets ever more aggressive across the Middle East, and especially so in Iraq.
If we resist Iranian escalations in Iraq by attacking along the border and even into Iranian terroritory, then we provoke a response far worse than anything we should imagine.
This means that there is no recourse, no action to be taken, no hope. We are entirely at the mercy of other people, and merely hope that the Iranian civilian population can save us, Save Us, SAVE US, from ourselves! (Please SAVE US
)
There is something very wrong with the picture.