The attacks that the United States has "accepted" in the past years, only shows how weak we have become. Every couple years, we sustain another attack, the most devastating was 9/11. However on the anniversary of that tragic date, our Ambassador is killed along with three others in Libya. The attacks have not stopped and they never will until we get some intestinal fortitude and decide that we have reached the end of our rope. When will that occur? We don't know but one thing is for sure, it will not happen until Obama is no longer President.
We seem to be deathly afraid of upsetting the "religion of peace" that sends children with bombs around their waists and preaches that they will go to heaven if they kill an infidel. Whether our President was Reagan, Bush or Obama, we do not want to take it to those who cause us harm.
We have mighty weapons and brave soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines, however they cannot win a war our leaders have decided is un-winnable. If the current attitude (that has existed since WWII) continues, we might as well fold up our tent and sue for peace, now.
Weakness only encourages more aggression. We saw that in WWII where Hitler thought he do anything he wanted as the governments around the world did not stand up on the rear haunches and demand he return Poland after his invasion. He also broke his treaty with the Soviet Union and invaded that country and only the Russian winter and over-extended supply lines defeated him, not any military force.
Once an aggressor thinks he can get away with his aggression, he will continue until stopped or he achieves his goals. We MUST stop Muslims now. We must stop being "kind and understanding" and trying not to hurt their feelings. They view this as weakness and it only encourages them.
Conservative Tom
We seem to be deathly afraid of upsetting the "religion of peace" that sends children with bombs around their waists and preaches that they will go to heaven if they kill an infidel. Whether our President was Reagan, Bush or Obama, we do not want to take it to those who cause us harm.
We have mighty weapons and brave soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines, however they cannot win a war our leaders have decided is un-winnable. If the current attitude (that has existed since WWII) continues, we might as well fold up our tent and sue for peace, now.
Weakness only encourages more aggression. We saw that in WWII where Hitler thought he do anything he wanted as the governments around the world did not stand up on the rear haunches and demand he return Poland after his invasion. He also broke his treaty with the Soviet Union and invaded that country and only the Russian winter and over-extended supply lines defeated him, not any military force.
Once an aggressor thinks he can get away with his aggression, he will continue until stopped or he achieves his goals. We MUST stop Muslims now. We must stop being "kind and understanding" and trying not to hurt their feelings. They view this as weakness and it only encourages them.
Conservative Tom
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Redacted from an extensive article by Dr. Mordechai Kedar,
Ph.D. Bar Ilan University
21 September 2012
http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4649
In the past, the United States was the “glory of the world” mainly after it came to the aid of Europe in the Second World War, the victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, and the American success in establishing a democratic state in South Korea (1953) following the war against the communists, who were allied with China and the USSR. However, the glory of the United States has faded during the last generation. Historians point to Vietnam as the beginning of the process of decline; the war lasted 16 years (1959-1975), cost the lives of almost 60,000 American soldiers and ended in a disastrous American rout and Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, falling to the Vietcong, the militia of communist North Vietnam.
The Vietnam War left parts of American society with a lack of will to fight for the values of freedom and democracy, especially if it’s a question of fighting in countries outside of the United States.
In 1973 the American ambassador, his deputy and the deputy ambassador of Belgium were kidnapped in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan by the Palestinian organization “Black September”, and were executed on the personally telephoned orders of Yasir Arafat.
In April 1983 Hizb’Allah – the long arm of Iran in Lebanon – blew up the embassy of the United States, in another breach of its sovereignty, and killed 63 people and in October of that same year demolished Marine headquarters in Beirut killing 241 American soldiers and citizens. The American reaction was to flee from Lebanon, which very much encouraged Hizb’Allah and its patrons in Iran and Syria, and caused the United States to appear as a country without a backbone.
A month before this, in March of 1983, Hizb’Allah attacked the United States embassy in Kuwait, and in June, 1985 Hizb’Allah organized the hijacking of an American passenger jet of TWA.
In June, 1996 Hizb’Allah carried out an attack on an American military base in Saudi Arabia, and all of these attacks carried out by Shi’ite Hizb’Allah with Iranian inspiration were left unanswered by the Americans.
Qadhaffi’s Libya also contributed its part in aggression against the U.S. with the attack on the disco in Berlin where a number of American soldiers were killed as they were enjoying a night out in 1986. The aggression was answered with an attack on Qadhaffi’s palace, and although his adopted daughter was killed, he did not stand down.
In 1988 he organized a revenge attack on a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing almost 300 people. What was his punishment? Nothing, until 2011, when the United States was dragged into attacking Libya, almost reluctantly.
August, 1990, Saddam Hussein disregarded the warnings of the United States and invaded Kuwait, one of the West’s main suppliers of oil, claiming that Kuwait is a province of Iraq. In this case, the West became outraged, and led by the US in January, 1991, entered a war that successfully liberated Kuwait, but did not liberate Iraq and the world from Saddam Hussein.
In March 1991 the Shi’ite rebellion against Saddam (who had been vanquished in Kuwait) began, but he put down the rebellion with great cruelty, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Shi’ites, and the United States did not lift a finger.
In October 1993 an American commando force entering the city by helicopter, tried to capture two terrorists in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The helicopter was shot down by the Somalis, who then killed 18 American soldiers and defiled their bodies. All of this was recorded on camera without fear of enraging the Americans.
Bin Laden, after his mujahedin succeeded in throwing out the Soviets from Afghanistan and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union, decided to turn the American weapons against the United States, “the world leader of heresy, permissiveness and materialistic culture” according to bin Laden’s description of the U.S. In December 1992 jihadists attacked hotels near the port of Aden where soldiers of the United States were housed.
In February 1993 the first attempt to collapse the twin towers was carried out in New York.
In August 1998 the United States embassies in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and Dar as-Salam the capital of Tanzania, were blown up, killing 224 and leaving thousands of wounded.
In 2000 al-Qaeda attacked the frigate USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 soldiers. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda organized a series of attacks in the United States on symbols of commerce and government, which caused about 3000 fatalities.
In the aura of the beginning years of the 2000′s in which the United States was perceived as vulnerable despite its great strength, Islamist terrorists did not hesitate to slaughter American citizens and soldiers on camera, for example Daniel Pearl in 2002; Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley in 2004.
As a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001 the United States entered into an all-out war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which sponsored the organization. A blitz war brought the collapse of the regime and the dismantling of hundreds of al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. The coalition led by the United States achieved total control of the entire area of Afghanistan within months, but today – after more than eleven years of Sisyphean (Greek Mythology – relating to Sisyphus – Endlessly laborious or futile fighting, and at the cost of much blood and treasure) the soldiers of the United States and their allies control only about 5 percent of the area of the state. It seems that Afghanistan is about to become the second Vietnam.
Later, an international coalition led by the United States conquered Iraq in 2003, but since then, organizations who adopted the ideology of al-Qaeda, challenged the stability that the United States tried to create in Iraq, by carrying out hundreds of attacks that killed thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens.
Iran, its eastern neighbor, also entered into the Iraqi turmoil, training, arming and financing Shi’ites who remembered well the American betrayal of March 1991, and between the years 2003 and 2008, caused many American fatalities. American intelligence had innumerable proofs of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, but the United States never ventured to even the account with Iran for this, because of the fear that it would have to open a new front, in addition to those of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over all, American taxpayers poured into Iraq more than a trillion (a thousand billion) dollars. President Obama, as he promised, withdrew the United States soldiers from Iraq in December 2011, and as a result of the American flight, Iraq today is effectively controlled by Iran.
Despite the international ban on Iran to export weapons, and on Syria to import them, Iran supplies the murderous regime in Syria with weapons, ammunition and fighters who are airlifted over the skies of Iraq. The Americans know this and don’t do a thing.
Another American failure, no less important than the failure in Iraq, is the failure to stop the military nuclear program of Iran. The United States under Obama is afraid of drawing red lines for the regime of the Ayatollahs, who are hurtling ahead towards acquisition of the bomb, which may be able to reach as far as New York, not just Tel Aviv.
Thus, in a continual process of declining strength, the United Stated has become a paper tigerin dealing with the Arab and Islamic world. The Islamic bandits draw strength from American weakness, and it is precisely Obama’s attempts to engage the Islamists, beginning with the Cairo speech (June 2009), that increases the Islamists’ demands from him.
On this background of American weakness are additional facts, which the people of the Middle East see well: North Korea does as it pleases with its nuclear plans and missiles, despite Western and Japanese objections. In the past the United States acceded to the nuclearization of India and Pakistan.
In October 2011, Iran attempted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, no less than the capital of the United States. The Iranians have no problem calling the United States “the Great Satan” which has only one meaning: that holy war must be waged against the United States – a jihad for the sake of Allah, which will only end with the destruction of the government of the United States and the conversion of its citizens to Shi’ite Islam.
The murder of the American ambassador in Libya this month was only another link in the chain of American failure to understand the Middle East.
Islamic zealots sense the American weakness and increase their pressure. The Americans have adopted the culture of “political correctness” that makes them “be nice” even if the one they are dealing with is not nice at all. They enable Islamic organizations to act freely in the United States, to establish mosques almost without limitations and preach violence against the “infidel” in these places, under the right of freedom of expression, of course.
People who are identified with radical Islam come and go in the White House and serve as “advisers” to the president and the secretary of state. During the past generation, the State Department has led the conciliatory and defeatist policy of the United States, which has brought the superpower of the past to be only a paper tiger in the eyes of the Arab and Islamic world.
Since last year, by instructions from above, all American investigative authorities – CIA, FBI and others – have been forbidden to ask people whom they are investigating questions about their faith, and all training programs for investigators have undergone censorship by an obscure committee, whose members are not known. Islam, which has an ideological platform for many of the terror activities that were carried out against Americans in the the United States, has ceased to be a matter that can be investigated or to asked about or related to in any way.
Thus – for example – the terrorist event at the Fort Hood base (November 2009) in which Nidal Hasan (a Palestinian Muslim) murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded 31, has become “violence in the workplace”, and the attempt of a Pakistani to set off a car bomb in Times Square in New York (May 2010) has become a “traffic accident”
The ignorance of the administration in the eyes of the Middle East has been proven over the past three years, when more than once, people of the government issued statements such as, “The Muslim Brotherhood is mainly a secular movement”, “Iran can be persuaded by diplomatic means to stop enriching uranium”, “There is no proof of the existence of a military nuclear program in Iran” and “Islam is a religion of peace”.
When the heads of the American government speak thus, the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sunni side of Islam, and the Iranians on the Shi’a side, know that they have nothing to worry about. The “Great Satan” has lost its teeth and its will to use its horns. The United States is quickly losing its will to defend its values, and in the Middle East this fact is clearly evident.
The conclusion that Israel must draw from all of this is clear: It’s security must not depend on the ever dissipating American determination, because some Americans who determine policy have the tendency to throw their friends – as in the case of Mubarak – under the bus. Therefore, Israel must place before her invading neighbors a real, concrete and credible threat, because in the Middle East peace is given only to those who can not be nvanquished, and freedom is given only to him who is ready to fight for it.
The Middle East is no place for bleeding hearts, and especially those whose glory has passed and is no more. The Arab and Islamic world knows how to appreciate and honor only those who honor themselves, who know how to draw a clear red line and then be willing to battle anyone who desires to harm them, to go to battle in order to guard the freedom of their region and their global glory.
However, the malaise of the United States need not be terminal: In the times of Ronald Reagan, George Bush the father and George W. Bush the son, there was in the United States a different image, because then at least, there was the will to cope with the problem-makers, not to appease them and not to surrender to them. Those were the days and those were the people. Are there any left like these? Where are they?
Mordechai Kedar is an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. He holds a Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University. Kedar is an academic expert on the Israeli Arab population. He served for twenty-five years in IDF Military Intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.
21 September 2012
http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4649
In the past, the United States was the “glory of the world” mainly after it came to the aid of Europe in the Second World War, the victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, and the American success in establishing a democratic state in South Korea (1953) following the war against the communists, who were allied with China and the USSR. However, the glory of the United States has faded during the last generation. Historians point to Vietnam as the beginning of the process of decline; the war lasted 16 years (1959-1975), cost the lives of almost 60,000 American soldiers and ended in a disastrous American rout and Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, falling to the Vietcong, the militia of communist North Vietnam.
The Vietnam War left parts of American society with a lack of will to fight for the values of freedom and democracy, especially if it’s a question of fighting in countries outside of the United States.
In 1973 the American ambassador, his deputy and the deputy ambassador of Belgium were kidnapped in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan by the Palestinian organization “Black September”, and were executed on the personally telephoned orders of Yasir Arafat.
In April 1983 Hizb’Allah – the long arm of Iran in Lebanon – blew up the embassy of the United States, in another breach of its sovereignty, and killed 63 people and in October of that same year demolished Marine headquarters in Beirut killing 241 American soldiers and citizens. The American reaction was to flee from Lebanon, which very much encouraged Hizb’Allah and its patrons in Iran and Syria, and caused the United States to appear as a country without a backbone.
A month before this, in March of 1983, Hizb’Allah attacked the United States embassy in Kuwait, and in June, 1985 Hizb’Allah organized the hijacking of an American passenger jet of TWA.
In June, 1996 Hizb’Allah carried out an attack on an American military base in Saudi Arabia, and all of these attacks carried out by Shi’ite Hizb’Allah with Iranian inspiration were left unanswered by the Americans.
Qadhaffi’s Libya also contributed its part in aggression against the U.S. with the attack on the disco in Berlin where a number of American soldiers were killed as they were enjoying a night out in 1986. The aggression was answered with an attack on Qadhaffi’s palace, and although his adopted daughter was killed, he did not stand down.
In 1988 he organized a revenge attack on a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing almost 300 people. What was his punishment? Nothing, until 2011, when the United States was dragged into attacking Libya, almost reluctantly.
August, 1990, Saddam Hussein disregarded the warnings of the United States and invaded Kuwait, one of the West’s main suppliers of oil, claiming that Kuwait is a province of Iraq. In this case, the West became outraged, and led by the US in January, 1991, entered a war that successfully liberated Kuwait, but did not liberate Iraq and the world from Saddam Hussein.
In March 1991 the Shi’ite rebellion against Saddam (who had been vanquished in Kuwait) began, but he put down the rebellion with great cruelty, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Shi’ites, and the United States did not lift a finger.
In October 1993 an American commando force entering the city by helicopter, tried to capture two terrorists in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The helicopter was shot down by the Somalis, who then killed 18 American soldiers and defiled their bodies. All of this was recorded on camera without fear of enraging the Americans.
Bin Laden, after his mujahedin succeeded in throwing out the Soviets from Afghanistan and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union, decided to turn the American weapons against the United States, “the world leader of heresy, permissiveness and materialistic culture” according to bin Laden’s description of the U.S. In December 1992 jihadists attacked hotels near the port of Aden where soldiers of the United States were housed.
In February 1993 the first attempt to collapse the twin towers was carried out in New York.
In August 1998 the United States embassies in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and Dar as-Salam the capital of Tanzania, were blown up, killing 224 and leaving thousands of wounded.
In 2000 al-Qaeda attacked the frigate USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 soldiers. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda organized a series of attacks in the United States on symbols of commerce and government, which caused about 3000 fatalities.
In the aura of the beginning years of the 2000′s in which the United States was perceived as vulnerable despite its great strength, Islamist terrorists did not hesitate to slaughter American citizens and soldiers on camera, for example Daniel Pearl in 2002; Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley in 2004.
As a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001 the United States entered into an all-out war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which sponsored the organization. A blitz war brought the collapse of the regime and the dismantling of hundreds of al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. The coalition led by the United States achieved total control of the entire area of Afghanistan within months, but today – after more than eleven years of Sisyphean (Greek Mythology – relating to Sisyphus – Endlessly laborious or futile fighting, and at the cost of much blood and treasure) the soldiers of the United States and their allies control only about 5 percent of the area of the state. It seems that Afghanistan is about to become the second Vietnam.
Later, an international coalition led by the United States conquered Iraq in 2003, but since then, organizations who adopted the ideology of al-Qaeda, challenged the stability that the United States tried to create in Iraq, by carrying out hundreds of attacks that killed thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens.
Iran, its eastern neighbor, also entered into the Iraqi turmoil, training, arming and financing Shi’ites who remembered well the American betrayal of March 1991, and between the years 2003 and 2008, caused many American fatalities. American intelligence had innumerable proofs of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, but the United States never ventured to even the account with Iran for this, because of the fear that it would have to open a new front, in addition to those of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over all, American taxpayers poured into Iraq more than a trillion (a thousand billion) dollars. President Obama, as he promised, withdrew the United States soldiers from Iraq in December 2011, and as a result of the American flight, Iraq today is effectively controlled by Iran.
Despite the international ban on Iran to export weapons, and on Syria to import them, Iran supplies the murderous regime in Syria with weapons, ammunition and fighters who are airlifted over the skies of Iraq. The Americans know this and don’t do a thing.
Another American failure, no less important than the failure in Iraq, is the failure to stop the military nuclear program of Iran. The United States under Obama is afraid of drawing red lines for the regime of the Ayatollahs, who are hurtling ahead towards acquisition of the bomb, which may be able to reach as far as New York, not just Tel Aviv.
Thus, in a continual process of declining strength, the United Stated has become a paper tigerin dealing with the Arab and Islamic world. The Islamic bandits draw strength from American weakness, and it is precisely Obama’s attempts to engage the Islamists, beginning with the Cairo speech (June 2009), that increases the Islamists’ demands from him.
On this background of American weakness are additional facts, which the people of the Middle East see well: North Korea does as it pleases with its nuclear plans and missiles, despite Western and Japanese objections. In the past the United States acceded to the nuclearization of India and Pakistan.
In October 2011, Iran attempted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, no less than the capital of the United States. The Iranians have no problem calling the United States “the Great Satan” which has only one meaning: that holy war must be waged against the United States – a jihad for the sake of Allah, which will only end with the destruction of the government of the United States and the conversion of its citizens to Shi’ite Islam.
The murder of the American ambassador in Libya this month was only another link in the chain of American failure to understand the Middle East.
Islamic zealots sense the American weakness and increase their pressure. The Americans have adopted the culture of “political correctness” that makes them “be nice” even if the one they are dealing with is not nice at all. They enable Islamic organizations to act freely in the United States, to establish mosques almost without limitations and preach violence against the “infidel” in these places, under the right of freedom of expression, of course.
People who are identified with radical Islam come and go in the White House and serve as “advisers” to the president and the secretary of state. During the past generation, the State Department has led the conciliatory and defeatist policy of the United States, which has brought the superpower of the past to be only a paper tiger in the eyes of the Arab and Islamic world.
Since last year, by instructions from above, all American investigative authorities – CIA, FBI and others – have been forbidden to ask people whom they are investigating questions about their faith, and all training programs for investigators have undergone censorship by an obscure committee, whose members are not known. Islam, which has an ideological platform for many of the terror activities that were carried out against Americans in the the United States, has ceased to be a matter that can be investigated or to asked about or related to in any way.
Thus – for example – the terrorist event at the Fort Hood base (November 2009) in which Nidal Hasan (a Palestinian Muslim) murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded 31, has become “violence in the workplace”, and the attempt of a Pakistani to set off a car bomb in Times Square in New York (May 2010) has become a “traffic accident”
The ignorance of the administration in the eyes of the Middle East has been proven over the past three years, when more than once, people of the government issued statements such as, “The Muslim Brotherhood is mainly a secular movement”, “Iran can be persuaded by diplomatic means to stop enriching uranium”, “There is no proof of the existence of a military nuclear program in Iran” and “Islam is a religion of peace”.
When the heads of the American government speak thus, the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sunni side of Islam, and the Iranians on the Shi’a side, know that they have nothing to worry about. The “Great Satan” has lost its teeth and its will to use its horns. The United States is quickly losing its will to defend its values, and in the Middle East this fact is clearly evident.
The conclusion that Israel must draw from all of this is clear: It’s security must not depend on the ever dissipating American determination, because some Americans who determine policy have the tendency to throw their friends – as in the case of Mubarak – under the bus. Therefore, Israel must place before her invading neighbors a real, concrete and credible threat, because in the Middle East peace is given only to those who can not be nvanquished, and freedom is given only to him who is ready to fight for it.
The Middle East is no place for bleeding hearts, and especially those whose glory has passed and is no more. The Arab and Islamic world knows how to appreciate and honor only those who honor themselves, who know how to draw a clear red line and then be willing to battle anyone who desires to harm them, to go to battle in order to guard the freedom of their region and their global glory.
However, the malaise of the United States need not be terminal: In the times of Ronald Reagan, George Bush the father and George W. Bush the son, there was in the United States a different image, because then at least, there was the will to cope with the problem-makers, not to appease them and not to surrender to them. Those were the days and those were the people. Are there any left like these? Where are they?
Mordechai Kedar is an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. He holds a Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University. Kedar is an academic expert on the Israeli Arab population. He served for twenty-five years in IDF Military Intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.
Before we start another war over there, maybe we should look at how the last two have turned out.
ReplyDeleteThe war in Afghanistan has been going on for 11 years, and all we have to show for it is the propped-up corrupt Karzai government and an Afghan military so infiltrated with Taliban that they are routinely killing our military from the inside. Have you been following any of this? As the saying goes, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"
And then we have the government in Iraq. I'd love to hear your comment on this also:
"There is no mystery behind the Syrian regime’s survival even after it lost control of most parts of the country and the opposition forces could march into Damascus. It is because Iraq supplies the regime with financial support, fuel and safe land crossings.
Even when the revolutionaries cut the regime’s major supply line from Iraq with the closure of the Al-Bokomal crossing, Iraq opened an air corridor for the Iranian planes to bring in the supplies that resuscitated Assad’s forces. Iraq’s major role in the regime’s war against people is also affirmed by the observations of the Iraqi telecommunications about planes crossing its airspace. There is also evidence to support a tripartite agreement of cooperation between Iran, Syria and Iraq."
http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/09/23/239611.html
--David
David,
ReplyDeleteI believe I have spoken on this before. I was in favor of going into Afghanistan to root out the Taliban. However, in this engagement as well as Iraq, we had no exit strategy. No goal to leave when "X" was accomplished. Had we supported Bin Ladin after he defeated the Russians, we probably would not have had the rise of the Taliban. Ironically, we never seem to learn.
I was not in favor of going into Iraq as they had not attacked us and I would not see a good outcome. It seems I was right. We have lost another engagement just like we have lost every engagement/war since WWII.
We do need to stop the development of nuclear capability by Iran, that would be a completely de-stabilizing force in the Middle East and would pose significant threats to the entire free world.
If you read my posting a day or so ago about an EMP attack by Iran. It would devastate the US and would result in millions of deaths from lack of food and water. Additionally, many would die from exposure as they would not be able to relocate to warmer climates and would literally freeze to death.
It would only take ONE nuclear device launched from a ship off shore to cause this crisis.So when Abina-wack-job says that we have 5800 nukes and they would only have one, why would we feel they are a threat? It would only take one nuke to put the US into the dust bin of history.
What I do not understand is why you can't see that starting a war with Iran would carry all the same results (but worse) that we already had in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where is the "goal to leave when X is accomplished"? Say X is blowing up their nuclear plants, which would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians and spew radiation into heavily populated cites! Then what comes next? Are we going to try an occupation and set up a puppet government like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would that government be any more loyal to our interests than the ones we propped up in Iraq and Afghanistan, or would they hate us for blow up their country? And if all we do is blow up their nuclear plants, they can start over with help from Russia and China.
ReplyDeleteThe only sensible foreign policy here is Ron Paul's. A noninterventionist foreign policy means having a strong military to fight any country that starts a war with us, but we do not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. As I said before, the only "red line" with Iran should be their borders. If they start a war with Israel, then they will be crushed the same way Saddam was rejected when he invaded Kuwait. That should be the policy. However, I am afraid that Obama (or Israel) is going to start a war with Iran over (nonexistent) nuclear weapons just as we did in Iraq over (nonexistent) WMD. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and there is no credible evidence that they are enriching uranium beyond 20% in order to build nuclear power plants for electricity. They might be doing it, or they might be bluffing Israel with a lot of threatening rhetoric to suck Israel into a panic reaction. Like kids on the playground trying to incite the other kid into throwing the first punch. But, what the heck, let's just launch another preemptive war over guesswork and speculation like we did in Iraq.
--David
a. there is a credible threat to the region.
ReplyDeleteb. whose crystal ball tells you that thousands of innocent Iranians would be killed?
c.Ron Paul is way off the rocker where it comes to foreign affairs. We cannot retreat from the world, it is too small. Even in the 1800's when the US went after the Barbary pirates (who were muslims)we had to do what we had to do.
d. So your solution is to have Tel Aviv in ashes before we act? Isn't that like letting the horse out and then chasing him?
e. who says there were no WMDs--yes we know the reports, but they are consistently finding planes buried in the Iraqi desert, so who says so?
f. So your plan is to wait until they launch a missile over the US, explode a nuke, EMP us, and then do what?
David, you are being naive and putting your head in the sand. The Iranians are enriching their uranium, otherwise why the centrifuges? If they wanted their own fuel source for non-weapon use, why not buy it? If the plant is for non-weapon use, why is it buried hundreds of feet below a mountain?
Remember, Abadingbat has threatened to destroy Israel with a nuke blast. One must take these threats at face value otherwise we are fools.
Are you willing to have another 6 million Jews killed because we did not stop these mad men? I am not.
a. there is a credible threat to the region.
ReplyDeleteNo, there is not. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and there is no credible evidence that they possess any weapons-grade uranium. One thing we should have learned from Iraq is that you don't launch wars based on fear and speculation.
b. whose crystal ball tells you that thousands of innocent Iranians would be killed?
It is a fact. These nuclear plants are located in heavily populated areas. The radiation released would not only affect hundreds of thousands of Iranian but would be carried by winds to other countries in the region. Furthermore, there would be birth defects for generations. That is already happening in Russian with the Chernobyl disaster, and that was from only one location. Also, many Iranians would be killed by the bombs directly.
c.Ron Paul is way off the rocker where it comes to foreign affairs. We cannot retreat from the world, it is too small.
You falsely reduce foreign policy choice to two options: 1. "retreat from the world" or 2. Start wars over there with Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. The policy of non-intervention is neither of the above. You should read some of Ron Paul's policy statements. He supports a strong military defense capability, but not military interventions into other countries who are not transgressing their borders.
d. So your solution is to have Tel Aviv in ashes before we act? Isn't that like letting the horse out and then chasing him?
We have already acted. Israel has a strong defense system -- technologically far superior to Iran. If there were a war, it is Iran that would be crushed. They know this, and that is why it would be suicidal for them to attack Israel. That is not just my opinion. Our top general in the Middle East (can't recall his name right now) said the same in an interview when asked whether he believes the Iranian leaders are rational.
e. who says there were no WMDs--yes we know the reports, but they are consistently finding planes buried in the Iraqi desert, so who says so?
The CIA final report says so. Planes buried in the desert are not WMDs. There were no WMDs.
f. So your plan is to wait until they launch a missile over the US, explode a nuke, EMP us, and then do what?
You can't prevent a war by starting it yourself. They will not start a war with the U.S. for the same reason they will not start one with Israel. The Soviet Union had infinitely more nuclear force than Iran, and they never used it for the same reason. It would be suicidal, and they know it.
g. The Iranians are enriching their uranium, otherwise why the centrifuges? If they wanted their own fuel source for non-weapon use, why not buy it? If the plant is for non-weapon use, why is it buried hundreds of feet below a mountain?
Why doesn't Japan, France, and every other country with nuclear power plants buy it instead of producing it themselves? It is not practical or economical. Since the Israelis have already announced their willingness to blow up Iran's nuclear facilities, they were buried too deep for Israel to destroy without bunker buster bombs (which they did not have until Obama sold them to Israel in 2009).
h. Are you willing to have another 6 million Jews killed because we did not stop these mad men? I am not.
My prediction is that, if Iran ever does develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent, they will be no more willing to commit suicide with them than were Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Pakistan, etc.
--David
David, you obviously do not have the fear of the Iranians that I do. It seems that you want to "wish"away any threat they might be, want to disregard their pronouncements to destroy Israel, and do not understand the Radical Muslim mind and their desire to go to heaven by killing infidels.
ReplyDeleteIran is not the same as the Soviets or Chinese, they do not fear "mutual assured destruction." They welcome it, it will be martyrdom.
Okay, I found the interview….
ReplyDeletehttp://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/08/zakaria-iran-is-a-rational-actor/
This is the opinion of general Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff. I trust his opinion a heck of a lot more than anything coming from Israel or neocon war-mongers here in the U.S. We simply disagree on this.
So let's move on in this discussion. What is your exit strategy after we attempt to blow up all their nuclear plants? Do we try another occupation as we did in Iraq? If not, what do you think happens next?
I am sick of these stupid wars like we had in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They all begin with trying to panic the American public that Armageddon is upon us if we don't do this war. They were all disasters. A war with Iran would be even worse. It is easy for them to send other people's kids into their wars. I had friends who died in Vietnam. My son was a Marine in the Iraq War. It changes your perspective.
--David
David, I disagree with your assessment on Israel totally. General Dempsey or Zakaria do not have their butt on the line. They can pontificate from on high without anything to lose. However, Israel has been threatened time after time by Iran that they will be wiped off the map. That would bring anyone's attention to the matter.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on having your son in the Iraq war. I am assuming the first one under George H.W., right?
Exit strategy is important as I have said many times. We need to know what we are going to do and under what schedule. I agree there. In my not so humble opinion, we need to destroy the nuke making capability and get out. Let regime change occur by itself, if it is going to occur. We need to destroy the problem and move on.
Did you read the article I posted today, I think you might agree.
I have been reading up a little on this. Apparently it requires huge amounts of water and electricity to enrich uranium up to the 90% level and the U.S. government has the satellite technology to detect this happening. So Israel can claim whatever they want about Iran's nuclear capacity, but I will trust the words of general Dempsey over them any day of the week.
ReplyDeleteYes, you are correct that Israel has a greater stake in the matter, but that also injects a degree of fear/emotionalism into their judgment. They are prone to a panic attack, whereas general Dempsey can view the Iranians more objectively as acting rationally rather than as suicidal maniacs.
--David
P.S. Regarding the other article, I wrote: I completely concur with this guy's section entitled "America Is Supposed To Have A Reserved Foreign Policy." This is essentially a statement of Ron Paul's foreign policy. It is why I refuse to vote for Obama or Romney.