Saturday, December 09, 2006
Article of the day
If you read one article today, read Andy McCarthy's detailed argument that the United States is, in fact, at war with Iran. Whether we are willing to admit it or not.
I have been reading about Iran all year, and remain uncertain as to the best course of action. I am, however, certain that it would be entirely within our rights in law and morality to launch a total war against that country. Casus belli absolutely exists; the only question is whether it is in our interests to do so, and on that I am exceedingly ambivalent.
20 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Dec 09, 09:31:00 AM:
MEMO TO: Tyrants Worldwide
FROM: Iraq Study Group
You are now free to conquer, rape, pillage, behead and commit all other forms of bestial behavior in the name of your god.
We won't bother you if you will just TRY to leave us alone, Ok.......?
Sincerely, James Baker, wiseman
By 
skipsailing, at
Sat Dec 09, 09:56:00 AM:
Well, I can't have an opinion on this because one of the "big three" hasn't told us what all this means yet.
When one of those insightful guys stops by and pooh-poohs all of this I'll feel better because, well, they KNOW stuff, right?
By Frederick, at
Sat Dec 09, 11:41:00 AM:
Going to war with Iran would be idiotic. What part of this Iraq mess haven't you got? The doctrine of preemptive war/Democracy at the barrel of a gun has proved an unmittigated failure, and you have no one to blame but those who were cheerleading for it all along.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Dec 09, 11:51:00 AM:
To terminate the Iranian threat in a spy novel, the author might have his American protagonist hire freelance Russian operatives to poison the Iranian government's hard-liners with a radioactive substance (like Litvinenko), bringing about the end of the country's nuclear ambitions in a peculiarly appropriate way.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Dec 09, 11:53:00 AM:
Well, H.H., we are at war with Iran in everything but name. The question is, should we escalate? I'll put you down as doubtful.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:23:00 PM:
"Going to war with Iran would be idiotic."
Why? Iranian government troops have already killed American government troops, personally and impersonally, and have been for the last 4 years. As it is, we simply are refusing to fight back.
'Go ahead and kill our people, we won't do anything about it.'
By Frederick, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:23:00 PM:
Do you think we should have escalated our "War in everything but name" against Russia back in the day?
By Frederick, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:29:00 PM:
'Go ahead and kill our people, we won't do anything about it.'
Or, 'We've learned our lesson in regards to being baited into a war we don't have to fight, and we won't fall for it again.'
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:31:00 PM:
preemptive war/Democracy at the barrel of a gun has proved an unmitigated failure
So how about if we skip the democracy thing and just do the Curtis LeMay part?
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:31:00 PM:
No, H.H., I do not, although the only reason that was the correct strategy was that the Soviet Union had atomic weapons. You can never derive what ought from what is, so I do not think we should escalate against Iran merely because it has attacked us relentlessly for more than 25 years. I'm just saying that we have the legal and moral justification to do so, and you have not (yet) objected to that point. So at least we have that out of the way.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Dec 09, 12:55:00 PM:
"be nice...be nice...be nice...until its time to NOT be nice" -- Dalton's speech to the bouncers in Roadhouse
McCarthy's piece lays out some stuff even I wasn't aware of. 25 years of "being nice" has gotten us nowhere. Anyone with a few neurons left firing can see this. The only ones who can't are the brain dead, and the literally dead.
Its time to not be nice.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Sat Dec 09, 01:45:00 PM:
Purple Avenger: "So how about if we skip the democracy thing and just do the Curtis LeMay part?"
That statement reminds me of a quote attributed to USMC Major General Oliver P. Smith during the Korean War: "Retreat Hell! We're just attacking in another direction."*
(*Sometimes the quote is incorrectly attributed to Chesty Puller, probably because of an erroneous wire-service news story at the time. The mainstream media apparently had trouble getting war stories right in those days, too.)
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Dec 09, 05:10:00 PM:
Ok HH... if a foreign power attacks us, we should withdraw so as not to be 'baited' into a conflict, no matter if it's actually against our interests to do so. Bbecause war is so terrible it should be avoided at every cost, right?
And, what if that kind of contemptible weakness is what they're counting on?
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Dec 09, 08:17:00 PM:
HH is repeating what is commonly said, as we all know. There seems to be this odd idea that we haven't heard the conventional wisdom of the elites, and that if people just keep repeating it, reminding us that it is the elites who are saying it, we'll get it.
In simplest form, HH: oversimplification and false dichotomy. unmitigated disasters are actually difficult to achieve. There's usually something worth salvaging in even bad situations. Thus, you show that you are attempting to use rhetorical flourish to persuade, rather than evidence. We're fairly immune to that here.
I recommend you get a sense for the regular commenters here, note that they do not always agree, and study what they do about that.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun Dec 10, 01:57:00 AM:
It helps to think of this as an exercise in motivation and actions. What motivations do the Iranian leaders have that we can take actions on which will result in them doing what we want them to do? A military attack on Iran at this moment will only serve to unify the country under the banner of resisting the “Great Satan”.
Perhaps if we would make it a little more personal to the individuals in the leadership of Iran, let them know just what will happen to their hometown or their family estate if they continue to wage a proxy war on the US. Raid a few Swiss bank accounts. Make some close and personal bombing plans and leak them to the NYT, showing just where the fallout would go. Enlist the aid of the Russians, tell them that we heard a certain Iman call Putin a naughty word.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Dec 10, 07:40:00 AM:
I agree, Georgefelis. I very much lean toward a duplicitous strategy -- engage Iran diplomatically, superficially accomodate them, perhaps even re-establish diplomatic relations. But then roll up Iranian intelligence assets, obviously tail the wives of Iranian officials when they go shopping in Paris, sabotage gasoline shipments into Iran, pursue a comprehensive Farsi-language propaganda strategy (including stupid stuff, like Baywatch in Farsi). We have been on the defensive for a long time, because we violated the old addage, never pick a fight with somebody who has more time than you do. Well, we need to make time for Iran, and we should start with sneaky stuff.
By Admin, at
Sun Dec 10, 09:32:00 AM:
so lets widen a conflict we are already mishandling?
what is wrong with you people?
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Dec 10, 03:10:00 PM:
To resolve it, genius. This conflict is already about, and with, Iran. Wouldn't you like to bring it to an end? ('YES!' I hear you say) Without suffering a national defeat and humiliation? ('er, um, hmm...')
Aside, I was recently informed that Farsi has replaced Arabic as the hot commodity among DOD linguists. So someone in the Army has been paying attention.
By Admin, at
Sun Dec 10, 03:24:00 PM:
widen the conflict to resolve it?
The standard, Conservative, Right wing, Back-against-the-wall, you-must-hate America and wish-its-defeat is pretty old, I'm surprised you'd still roll it out.
Getting us into illegal war of aggression based on flimsy evidence, ignoring the real threat - Iran - until bedded down in a bogus war, is not my idea of National Security.
By skipsailing, at
Mon Dec 11, 11:19:00 AM:
yes, dear boy, widen the conflict to end it. I know this runs counter to the recieved wisdom you obtained at the last free mumia rally, but let's face it Iran is the problem.
Frankly I believed that Iran was the problem well before we invaded Iraq. I welcomed the invasion simply because it placed us at Iran's doorstep.
now we are in an open conflict with the mullahs and you know boy, I'm fine with that. Winning this is actually pretty easy IMHO
(1) Abolish catch and release. If US forces detain someone, they stay detained for months, perhaps years. If we determine that farsi is their mother tongue, we publish photos of them on Al Jazeera. We insure that the Iranian public knows that we're holding these guys prisoner. An occassional trial and execution would help in this regard.
(2) We muscle Maliki into a corner. the goal here is simple, Iran is funding and supporting many groups in Iraq. If we force Iran to chose one over the others the arab will respond with their best thing: internicene violence. It's not about some vision of a caliphate or the 12th imam for most of the guys whacking each other in B-dad its about money. Finding a way to pit these mobs against each other makes Iran's ability to meddle vanish in the flash of a carbomb.
(3) we engage in a low level guerilla war against Iran's government. By damaging the Mullah's ability to provide "security" we de ligitimize them. We're already seeing clear signs of strain, we need to exacerbate this any way we can. I read stories of "plane crashes" routinely now. somebody is whacking the Iranian military leaders. Is it us? is it them? Imagine the thoughts of an Iranian general just now. Who is scarier: the madmen in the revolutionary guard or the marines in Fallujah?
(4) we engage in a disinformation campaign designed to foment civil unrest in Iran. The people of the middle east are amazingly ill informed. We simply use this as a tool. If the Sunnis can lie about "civilian deaths" in Fallujah, what can we effectively lie about?
Yes, fellah, we are engaged with Iran, let's bleed them white.
