Iran is next...

[AtomicLabMonkey]

The administration still has 2 more years in power to pull off an attack on Iran. It's coming.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/conten...5fa_fact_hersh

In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.

Discuss.

[sperry]

Why we are in the middle of what is basically a Catholic vs. Protestant type conflict I don't understand. Is this is what Ireland would have been like in the 80's if there was oil there? We should just pack up our shit and leave... the cows out of the barn... we might as well just let the barn burn down at this point.

[Kevin M]

Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey

The administration still has 2 more years in power to pull off an attack on Iran. It's coming.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/conten...5fa_fact_hersh



Discuss.

While I don't doubt for a second that the administration would like a reason to attack Iran, the existence of a bombing plan for such a contingency doesn't indicate a pressing desire. There are people in the Pentagon cooking up plans for invading Antarctica and New Jersey too.

[Nick Koan]

2 years is a short time to get engaged in both Iran and North Korea.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

Originally Posted by BAN SUVS

While I don't doubt for a second that the administration would like a reason to attack Iran, the existence of a bombing plan for such a contingency doesn't indicate a pressing desire.

In and of itself, contingency planning is just good sense and doesn't signal intent. But when military planning is combined with escalating public rhetoric, confrontational foreign policy, and troop movements, it gets more serious.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey

In and of itself, contingency planning is just good sense and doesn't signal intent. But when military planning is combined with escalating public rhetoric, confrontational foreign policy, and troop movements, it gets more serious.

Not to mention a trigger happy administration that has shown past contempt for the will of the people they're supposed to represent.

[MikeK]

And there I was thinking you guys didn't have enough troops for the current commitments.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by MikeK

And there I was thinking you guys didn't have enough troops for the current commitments.

We don't. But incapability was never a limiting factor: "Oops, didn't win the presidency... no problem! Oops, no legal reason to invade Iraq... no problem! Oops, no public support for expanding the war... no problem! Oops, no drafted military for invading Iran... no problem!"

[MikeK]

I like your "can do" attitude!

[zpeed]

I want to see the money spend to help ourself inside the country. Like SS, Health care, Education. Why do we need to be a world police? Everybody else don't. Other country starting to withdraw their troops when we add more???

[sperry]

Originally Posted by zpeed

I want to see the money spend to help ourself inside the country. Like SS, Health care, Education. Why do we need to be a world police? Everybody else don't. Other country starting to withdraw their troops when we add more???

I think you feel like 80% of Americans.

The trouble is that the lame duck administration is too bull-headed to realize when they've lost, and insists on mucking around trying to fix an unfixable situation despite the will of the people.

Reminds me of Vietnam... you would think this was a lesson we had already learned... oh wait, Bush dodged Vietnam by going AWOL from the Air National Guard or something... he probably doesn't remember it all that well. </cheap shot>

[AtomicLabMonkey]

Originally Posted by MikeK

I like your "can do" attitude!

[Joeyy]

If you look back in history you'll see a common trend. We as a nation have gone through many periods of what is called isolationism. Prior to our late entry into WWII, you could say our foriegn policy was a policy of isolationism. There is an argument that we entered the war far to late and could have saved many lives if we entered earlier.

Now we are in a far different possision. In the past we could provide for ourselves. We made our own cars and had an industrial based economy. Now our people want to revert to isolationism but the world has changed and is changing. For the better in some areas and in others we are repeating the same mistakes.

I was in the service for over nine years and saw endless cut backs. At the same time I saw our new enemy growing and becoming more powerull on the world seen. Fuck Iraq and Iran, they are small turkeys. Hit the bomb making factories and nuclear labs with some good old American made cruise missiles and the problem of our men and women on the ground can be fixed. An occupanion takes alot of man power and is usually a logistics nightmare. Get our people off the ground let our technology stretch it's legs.

Back to the real enemy. Yes, somebody has to say it on this thread. People it is China. They are not our freind and will always hate us. My father had to deal with them in North Korea and my uncles killed them in Laos and Vietnam. Can't we learn from our mistakes. Isolationizm is not going to work and neither is an occupation.

If you look really close at the signs. I see the rug getting ready to be pulled out from under our feet with the help of our government.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

I don't think the US & China can afford a war with each other. The people in power on both sides know this. Any real war that disrupted trade between us would bring both economies crashing down.

[sperry]

Isolationism is suicide... the economy is global, you can't (and I don't think anyone is suggesting that we do) just pull out of the world like you could in 1930.

IMO, China is *not* our enemy. You're father and uncles fought the Chinese in the past because the US leaders of the time believed that if communism spread to any "free" counties, then it would domino and envelope the world. There were three incorrect assumptions, 1) that communism and capitalism can't co-exists (proven wrong by the *massive* success story that is Hong Kong), 2) that the domino effect was real (failures in Korea and Vietnam didn't make communism run rampant), and 3) that communism was a viable long-term economic system (empirical evidence shows that communism just doesn't work in a globally competitive economy).

Which brings us to modern China. Are they communists? Yep. But they have an increasingly free-market economy, brought on mostly by seeing how well Hong Kong did under British rule until the turn of the century. Remember the big "oh shit, what's China gonna do when they get HK back?"... well China made the right move, they let HK be, and even better for them, they adopted HK's free-market tilt. China saw the USSR collapse due to it's economy, and so they've gone the other route... they trade on the free market, and they're adopting free market methods internally. They've got the man power, and natural resources to be the next super power.

IMO, China will be our replacement as the next world super power. But for a while yet, they're going to need the US as an economic partner to make it happen. Like Austin said, they're not stupid enough to start a war that can't possibly profit them, when all they need to do is keep what their doing right now to become a super power. Hell, look at China's reaction to the North Korea situation... they were *far* more diplomatic than they would have been in the past. I get the feeling that China's ready and willing to step into a world leadership roll in the next 20-50 years, and they're looking at the DPRK like a retarded younger brother that can't stop shitting in his own pants and embarrassing China.

Wars are started under two situations: potential for profit, or nothing to lose. China and the US have nothing to profit from, and everything to lose if they were go go to war. IMO, China's not a threat, or an enemy.

The past is the past... we wouldn't bomb Japan over Pearl Harbor, why bomb China over Korea/Vietnam? I'd like to think that we've learned our lessons about those situations (though Iraq tells me we haven't... but we're not in Iraq over political policy, we're in Iraq over money).

And speaking of the Middle East... Joeyy's right... that's a situation where cruise missiles really probably would have been the right move. If we stop dicking around trying to shape policy over there, and instead every time they build something that threatens us, it blows up in the middle of the night, you gotta think they'd stop building threatening stuff and keep to themselves. Our failure in the Middle East has been because we have a policy of trying to make them act in a way that profits us... so we supported Israel, we played sides in Iran/Iraq, we played sides in USSR/Afghanistan, we bailed out Kuwait... of course those people hate us, we've got our dick in their mashed potatoes. And the *only* reason we did it, was because we were attempting to secure the oil we'd need to fight Russia (who is self-sufficient w/ regard to oil) during the Cold War. i.e. all the problems in the Middle East all stem from the same 3 bad assumptions we made in the 50s!

I forget my point... it's something like: China's not a threat, in fact they're the next super power, and we have tremendous opportunity to profit from working with them and strengthening economic ties over the next few decades. The Middle East is just a cluster fuck resulting from continued poor policy for profit bullshit, and frankly we should just walk away with an international "oops, my bad" apology. Then launch cruise missiles into their reactors to keep their nuclear programs more expensive than they can afford.

Oh, and while I'm solving all the worlds' problems... Israel needs to recognize Palestine and vise versa, define some fair boarders, and actually stop their pseudo-occupation bullshit settlements... open the roads and respect each other, and the suicide attacks will stop. Israel can make concessions without looking like they're caving to terrorist tactics. Really, terrorists exist only because they have no other options... if you give them options, and give them real hope for peace, the terrorists disappear. No one really wants to blow themselves to bits if they don't have to.

[sperry]

Holy jebus... that was a long post! I wrote that bitch in like 8 minutes too!

[ScottyS]

No one really wants to blow themselves to bits if they don't have to.

EDIT:
Oh, and while I think all your remarks about China are (from our rational economic point of view) correct, it still doesn't take into account possible cultural undercurrents and long-term views. There is always that straining desire in the human mind (or lab rat's) to "take over the world". We've done it technologically and economically to a certain extent, but despite what the flaming Dem campaign managers would have us think, we do NOT own the world militarily (that was back in the late 40's). We can't even get it done against total disorganization. For the short term, the whole "China rising to a profitable and prosperous position as THE world economic power" thing is true. However, ONCE that happens, there is no guaranteeing what happens down the road. Leaders in power (and even popular desire) can go in strange directions in countries with millenia-long homogenous cultural roots. By the way, that's another reason why the US has been comparatively a very generous steward in the decades following WW2......

[Nick Koan]

Originally Posted by sperry

Holy jebus... that was a long post! I wrote that bitch in like 8 minutes too!

I read it in about 16 minutes.

An interesting aside, last week a Chinese government official was recorded saying that he expects China to fade out communism within the next 100 years. And I'd believe it too. From seeing what they are doing in regards to making their country independent on foreign resources they seem to be building a very viable free market economy. And communism, being more of an economic ideal than a political one, is going to slowly fade away. If not in name, definitely in practice.

[Dean]

U.S. out of other people's Civil and / or religion/belief (to any extent) motivated wars....

That is all.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

U.S. out of other people's Civil and / or religion/belief (to any extent) motivated wars....

That is all.

Huh? Did you leave out a word, I don't understand.

Are you implying that the Christian belief base of the US is the trigger for sending us to war? Or that religious beliefs in general trigger wars?

On the surface I'd agree with you, that religion has been one of the greatest offenders of war mongering since the dawn of time... but upon more thought, I think religion is really more of an excuse or a means to motivate a people to war, and not the actual cause of the war. Really, war is driven by profit, be it conquest of territory, opening of trade, elimination of competition, etc. Religion is just a great tool for to make your soldiers willing to fight to their last man.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

I think he just meant we should get our dicks out of other people's civil & religious mashed potatoes.

[Dean]

My point was that the U.S. should not involve itself in conflicts between factions within a given country or region especially when religion or belief systems are involved. AKA most of the middle east.

Yes, we should assist our allies in defending their borders where appropriate, but trying to "police" a civil or internal conflict is like trying to have school children herd rabid cheetahs. And thrusting "democracy" on a country leads me to think of the old horse and water adage. It just isn't going to work.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

My point was that the U.S. should not involve itself in conflicts between factions within a given country or region especially when religion or belief systems are involved. AKA most of the middle east.

Yes, we should assist our allies in defending their borders where appropriate, but trying to "police" a civil or internal conflict is like trying to have school children herd rabid cheetahs. And thrusting "democracy" on a country leads me to think of teh old horse and watter adage. It just isn't going to work.

I got it now, and I agree.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

I got it now, and I agree.

Holy $4!+... I think I just saw an airborne swine, and some guy with horns and a red tail buy a parka.

[MPREZIV]

REPENT!!!!!!! ONE!!111!!+1