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No more Mr. Nice Guy: Ahmadinejab and the UN — 36 Comments

1. Spanky, please stop playing games:
   So far as I know, Ahmadinejad hasn’t called for nuclear attacks on the US; he hasn’t called for nuclear attacks on anyone.

   In fact, he has said:

   “We would like to send the message to those who claim Iran is searching for nuclear weapons that there is no such policy and this [policy] is illegal and against our religion.”

   And…”A nation which has culture, logic and civilisation does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons.”

   So, according to you, we need to take him at face value. Guess he doesn’t want nukes!

   You know that those quotes are old, coming from the period when Tehran was still running the Europeans around the block a few times, and claiming the whole program was for civilian use… Then they got to the point where even the Euros declared the existing talks useless… so Tehran came clean and laughed at everyone and told us outright they were working towards a bomb, that they’ve ‘joined the club’, and have every right to the bomb…

   It’s frankly insulting that you’d think people here would buy that approach.

2. Oh, and one more:

   “Russia would shoot their people in the back, if they ran towards the Soviet Lines. Which meant that Russia’s ruthlessness stopped the German advance, by piling bodies onto bodies.”

   The Russians didn’t halt the Germans by “piling bodies onto bodies.” The Russians halted the German advance in two battles, Zhukov’s offensive at Moscow in the winter of 1941 and again at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942. Do you have any concept of these battles?

   See, this is why I make fun of you for reading sci-fi and then using that to justify your beliefs. You have this fantasy in your head, about ruthlessness, about the bodies piling up, about changing the course of the battle through sheer strength of will, because those authors can create whatever world they want. They can create an imaginary world in which sheer strength of will can actually win a battle, and so you think that this applies to the real world. You don’t actually know anything about the war, or understand its key turning points, as in the two battles I mentioned above. Instead of actually knowing about the war, you have this vague feeling about the war, this one image (bodies piling up) that encapsulates your entire thinking about the war. In a book, an author can cover a war in a page; in real life, it’s a little more complex than that. But to you, that’s just it. These wars are like epics, space operas for you to think “wow, how cool! They blew up a planet! The Russians just piled up the bodies until they won! Superficial lack of understanding!”

   Yammer, try reading an actual history book for a change.

3. “Why would I say that they didn’t use tanks in WWI?”

   Because this is what you said. I don’t know why you said it, when it could so easily be checked, but this is what you said. You immediately back-pedaled when called on it, claiming that you didn’t actually say it, and now you’re claiming that you said something completely different (“they didn’t use them until they had to use them”).

   I’m not even sure what that means, “they didn’t use them until they had to use them.” The Allies certainly never had to do anything. War doesn’t work that way. The Allies were seeking a weapon that could break the stalemate of trench warfare; both sides tried lots of things (high explosives, flamethrowers, gas, etc.). But tanks were neither necessary nor decisive. They might have tipped a few battles, but the war was won and lost by the infantry and the artillery.

   Jesus, Yammer. You know so little it’s amazing. You talk and you talk and you talk and you’ve obviously read a book or two, or seen a couple of shows on this History Channel, because you talk as if you know something, and you might fool a few people who don’t know any better. But some of the things you say are just so absurd, it’s like listening to a history lecture as translated from Enlgish to Chinese to Swahili and back to English again. Some of the words are in the right place, but they don’t really mean what you think they mean.

4. Oh, here’s another one:

   “This was actually due to Stalin’s ruthlessness, not Hitler’s.”

   This I should have, but did not, expect from you. After all, you’re the little wannabe fascist. Oh, how you must long for those cool uniforms…

   Hitler planned the war, from the very beginning, to be as ruthless as possible. In fact, he said:

   “The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies.”

   This comes from page 830 of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, in case you were wondering about the citation.

   But even if Hitler had never said this, the idea that the 25 million Soviet citizens who died were solely, or even predominantly, the responsibility of Stalin, is revisionist history in defense of Hitler and the Nazis.

   Here are a few terms to google:

   Einsatzkommando
   Babi Yar
   Alfred Rosenberg

   Official German policy in the East was to divert Russian agricultural output to Germany. This would have two effects: freeing Germany from the threat of a blockade and starving off the population of Russia. It was official German policy to starve to death millions of people. Read page 563 of Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History for transcripts from Nurenburg in which they discuss planning the murder of thirty million civilians.

   I knew I was writing to an idiot, but I didn’t know that I was also writing to a Nazi-symp.

5. Yammer, I don’t know where to start with you because you make so many errors that any one of them should illustrate how little you really know and understand.

   Let’s pick this one:

   “The Germans had better tactics and better machineguns, they only quit cause they were scared of the Dough Boys. What’s a naval historian doing with landwar anyway? Hobby time?”

   The Germans were certainly more flexible for most of the war, though the French (and the British, much more slowly and reluctantly) adapted their tactics not long into the war. The German’s chief advantages at the outset of the war were their extensive use of mortars, which were easier to use against trenches than the French flat-trajectory 75s, and the fact that they spent most of the war in the West on the defensive. German machine guns, being water-cooled, were actually harder to move than Allied air-cooled machine guns, and so offered a distinct disadvantage.

   But the Germans didn’t lose the war because of America. They lost the war because the German economy was never suited to a war like that. The Germans, throughout the war, certainly killed Allied soldiers at a higher rate than they lost soldiers, but when they were facing the combined forces of Russia, Britian, France, and the rest with only weak allies on their side (Austria was essentially a non-factor after 1916). They just couldn’t afford it, in men or material.

   No, the Germans lost because of this: they knew that an unrestricted submarine campaign would draw the US into the war, so they gambled that the campaign would starve Britian into submisison before Americans arrived. When that didn’t work, the Germans made one last gamble. They moved massive numbers of troops from East to West after the surrender of Russia and launched their Spring Offensives of 1918. They almost succeeded in splitting the British from the French, allowing them to knock the British out of the war, but Foch had carefully preserved a large reserve and plugged the gap. The Germans lots 300,000 men in a matter of a few days, all that was left of their manpower reserve, and they just couldn’t keep fighting anymore.

   It didn’t help that the German soldiers, who hadn’t eaten real meat in years, overran Allied stores and found that, unlike them, the Allies were well-fed. It didn’t take long before the mutinies broke out. The Germans were already in retreat when the Americans arrived with more the a platoon or two.

   Anyway, Yammer, this is the sort of thing that other people know that you clearly do not. I recommend that, instead of reading fiction (which you should still do for fun), you should try reading non-fiction, and quoting that as evidence for your arguments. It does wonders.

   And Yammer, a professional historian with a doctorate in history working for the Navy is not a naval historian. A naval historian is an historian who specializes in naval history. The service branches employ a number of historians who work on a variety of topics. The one to whom I referred specialized in German history and military strategy through history. Nice try, though, to denigrate an expert’s opinion because it doesn’t match up to yours. I shouldn’t really say that it surprised me, though.

   Seriously: if you’re interested in this sort of thing, I can put together a reading list for you.

6. Gandhi lived in India, not Kenya.

   I thought you knew that Spank, did you have to look it up?

   Yammer, I don’t even know where to begin with you.

   Start at the beginning, go to the middle, and end at the end.

   You make up historical “facts” out of whole cloth (“the Allies never used tanks in the First World War”)

   It’s a fact the Allies never used tanks in WWI before they were forced to. Which was the point, I believe, but you wouldn’t know that would you.

   and then, when confronted with reality, claim you never really said it.

   Why would I say that they didn’t use tanks in WWI? That would be like saying the Eastern Roman Empire didn’t use cataphracts because they were forced to. I think you need remedial logic.

   In each othe cases I listed, the use of “ruthlessness” did not produce victory; on the contrary, the more violent the actor was, the greater the resistance it provoked on the other side.

   You learned this from a military book, eh? A book general, I see.

   Saddam, for example, never defeated the Kurds, despite using mass-casualty weapons like poison gas.

   What does that have to do with anything, really? With no fly zones, what’s the problem, you can’t bomb the kurds anymore.

   They forget that France won World War One.

   The Germans had better tactics and better machineguns, they only quit cause they were scared of the Dough Boys. What’s a naval historian doing with landwar anyway? Hobby time?

   What traitors? German traitors?

   Let me not do a Justin here, and outline the logic. The logic is that ruthlessness wins war simply because war is a contest of will, as much as it is a contest of logistics and strategem. Whoever quits first, loses. Russia would shoot their people in the back, if they ran towards the Soviet Lines. Which meant that Russia’s ruthlessness stopped the German advance, by piling bodies onto bodies.

   Russia wouldn’t give up, which allowed them to hit back. Will isn’t everything, but it is 3/4ths the battle.

   Yammer, the Soviets lost 20-25 million people in the course of the war. In his infamous “Commissar Order,” Hitler made explicit that the war was to be waged as ruthlessly as possible.

   This was actually due to Stalin’s ruthlessness, not Hitler’s. It’s kinda hard not to rock up lots of kills when they keep trying to rush your MG nests.

   Here’s the real low down on war people. Will and determination makes up 3/4ths of the war effort. Strategy and tactics about 1/10th maybe, and logistics the rest.

   It is important to be ruthless, but it is also important to be right. Spank’s arguments to the contrary, doesn’t do what he thinks it does. It doesn’t argue against ruthlessness, it just argues that being smart about it is a lot more useful than just throwing bodies at the problem like the Soviets did.

   Being right is about placing logistics correctly and choosing the correct strategy and tactics. Realistically, it was not a good idea to throw Soviet bodies at the Germans. It was a lot smarter to do guerrila warfare and try to slow the Germans down and then cut the German logistics. It took a few million for Russia to get this of course, but that’s how it is with the Russians. Not very smart, but very determined.

   America is both very smart and very determined. That’s why Normandy worked, Hitler was fooled into thinking it was somewhere else by smart British spies and double agents. Still hard, which meant willpower was required, but not impossible. Not when there is a will, there is a way.

7. Spanky its about time someone shut this kool-aid drinking punk.

   Thank you

8. “-Germany in the Soviet Union

   Ya, shoot the traitors if they run back towards the Soviet lines, a good example of ruthlessness.”

   Out of all your gibberish, I think I am most puzzled by this. Of all the atrocities commited by the Germans on the Eastern Front, you decided to mention the shooting of traitors if they run back towards the Soviet lines? I’m not even sure to whom you are referring. What traitors? German traitors?

   Yammer, the Soviets lost 20-25 million people in the course of the war. In his infamous “Commissar Order,” Hitler made explicit that the war was to be waged as ruthlessly as possible.

   And you don’t know this? Are you unaware, as your comment makes it seem? Do you really know so little? Or did you just make up another historical “fact”?

9. Yammer, I really don’t get it. You have such a superficial understanding of history, and you say things that can so very easily be checked. No British ruthlessness in Kenya?

   Why, “British brutality in Mau Mau conflict”

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,836653,00.html

10. Yammer, I don’t even know where to begin with you. You make up historical “facts” out of whole cloth (“the Allies never used tanks in the First World War”) and then, when confronted with reality, claim you never really said it.

    In each othe cases I listed, the use of “ruthlessness” did not produce victory; on the contrary, the more violent the actor was, the greater the resistance it provoked on the other side.

    Saddam, for example, never defeated the Kurds, despite using mass-casualty weapons like poison gas. The Germans, despite fighting the most ruthless war in history on the Eastern Front, were defeated by the Soviets. The Germans dropped bombs on London in the Blitz, believing that the ruthless slaughter of civilians would cause them to drop out of the war. The Allied air campaign against Germany was meant to blast them into submission, but German war industrial output reached its peak during the bombing.

    And so on.

    A couple of points:

    It’s not spelled “Ghandie,” it’s spelled “Gandhi.” Gandhi lived in India, not Kenya.

    As for the French, I highly recommend you read Robert Doughty’s “Pyrrhic Victory : French Strategy and Operations in the Great War.” An historian with the Navy once said to me: Everyone makes fun of France. They forget that France won World War One.

    But on this subject, Robert Farley wrote much better than I can. Read:

    http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/05/question-of-will.html

11. -Germany in the Soviet Union

    Ya, shoot the traitors if they run back towards the Soviet lines, a good example of ruthlessness.

    -Saddam against the Kurds

    Which gave him several more years of power, until the US came into the picture, and it wasn’t to help the Kurds.

    -The American Air Campaign against North Vietnam

    SB said it himself.

    -The Soviet Union in Afghanistan

    Without nukes, can’t do much.

    -The British in Kenya

    Brits can’t handle Ghandie, no ruthlessness there at all.

    -The French in Algeria

    The French couldn’t win a war if they were fighting a kid.

    -The German Air Campaign against Britain
    
    Not blowing up RAF airbases is not ruthlessness. Got a little bit scared I see.

    -The Japanese in China

    Here’s an example where American Ruthlessness in Japan produced a resounding victory.

    If you ever quit your day job, Spank, you can take a job with the enemies of America in propagandizing about American defeats through using ruthlessness. That’s pretty popular now a days. You can have a party right then, eh?

12. Of course! Why haven’t we thought about that before? All we need is to be more ruthless.

    Here’s a small list of cases in which ruthlessness resulted in a resounding victory:

    -Germany in the Soviet Union

    -The Allied Air Campaign against Germany

    -Saddam against the Kurds

    -The American Air Campaign against North Vietnam

    -Saddam against Iran

    -The Soviet Union in Afghanistan

    -The British in Kenya

    -The French in Algeria

    -The German Air Campaign against Britain

    -The Japanese in China

    Woops! I meant to make a list of examples in which ruthlessness resulted in victory, when in reality I offered a list of examples in which the dropping of more bombs and the killing of more people resulted in defeat, rather than victory, for the ruthless party. Woops!

13. As you can see, a lack of ruthlessness not only encourages and makes your enemies happy, but also your domestic opponents like anon as well.

    Imagine that all the WMD’s and we can’t even use one LOL.

    You see them laughing? Amanie is doing the same. They’re having a party, lots of parties, did you see the “nuclear” one they had recently? Yellowcake, yummm.

    I’d also make the note that when people criticize President Bush for not being more pro-active, people like david stay quiet. When people say Bush is golden and what not, people like david come out and say the neo-cons are slavishly following the Government and not thinking.

    It’s not equal opportunity, because the hit and run strategy requires asymmetrical variables to be present.

14. For those who might have gotten their impressions of the Crusades from older books on the Crusades, like Runciman’s 1954 multi-volume, “A History of the Crusades,” a recent article by a academic expert on the crusades, Professor Thomas F., Madden titled, “The Real HIstory of the Crusades,” might be an eye-opener. see http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2002/
    cover.htm

15. The Iranian “president” is just talken trash. If they are at an advantage then they can do all the trash talken.

    But by no means are they foolish to attack anyone including Israel.

    U.S. on the other hand is in no position to talk trash. (at least at the moment.)

    Imagine that all the WMD’s and we can’t even use one LOL.

    P.S. Ahmadinejad is as much of a “president” as Bush no wonder they dont like each other.

16. Why wouldn’t the Iranians want nukes again? As shown with N. Korea, if you have them, we will walk on egg shells around you.

17. Great! Just great!

    The UN is clown college run by the most malevolent and venal of the clowns and backbone and reality are in real short supply.

    Ahmadinejab is just plain nuts and he believes the 12th, the “Hidden Imam” is about to enter stage left, the Apocalypse is at hand and–great news–Ahmadinejab has a starring role!

    What a combination! Does anyone seriously believe anything concrete, much less promoting peace in the current situation, can come from this combination?

18. Spanky, why are you ignoring the fact that the Iranian President has also called for Israel to be wiped off the map, and has promised to strike American interests worldwide?

    And it doesn’t matter that the power in Iran rests with the Mullahs, because he’s their hand-picked spokesman.

    I’m sure it’s comforting to think we can all get along… but what if they don’t _want_ to get along?

    Again, how many dead do you need?

19. Nice, accuse me of anti-Semitism because…well, because, I guess.

    So far as I know, Ahmadinejad hasn’t called for nuclear attacks on the US; he hasn’t called for nuclear attacks on anyone.

    In fact, he has said:

    “We would like to send the message to those who claim Iran is searching for nuclear weapons that there is no such policy and this [policy] is illegal and against our religion.”

    And…”A nation which has culture, logic and civilisation does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons.”

    So, according to you, we need to take him at face value. Guess he doesn’t want nukes!

    I reiterate: I don’t think the Iranians want nuclear weapons, but I do think they want to be able to produce them very quickly if they want to.

    But the bigger problem with all this is that Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge of nuclear policy. The presidency in Iran is still a fairly marginal position, and has more to do with domestic policy (which explains why Ahmadinejad’s populism is really popular with Iran’s rural poor).

    The real leaders of Iran are the aptly-titled Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, and in the case of nukes, the Security Council. Ahmadinejad is great at getting everyone worked up, but all the president in Iran can really do is run his mouth.

20. Spanky:

    It’s not the Weekly Standard arguing for Iranian strikes against the West, it’s the Iranian _government_. The _president_ of Iran. Why do you refuse to believe what the man says openly?

    How many dead will it take to convince you? A million? Will it take two million if they’re Jewish?

21. This is, of course, premised on the notion that there will be a nuclear war. I sincerely doubt the Iranians would want to start one, but who knows? Maybe they have their version of the Weekly Standard arguing for launching pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the US.

22. I think the idea is to stop them now before there is a nuclear war.

23. What did they say about Trojan horses again?

24. Rice said it was time for the Security Council to act if the world body wished to remain credible.

    Now why does that sound familiar to what I heard in 2002?

    If you keep saying that you’ll get burned if you touch the stove, and the kid keeps touching the stove and doesn’t get burned… you really think this will do anything to make the kid stop touching the stove?

    A 4 year old would understand how that works. Our State Department Diplomats seem to think it’s a bit more complex than that.

    I don’t know why Bush is so pathological about diplomacy and international coalitions, but it’s really annoying.

    “The Security Council is the primary and most important institution for the maintenance of peace and stability and security and it cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a member state,” Rice said….

    The primary institution for the maintenance of peace and stability os the US Navy and the United States military.

    Leaders are leaders for a reason, and not because they can shift their responsibility to the UN. You can delegate, Sec. Rice, but the mantle of command and the burden of leadership can never be delegated.

    We all know what Bolton thinks of the UN, but when Bush his boss tells Bolton to reform the UN instead of blowing it up with det cord and mass purges, Bolton tries and do it. The problem isn’t with the followers, it is always with the leaders. When you don’t have good officers setting good standards, it don’t matter if you have crack elite ground troops.

    The problem isn’t Sec Rice, Sec Rumsfield, Bolton, or anyone else in the administration. The problem is Bush, the buck stops there, any policy problems in his administration came about by his decisions. And since he won’t tell us why he made those decisions, unless you piece together some of his memoirs or something over the years, it is both hard to pin down his justifications to argue against as well as to confront his own reasoning.

    It’s easy to argue against Bush’s UN policies, but people like Spank will never do so, and thus Bush will keep on trucking because those who oppose him, oppose him for the wrong reasons.

    Even now, it is not very clear why Bush is multilateral, it is just a fact that Bush IS multilateral, to an extent that drastically overreached his father. Some kind of parent-child dichotomy going on there, trying to separate yourself from your parents, then ending up almost just like them going on.

    Obviously Rumsfield doesn’t care about “Old Europe”. But Bush does. Why? Is it because the Democrats got pissed and moaned and went on about Bush the unilateralist? Not really, too stubborn for that. The real reasons probably won’t be apparent until well after Bush has sank his legacy onto the history of American presidents.

    Personally, I want the US to give Iran a nuclear bomb as a present, and then accidentally set it off when it’s on Iranian territory with a remote detonator.

25. Richard, of course it might not work. There is never a guarantee. But a conventional strike against Iran offers no guarantee that it would destroy completely the Iranian nuclear program (check out the Institute for Science and International Security for good analysis of satellite data), or that an invasion of Iran would look any different from the mess that is Iraq (even if we had the troops, which we don’t, Iran’s terrain, population, and military indicate that it would be a lot worse). A nuclear strike has all the drawbacks of, you know, a nuclear strike. So of course there’s no guarantee – but what do you have to lose by opening your mouth and saying words?

    Little blip:

    “your Iranian brothers”

    “Americans – if in fact you count yourself as one”

    “your brethern whack jobs”

    Oh, I see. I call into question the logic of rushing off to start a nuclear war, and therefore I hate America. Gotcha.

    “If it wern’t for the US all of arabia would be under Nazi rule”

    Actually, it was the British and the Free French who drove the Germans from the Middle East, what few of them there were there.

    “as a show of force from the only country that has even a remote chance of forwarding democratic causes in the world, we should essentially erase thier ability to function as a society”

    So…as the country that promotes democracy, we should commit genocide…to promote democracy…

    Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic. The words are “redux,” “enslaved,” and “their. I’m not too sure about this:

    “Muslims / Arabs / Islamists cooked of camel ship for eons”

    Should I call into question whether or not you consider yourself an American? You don’t quite seem to have the language down pat just yet.

26. Is that even Arabic? I don’t know the language, but I do know some about the alphabet, and those are some awfully short words (either that or my font is doing something weird, and rendering the final forms when it should be using the initial/medial forms).

27. Spanky: You silly little arabic writing liberal.

    The object in spanking, pun intended, your Iranian brothers in the near term is so we (Americans – if in fact you count yourself as one)don’t have to face down your brethern whack jobs four years down the road – when they are a credible threat and proliferated the big firecrackers to all thier arab buddies. If it wern’t for the US all of arabia would be under Nazi rule – which is to say, inslaved or dead. Muslims / Arabs / Islamists cooked of camel ship for eons, so it will be easy for them to adapt once we teach them the lesson that has been too long coming.

    The United States is currently capable of curtailing any and all Iranian efforts to go nuclear. This could be done conventionally. Additionally, and as a show of force from the only country that has even a remote chance of forwarding democratic causes in the world, we should essentially erase thier ability to function as a society. Iran is the undisputed leader in support to world terrorism. We are in a war agaist terrorism. I say we smoke ’em. Bomb thier military instalations, shipyards, water, electrical….. thier intire infrastructure – gone. Shermans march to the sea, redoux.

    In a world full of uncertainty, America needs to stand up against the Islamist – Iranian / all the same to me’s, and give them the ass kickin’ they have had coming since they took American hostages during the Carter administration – if Jimmy had even one ball he would have taught the mullahs a lesson back then. This will set precedence for North Korea (China’s evil little brother sponsorship), Hugo and the rest of the unruley world. The message? We are big, we are bad, you jack with us and we take you out. Simple. This is the only way, and the only thing the tyrants and the growing threats to this worlds security understand – brute force & the will to use it. Two wars, two wins, my bets are on the US. Who are your chips on?

28. Spanky.
    Suppose they take the offer and renege?

    The way this dance goes is they get to renege and we don’t get to respond as if they’d reneged. See Oslo, for example.

    You may remember some arms control treaties during the Cold War. The USSR ignored what they’d signed and the US’ left insisted on redefining the problem so that the Sovs really didn’t cheat. The Backfire bomber wasn’t intercontinental. Except if it had external fuel tanks, which, the lefties said, the Sovs promised not to put on them.

    It used to be said the Sovs would put a silly proposal forward and let the US negotiate it with the democratic party.

    Don’t trust them. Don’t trust you.

29. Hmm…do I get awesome powers because I’m an evil Lefty? Someone look into that for me.

    I can speak for myself, not THE LEFT, about Iran. I happen to know a thing or two about Iran. !ﻡﻧﺯﻰﻣ ﻑﺮﺤ ﻰﺴﺮﺎﻓ ﻦﻣ

    I don’t think, unlike you, that Iran is going to be an apocalyptic showdown. Yes, yes, Ahmadinejad is crazy and so forth. But he’s not in charge of Iran; that would be the Ayatollahs and the Guardian Council. Ahmadinejad doesn’t get to do anything they don’t want him to, and they tend not to want to be vaporized by Israeli or American nuclear bombs.

    What does Iran want? Iran wants several things. One, it wants security – America is talking about nuking it, has troops on its borders, its once stable borders are replaced by chaos, etc. Two, it wants normalization – Iran really wants normalized trade and relations with the rest of the world. Three – Iran really wants to be the leader of the Muslim world and has been frustrated in its inability to do so.

    I don’t think Iran wants nuclear bombs. I think that it wants to have the capacity, at short notice, to build bombs. Its nuclear power program is very popular; so popular that Ahmadinejad the populist would likely push it ahead no matter what. The Iranian people tend to be more ambivalent towards actual nuclear weapons.

    Would Iran give nuclear weapons to Hizbollah? Almost certainly not. What regime that cares about survival would give nuclear weapons to a terrorist group acting outside their control? Iran funds Hizbollah because Hizbollah is a useful tool for extending their power throughout the Middle East, but nuclear weapons? No one’s that stupid.

    Thomas PM Barnett, who wrote “The Pentagon’s New Map,” might be one of the dumbest people alive, but he got it right on Iran: we’re busy with Iraq, while all the while Iran is saying “sure you don’t want to talk? I’m just gonna creep a liiiiitle closer to nukes. Sure you don’t want to talk? Ok, a teeeeny little step. Don’t want to talk? Are you sure? Uh-oh, I took another step towards nukes…”

    The irony of all this is: are Iranian leaders thinking “If we give into American hints at using nuclear weapons, will we be appeasing them? Will they simply demand more in the future? What about next time?”

    That’s the biggest problem: no dialogue. We haven’t talked to Iran in years. We don’t really know what they want – we can only guess. So, I propose something that you’re going to hate – hate! – because of its cowardly appeasement. Who talks? They’re evil! Whatever.

    I propose that we offer Iran a grand bargain: normalization of relations in exchange for a complete halt on uranium enrichment and complete transparency in their nuclear program (which, by international law under NPT, they’re still entitled, and which unless we’re willing to start a nuclear war they’re going to have no matter what).

    We can talk about anything we want – trade, relations, drug trafficing, al Qaeda, cooperation in Afghanistan, coordinating policy in Iraq (hey, we both support Shi’ite religious parties!), anything we please.

    If Iran takes the offer…well, we’re one step closer to an end to the crisis. I bet they’d take it.

    And if they didn’t, well, then we could get back to the wailing and the doomsday talk.

30. Seriously man. Don’t mess with me. My powers are awesome. That’s why we control no branches of the government. Awesome!

31. Don’t expect a sensible response; I’d guess Lefty is actually some right-winger trying to mock me.

    The left has awesome power, make no mistake about it. They just suffer from a self directed version of their usual utopian vision; essentially, since thier power is not absolute and total, then it might as well be non-existant.

    The grief the left causes the world stems as often from underestimating their powers, as it does from overestimating them. The few liberals who can see reality for what it truly is, are ostracized and labeled “neo-cons.”

32. What would you do about the current Iranian situation, Lefty? Is it a problem? And if so, how great? And lastly, what would you do to solve it?
    I look forward to your or any other liberal’s response.

33. My God! I had no idea that we were so powerful? Who knew that we were so powerful that we could stop the United States from saving itself from nuclear annihilation?

    Sweet!

34. Here’s what will happen.

    The UN won’t do anything.
    The US will make noise, but can’t do anything either because of opposition from the Left and the Europeans.

    Iran gets the bomb.

    Iran won’t just attack Israel, though. They’re too smart for that. Iran just becomes the impregnable base, training center, and supply depot for Islamist terrorism across the world.

    Iran also helps other Muslim states get the bomb. Once there are several, so the sponsors cannot be identified with any certainty, then comes the nuclear terrorism against America, Israel, and Europe.

35. It certainly is, for us Americans… all roads end in either a US destroyed in a nuclear war, or turned into an Orwellian dictatorship with the international media playing the part of Big Brother.

    If there is a third option, I’m not seeing it. Or at least not seeing one that doesn’t involve fantasies about The Rapture, UN action, Iran not firing off nukes at Israel the instant it gets any, etc.

36. I feel as though this confrontation with Iran is some terrible turning point for our world.

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