Could we sound much weaker?
Iran’s leaders demonstrate their contempt for hopey-changey dialoging. Can anyone blame them?
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Iran’s leaders demonstrate their contempt for hopey-changey dialoging. Can anyone blame them?
These talks might be better than most sit-coms…
Ahmadinejad’s a racist! Probably a Rethuglican!
(Here’s where I meant to post, obviously.)
Ahmadinejad has clearly taken Obama’s measure, and once he stopped laughing, ordered full speed ahead.
Ahmadinejad to Obama:
we’ll always have Cairo
And Venezuela has taken notice and announced THEY will pursue nuclear power.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aElQ3UEU9eYM
Anyone think they won’t build a bomb.
Sucks to act so craven and still have nothing to show for it
And to think, we’re not even one year into this clown’s presidency. The only up-side is that in another couple of years, Americans will be hunting democrats with dogs.
“Could we sound much weaker?”
Well, I don’t know, but we’ll probably give it a try anyway–that’s the only way to find out for sure.
Well its going to get real interesting soon…
obama basically has no place to stand with alma…
and chavez just clinched a deal for 100 t-72 and t-90 main battle tanks… along with three kilo class subs. (along with a mish mosh of arms and missiles). the T-90s are the new ones.
My Irish friend tells me that Obama is still popular with Europeans but the leaders have written him off as an effective force.
“My Irish friend tells me that Obama is still popular with Europeans but the leaders have written him off as an effective force.”
I rather suspect that until we are needed in their defense again this (and the opposite – strong leader = hated by the Euro populace) will be the case.
Of course people who want to us weak and “humbled” are happy when we elect a President who is rushing towards that as fast as he can. Their leaders have to actually worry about what happens and make informed decisions.
Now, when the proverbial Wolf growls at their door I bet a sudden catharsis will occur when Obama waffles and talks. Personally outside of a few countries I would support waffling and talking too.
Foreign policy-wise Obama’s reign shapes up to be even worse than Carter’s, which is the Presidency that gave us the Mullahs in the first place, bless his heart.
What I fear is that all this Iranian smoke and mirrors about conventional nukes meant for Israel is a sly diversion from the real goal: an EMP strike against the US and Israel. Why do I fear this?
The Iranian emphasis has always seemed to have been on creating fissionable material — on the centrifuges. Aiming, launching and delivery systems have seemed to be almost an afterthought. And that would follow if they believe they will have little use for the massive, complicated and expensive equipment needed to accurately launch nuclear missiles at opponents. Buy some for show to fool the stupid infidels. Cheap, second-hand, barely-working stuff from Russia.
Smells like an Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon.
What you need for EMP is lots of fissionable material. You don’t need the other stuff. EMP weapons don’t need to be accurate. A freighter 50 miles off the coast slides back a hatch, a rocket is launched up at a 30 degree angle and at 300 miles high goes BOOM — and Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi have NO electricity. And won’t have electricity for months. Millions would die. It would require about as much expertise as aiming a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July. We have NO defense system for this type of weapon.
Two or three weapons would do the job. One for Israel and a couple for the US.
If I were Iran and had their mindset it would be what I would do.
I nurse the faint hope that our intelligence agencies may be alert to this possibility. I say “faint” because I’m not sure what our leaders would or could do even if an EMP strike was secretly thought to be probable. And also because the CIA has been wrong on every estimate about every nation that has acquired a conventional nuclear capability since WW2. I see no reason to believe that pattern of error won’t continue and is continuing with Iran.
Proving (once again) that “talk is cheap”.
I also fear grackle’s scenario. I pray that if that day comes, Americans will care for and rescue each other, and we become a unified country for at least a few decades after. It is desperately sad that we seem to need tragedy for large segments of the population to become aware that international dangers are real.
My grimmer worry is that one of these times, America will not unify in the face of emergency, but split.
Sorry off topic:
Charlie Gibson who thought Palin was incurious IS INCURIOUS
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/15/acorn-watch-charlie-gibson-and-the-ostrich-media/
Charlie Gibson is incurious people. And he doesn’t know squat about what the Bush Doctrine was. Idiot.
And Charlie Gibson is sexist.
It is desperately sad that we seem to need tragedy for large segments of the population to become aware that international dangers are real.
actually its not sad, just unfortunate.
the reason its not sad is that its a living testimoney to our ability as capitalists to strip the negative givens of life and leave them unconcerned.
pets are much the same way, and a housepet would rather not live the life of a wild animal in a constant state of paranoia.
however that is the norm…
Every civilization nourishes within itself various cults opposed to its values. That is basically what “Communism” represents. The specifics of ideology are unimportant, for what is represented is essentially anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, anti-Western civilization. It can change its name, it rhetoric, its tactics, but the movement in opposition to civilization remains essentially the same in its determination to destroy what presently exists. Taking this into account, take a good look around and re-examine the former Cold War battlefield. Note the changes around the globe, and the changes in Washington.
What do you think has been happening over the last 20 years?
According to Chandler, “The radical Left” is engaging in a new form of political warfare in which the Left targeted “open spaces” in the American social structure; namely, schools and universities, government, churches and community organizations. The idea was, wrote Chandler, “to transform society and replace traditional American values and institutions with neo-Marxist values.” At a Marxist conference that Chandler attended, one of the agenda items was openly listed as, “The Strange Pleasures of Destruction in Capitalist America.” He relates that most of the participants “were university professors.” In the course of this conference, purely by accident, he ran into Zapatista Subcommandante Marcos in an underground parking garage. According to Chandler, “Orthodox communsits warned conference participants about the dangers of wandering away from the basics of Marx and Lenin….” He further explained that everyone present at the conference agreed it was necessary to “destroy the state as a part of the coming socialist revolution. There simply was no other way to achieve socialist governance in the United States than to crush the existing capitalist system.”
welcome to war without guns… war by other means against an adversary in which guns are ineffective.
I’m sure el chav wants the bomb but you also have to remember that oil prodution is falling through the floor due to his socialism / mismanagment. They really will need another source of [cheap] domestic power so they’ll still have enough oil to sell and/or to replace the missing oil production.
Yes, EMP is the one WMD scenario that gives me the willies in the near-term.
We do have people thinking about EMP and working on it, and I dearly wish if we are going to spend money like drunken hedge fund managers, we would spend some of the money on hardening our infrastructure.
My take is that Obama is not serious about stopping Iran, so there is no longer any question that the Israelis will have to do it. That probably suits Obama fine. Israel takes the blame and his hands are clean.
Probably the only way to look any weaker would be to appoint Jimmy Carter as Special Ambassador to Iran.
I’ve got a bad feeling that Obama will do his worst damage in the area of foreign policy, and Iran is the number one danger.
I pray that if that day comes, Americans will care for and rescue each other, and we become a unified country for at least a few decades after … My grimmer worry is that one of these times, America will not unify in the face of emergency, but split.
We do have people thinking about EMP and working on it, and I dearly wish if we are going to spend money like drunken hedge fund managers, we would spend some of the money on hardening our infrastructure.
My take is that Obama is not serious about stopping Iran, so there is no longer any question that the Israelis will have to do it.
The amount of devastation possible is a function of amount of fissionable material and the height of the material when ignited — creating a cone of electrical deadness beneath the ignition.
No doubt there’s a certain amount of, not “hardening,” but shielding from the electromagnetic pulse. Emergency communication systems between certain groups. It’s not the blast that’s the problem. Every vehicle, every water pumping station, every refrigeration system, every radio, every TV, every computer, all these will cease working. Anything that runs on electricity will be rendered useless. Think about it.
One thing that could be tried if it happens is to walk out. Most would not make it out. The food and water would run out within days. There would be no police or military in the dead zone.
There would be a flood of refugees like the world has never seen. In fact I can imagine that refugees might be turned back at the edge of devastation. “Don’t come out of there to eat all OUR food.”
Or you could stay and try to survive. I have several pistols and one pump 12 gauge that would come in handy if I could hang on to them and a limited amount of ammo. Guns would still work. Bows, crossbows, knives, axes, hatchets, the odd sword, clubs, hammers turned into weapons — all would be good to have. You wouldn’t be able to survive alone, you would have join a group.
The economy — destroyed. Our institutions, what would be left — overwhelmed. I’m thinking our government, if any government were left, would surrender and sue for peace.
I, too, hope Israel will cut the Iranian water off. A nice trick would be if our government acted like it did not want an Israeli strike but was secretly giving Netanyahu the nod. Another faint hope, considering the fellow in the Whitehouse.
grackle, Bret Stephens talked about how US foreign policy is pushing Israel towards that situation today.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203917304574410672271269390.html
According to Stephens, this is not a desirable outcome for anyone. To paraphrase Neo’s post on Updike (an excellent thread by the way), peace is contingent upon the threat of violence. If so, then outsourcing our role as sheriff in these parts has severely curbed the level of violence we can use to make peace. Israel doesn’t know if it can successfully call the strike, either politically or militarily.
We would have had a higher rate of success at preventing war if we hadn’t made it publicly known that our threat was off the table. Recent events in East Asia and the Middle East are a testament to that.
I, too, hope Israel will cut the Iranian water off. A nice trick would be if our government acted like it did not want an Israeli strike but was secretly giving Netanyahu the nod. Another faint hope, considering the fellow in the Whitehouse.
grackle: I doubt the Obama admin is giving Israel the nod; they just know that Israel has little choice if the US won’t do it, and if Israel does it, it’s no skin off Obama. He gets to have his hands clean and toughen up his negotiating stance towards Israel.
No doubt there’s a certain amount of, not “hardening,” but shielding from the electromagnetic pulse.
grackle: Tell someone else how to suck eggs. Google “emp hardening”.
I said: No doubt there’s a certain amount of, not “hardening,” but shielding from the electromagnetic pulse.
Huxley: grackle: Tell someone else how to suck eggs. Google “emp hardening”.
I stand corrected. There is such a thing as “hardening” against EMP. Thank you for pointing that out, Huxley. My thinking was into a mode where “hardening” meant blast protection.
grackle: That was graceful. Thanks!
Back to the question of a possible Israeli strike. Iran must know there is a possibility of an Israel strike. After all, Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear facility in 2007.
Iran could be hoping Obama can forestall an Israeli strike until Iranian defenses are improved to the point of limiting the effectiveness of a strike.
Or until Iranian fissionable material production facilities are decentralized and spread out enough so that an Israeli strike would be somewhat ineffective and allow the production to continue with minimal abatement.
Or Iran may be using as bait the aiming, launching and delivery systems that they have no intention of using anyway.
Or Iran may already have enough fissionable material for a devastating EMP and is waiting for an Israeli action in order to justify the Iranian strike as a defensive action — waiting for the most advantageous moment propaganda-wise.
The Israelis may be thinking that if they destroy the launching facilities that they have done their job because what good is fissionable material without the means of delivery?
From the Iranian point of view if your goal is an EMP strike, you use the unneeded delivery systems as decoys but continue with the refining of the fissionable material until you amass enough to deal with the infidel once and for all.
There’s other factors: How much fissionable material has Iran bought on the black market? How much has it secretly bought from North Korea? How much has it secretly bought from Russia? Is China playing a role? Pakistan? Are intelligence estimates of the number of centrifuges possessed by Iran accurate?
“Could we sound much weaker?”
Yes we can!
“Could we sound much weaker?”
Great… your question got answered.
“U.S. Shelves Nuclear-Missile Shield”
Now, the weakness doesn’t necessarily come in the shelving of the plan – missile defense technology is not really proven at this time – but rather in the way the plan was dropped. As Fausta has accurately noted, “the entire foreign policy has been, “appease our enemies, drop our friends.”
> Iran’s leaders demonstrate their contempt for hopey-changey dialoging. Can anyone blame them?
I think you misspelled that: “DOPEY-changey”.
Easy mistake.
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A “Racist”? Yes. Yes I am.