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DCblogger's picture
Submitted by DCblogger on Sat, 06/12/2010 - 4:51pm
Departments: 
Department of War
Thread: 
Iran Clusterfuck

Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

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three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Radical Shia hegemony with nukes expanding beyond Iran and Iraq in an already peak oil paranoid region with no shortage of Shia-hating Sunni state sponsored Wahhabi extremist movements with satellite operations worldwide. What could possibly go wrong. Must be the Israeli's fault. Let's close our eyes count to hundred and wake up in wonderland.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

But I'm a little unclear on what you're proposing for your non-Wonderland world:

1. Israel should destroy all current Shia and/or Sunni and/or Wahabi nuclear installations with (a) conventional or (b) nuclear weapons?

2. The United States should destroy all current Shia and/or Sunni and/or Wahabi nuclear installations with (a) conventional or (b) nuclear weapons

3. The United States should guarantee Israel's safey, should Israel destroy all current Shia and/or Sunni and/or Wahabi nuclear installations with (a) conventional or (b) nuclear weapons?

I guess I'm also a little unclear on why Mutually Assured Destruction won't work in the Middle East as it has elsewhere. Sure, non-proliferation would be great, but Israel has already proliferated, so perhaps we should look for alternatives. Yes? No?

madamab's picture
Submitted by madamab on

Who has clearly stated that he woud like to wipe Israel off the map, having nukes, is not an outcome that anyone should think is okay. (The Gaza Strip would be incinerated too - I hope people get that.)

OTOH, if I were a Middle Eastern leader, the lesson I'd take from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is, "Better get nukes or the US will invade my country for its natural resources." As nutty as Achmadinejad is, he's smart enough to know how to protect himself.

If we're going to get to that "nuclear umbrella" Hillary was talking about (mutually assured destruction), we'd better hurry the fuck up and get on with it. Sanctions are not the answer, yet that's all Obama seems to be willing to do.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

No, they could take out the 3 million in Tel Aviv with the missile technology they currently have without affecting Gaza too much. A win for Israel despising progressives. Yeah, halfway to elimination.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

Come on. You think nuking Tel Aviv is going to have no nuclear effect on Gaza? Another silly statement. Fall out, water, blast, the effect of a miss, anything.

And then, of course, there are the Palestinians working and living in or near Tel Aviv. Your argument is that Iran would nuke them, too?

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Let's just say if it weren't for sanctions, interventions, negotiations, inspections, pressure from China and Russia, North Korea today would have nukes that could take out San Francisco and Los Angeles, and they would be exporting that capability to rogue states and groups everywhere because they need the money. Mutually assured destruction would not scare them much, their leaders (not all their people) are that paranoid, desperate and delusional. They'd pick San Francisco off without much hand wringing. Not sure Ahmadinejad and the ruling mullahs who currently receive nuclear and weapons technologies from North Korea would be much less unpredictable. Sunni Pakistan of course have nukes which the growing fundamentalist militant extremists there would love to have. Again, mutually assured self destruction has meaning when you have a problem with suicide.

What should be done? No more, no less than Hillary is trying to get done on the issue and global threat, while progressive gurus curse her as a War Criminal from the comfort and safety of their bedrooms. Wonderland, where we can tell stories of a world that is innocent and peaceful and well meaning and we're the ones victimizing everyone, is right there below the rabbit hole.

Because a 100 million people didn't die in the second world war. Or if they did, that was our grandparents' generation, ancient history.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

Three wickets:

I posed three concrete policy alternatives above (exactly what you didn't like about Silber).

I would like you to pick one, or propose your own. Otherwise, I think you're doing exactly what you accuse others of doing.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

That's it? Those options would likely all lead to war, which is not a reason to exclude them from consideration in the minds of those involved. But by themselves, they represent a false choice, black or white. I'd include other measures mentioned above in the first part of my rabbit hole comment.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

Otherwise, just like you think Arthur is, you're just commenting to hear yourself talk, so far as I can tell. Windbaggery, in your parlance.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on


..sanctions, interventions, negotiations, inspections, pressure from China and Russia..

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

For a mish-mash like that, you're throwing round accusations of anti-semitism and screaming at other people because they aren't making policy proposals?

To pick only two:

1. Define "intervention." Typically, "intervention" means military intervention. What form of military intervention are you proposing?

2. How do you propose to "let George do it" and induce or threaten Russia and China to intervene?

Thanks for "cutting and pasting." Since your reference was unclear, I asked for clarity, which you provided.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

I'm not screaming. I rarely if ever scream. I'm offering a counterpoint (one I happen to believe in) to the prevailing view here on a difficult and sensitive topic. I respect everyone here.

DCblogger's picture
Submitted by DCblogger on

we know for certain that Iraq does not have them and the UN (the ones who got it right on Iraq) says that Iran does not have nukes or anything like.

The Iran-has-nukes spin is brought to us by the same people who lied us into the Iraq war. No one should listen to them.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

This is the same Arthur Silber who wrote last month that Hillary is a "war criminal and a monster." Has Arthur followed up with the Hague on the war criminal bit. Else he's another emotional blogger prone to flowery exaggeration who's more interested in his writing than in finding policy solutions.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Which is why Arthur's comment about war criminal is silly. Sounds like just another windbag.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

You're the one demanding that Arthur "follow up" with the Hague Court.

Or is your operational definition of war criminal somebody who's actually stood in the dock at the Hague or at Nuremburg? That would seem to rather limit the field, eh?

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Does it mean something different when Arthur says war criminal than when Glenn says war criminal. Is there a list, or can it include all wingnuts. Hard to keep up with these progressive memes, which frankly don't have much nuance.

Submitted by jawbone on

maybe have nukes at some future time, the exact time being uncertain, but we'll know it when we see it. However, we must ACT before we see that Iran has nukes, so skip the proof shit. See, it's some kind of preventive pre-emption of prevention. Or Pre-pre-pre-emption or or neo-prevention or...something like that.

And, as Obama says of so much, it's complicated. So, STFU and get with the program.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Progressives need to get beyond this knee jerk mindset that anything wingnuts say must be wrong or untrue because they said it, or the mindset that because Iraq was a monumental mistake there must not still be real and imminent dangers in the world. (Truther psychology. The people in Washington are making all this shit up. It's all an elaborate ruse that Washington makes seem real by doing things like flying our own planes into buildings.) It's the isolationist mentality and politics of 1930s America vis a vis Germany and the world, a time incidentally when anti-semitism was at its peak here and abroad.

The Iran regime for instance has been the number one importer of North Korean nuclear weapons technology. If South Korea can launch space satellites, North Korea can make ballistic missiles with warheads if they aren't pressured to stand down. NK's industry is their military, the 4th largest in the world. They may be starving, but they are not stupid about technology which is driven by their military, and they continue to export both benign and weapons technologies to whoever will pay...like the dictators running Iran. The United Nations in their IAEA report this month says Iran now enough fuel for two nuclear weapons.

But maybe we should ignore all this because Cheney said it, or sounds like he would say it. Even a criminal can yell fire once in a while and be right, and the UN may be cumbersome but they are not criminals and they try not to lie. I will ignore the wingnuts, but I won't ignore facts.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

Though, even the current fragile shaky leadership of Pakistan has not said the Holocaust was a hoax and Israel should be wiped off the map. But maybe we shouldn't take those crazy threats seriously from the dictatorship in Iran. Fascistic dictators come and go. What could go wrong. Though if I were a Jew in Israel, I might worry about history and resolve to fight back this time against those who openly and often state their mission to exterminate me and my people. I wish the Iranian people had prevailed in their uprising last year, but they didn't, and the paranoid leaders did send two milllion Iranians to their deaths to fight Saddam. So they probably have some tolerance to any blowback from their ballistic decisions.

And Pakistan's nuclear stockpiles are a worry, with the extremists so intent on getting to them. Doesn't seem to concern you at all. Just stuff that happens over there.

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

So, I'm a bit unclear what you're actually proposing, underneath the heated language. Are you advocating that Israel wage a preventive war against Iran? What, exactly? See this comment on policy alternatives -- since I'd like to understand what you really want to have happen, here.

three wickets's picture
Submitted by three wickets on

I am not a Jew or an Israeli. My point was that I can understand Israel's point of view given history and current circumstances. I support what Hillary is trying to get done to both stand Iran down and defuse the crisis. If Israel decides to attack Iran's nuclear sites unilaterally, I would disagree with it strongly, but I would understand (not agree with) why they were compelled to do so. If the rest of the world wants to forget the Holocaust, fine. But I'm guessing Israel has not forgotten, especially when a crazed dictator (Aryan by chance) is threatening them with another one in speech after speech.

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