First Steps Toward a new Conflict?Follow

Weeeee!

This, of course, coming after the US donated several million dollars to the Lebanese government to fight Iran-backed Hezbollah.

bah, bush is limiting himself.

its not JUST the iranians. its also the syerians, the jordians, the pakistanians, and im sure several factions within lebonon and saudi arabia also.

even if he killed ALL the iranian bad guys, the slaughter would continue unhindered. something he should have learned from the russian/afganistan ***** up.

our "mission" in lebonon, first to get the syrians out, then to set up a "israel friendly" government is going down in flames too as we speak. stupid is as stupid does, and we are dumber than most it seems.

here is something to think about when trying to measure our sucess in the middle east. it would be better right now if Hussin was still in charge of iraq and botteled up like they were before the war, and syeria still in lebonon with a tight leash on the dogs of war there than where we are right now.

even the israel/palistianin talks are completely dead.

total failure. the sumation of our efforts in the middle east since 2001.

time to impeach so we can point a finger at someone in particular to save a little face. we ask service men to sacrifice, so why not a hand full of politicians who demanded that sacrifice then squandered it away on a **** poor plan?

Granted, perception of US intelligence in Iraq is something you'd rank just below Bat-Boy on the credibility meter but I don't think it's much of a secret that Iran is helping out the Iraqi insurgents who are on "their side".

Maybe Bush is trying to escalate it or, at least, wouldn't be adverse to seeing it escalated. Speaking strictly off the cuff, if we do enter into a conflict with Iran, I'd imagine it would be of the airstrike variety with minimal use of ground forces. Punch a bunch of holes in their infrastructure, blow up their airfields and military installations and take the opportunity to drop a bunch of bombs on their nuclear research sites since watered-down IN resolutions aren't exactly putting the fear of God (or Allah) into them. I can't imagine that even the Bush administration is stupid enough to attempt "nation building" a second time in Iran.

He's never let us down before, right?

Edited, Jan 26th 2007 1:18pm by Kaelesh

It would be an interesting situation. You shift the insurgency out of iraq and back into Iran, where you really don't care about blowing **** up. Gives iraq time to consolodate if you can leave enough forces behind to keep things under control. Might as well finsih the job. Its not like we can **** off the middle east much more at this point.

First off. Bush is clearly using a specific definition of "nation building" (which itself is a term that means many different things depending on who you're talking to). He's specifically talking about using purely diplomatic "carrots" to try to get foreign nations to do what we want. In particular, the programs Clinton supported with regard to the Taliban in Afganistan, Hussein in Iraq, Kim Il in North Korea, and whoever the heck was in charge in Iran at the time. In every case, Clinton's foreign policy revolved around the use of giving people who didn't like us concessions (or offering them) in the hope that it would make them like us more and change whatever it was that we didn't like about them.


His argument was that all this would accomplish was to give those nations the time and resources to do whatever "bad things" we were trying to stop in the first place. And well, he was right. The Taliban continued supporting Al-queda despite Clinton's attempts to change make them into "good people", resulting in the 9/11 attacks. North Korean continued researching and developing nuclear weapons in secret, leading us to a very difficult situation there. Saddam continued to conceal every scrap of information regarding WMDs, and actively sought to obtain longer range missile technology and materials needed to build nuclear weapons. Iran pretty much ignored everything the US tried, took what we gave them, then used it to suppress the more western thinking people in their nation instead.


Pretty much every case of Clinton's foreign policy during his terms resulted in exactly the opposite of what we wanted happening. So yeah. Bush's position would seem to have been vindicated.

If the Iranian governemnt is sending people in to hinder and kill our troops..

isn't that an act of War?
Why aren't we bombing Iran RIGHT NOW? What are we a bunch of PUS5IES!?



/loads gun and shoots ceiling

I spent a semester in Mexico last year and met a girl whose uncle did this once. Turns out the gun was loaded, he shot through the ceiling and hit her. She was rushed to the hospital, barely survived, and is scarred up and down the abdomen today. She's fine now, but she'll have those scars forever.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, I don't see why we needed to OK shooting people shooting at us, no matter what nationality. And if they were just making the weapons, and we caught them, they could always be made to "disappear." I don't recommend that, obviously, but it wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. Honestly, a scenario where we learn about a group of marines barging into a makeshift bomb factory and killing everyone, just to find out they're all Iranians... seems like it's just what the administration desires.

Does anyone else feel Bush is kind of like the little boy who cried wolf?
"Fight in Afghanistan! They sponsored 9/11!"
OK! Almost 100% support, throughout the world.
"Fight in Iraq! They... wait, let me shred all these documents with excuses... fight in Iraq!"
51% of America agrees and the world /sighs
"Fight in Iran! They're supporting Iraqi insurgents!"
Everyone kinda goes, "Well, maybe they have the right f***in' idea."

He's criticizing Clinton's "nation building". Thus, it's reasonable to assume that he's using the term "nation building" to mean that type of stuff Clinton was doing. What part of that logic is confusing for you?

As I stated, the term nation building has many different uses and definitions:




Interestingly enough, later in the essay she mentions a 2003 report that defined nation-building in the context of what the US is doing in Iraq. Of course, this is kinda like re-defining stuff after the fact. Bush was speaking *before* 2003 in the earlier context, so the later change of the term "nation building" to reference our actions in Iraq is irrelevant.

You can't imply that Bush was himself being hypocritical with his use of the term nation building when the later use of the term in reference to his actions was the result of a re-definition of the term itself. When he used it, the term referred to the kind of diplomatic efforts that folks like Clinton were trying to use to spur desired changes. Thus, it was completely consistent for him to use that term in that context at that time. You might *today* call what Bush is doing nation building as well, but it's a different form of nation building. If over time the use of the term "pot" and "kettle" change, it's absurdly silly to read something written in the past and attack it because they used the terms incorrectly...

So you are saying they come in free voluntarily free trade peace and we don't? Oh wait, of course not, you're violent ugly liberals. My fault. But really, we should at some point psychoanalyze that fantasy of "them" being the ones to open fire on the flying saucers.

Gah, maybe Switzerland had the right idea...

I said it before and I'll say it again. If the people in this area cannot control themselves, or govern themselves, in a fashion that is acceptible to the rest of the world, then they deserve to be governed by outsiders.

The Middle East has never been a peaceful place, and the further we get into the modern age the more this is becomming apparent. Those who did not like what was happening left (with good reason), but few ever went back to try to fix the problems.

In order for there to be peace in the Middle East, there is going to be a lot of bloodshed. Unfortunately, this sort of thinking is not popular, and so the problem continues. This is also the reason that the current situation in Iraq and Iran is doomed to failure, for there are far too few people on the ground to do the job and far too much political correctness involved in effecting change.

The way that I see it, there are only two solutions to this problem, and neither of them very nice:
1. Nuke the Middle East. Kill off a large percentage of the population and they are no longer a threat. The reasons why this is not an acceptable solution, however, should be quite clear.
2. Real occupation and rule by a foreign power. By "real" occupation, I mean total military occupation with a large force given the right to kill on sight given any provocation (see someone carrying a gun? shoot them. Someone's face is covered up? shoot them. Someone is out after curfew? shoot them).

The US, as a superpower, is too much in the public eye to do this. Normally I'd say that Russia would be the best bet to effect this sort of change, but they've still got too many internal problems. Therefore I'd give ruling the Middle East to China. They have shown that they have the power and mindset to accomplish this goal and they have the military might to do so.

In a few generations, the Middle East then may be able to join the rest of the world under its own government. I have nothing against anyone from the Middle East personally, nor do I have anything against Islam. But deep down we all know that the current system of government through hate in many of these countries is not compatible with the rest of the world.