Bomb. bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?

A friend in Washington tells me that there is a lot of buzz among the "neocon elite" to the effect that we're going to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities next month. He links to this story in The New Yorker as supporting evidence.

A real, live, all out war with Iran is inevitable, and in fact twenty-eight years overdue. But our committments in Iraq and Afghanistan make such a war at this time impossible. While I continue to think that war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq was also inevitable, and while (the Left and the MSM to the contrary) the decision to go to war against it at the time that decision was made and with the information at hand was an eminently reasonable one, the restraint the current conflict in the Gulf places on our ability to deal with what is, ironically, to a large extent the real enemy even in Iraq is thereby limited. You can't fight a war with air power and naval bombardment alone-wars are actually won on the ground- and if we'd known then what we know now we would have been well-advised to delay dealing with Saddam until we'd settled with the mullahmoonbats.

The objective of the October operation- if one, in fact, takes place- will probably be simply to take out Iran's nuclear infrastructure (my friend in Washington cites articles in the media to the effect that such a plan- which supposedly could be carried out in three days- has been in development for some time). The real confrontation with the thugs in Teheran will have to wait. Hopefully the next president will have the brains and the courage to vastly grow our military and our capacity to wage war. It won't be a popular thing to do, but it's the only sane course available given the international realities of the moment.

Our world is far more dangerous today than it was during the Cold War. Russia may not be the threat it once was, but China, North Korea, and the threat of global Islamofascism is already providing us with, if anything, even more reason to keep our powder dry than we had back in the days of Khruschev and Brezhnev.

They never actually launched an attack on American soil.

Comments

Jeff D said…
Dude, chill. Seriously.
Dude, at long last, start living in the real world. Seriously.

A nuclear Iran is a nuked Israel- and a third world war for us all. And the Islamofascist regime has been kidnapping Western citizens and arming our enemies in Iraq for quite some time.

You can't just stick your head in some Eighteenth Century hole in the ground, very selectively quote the Founding Fathers to advocate wholly unworkable political positions, and generally play powdered wig. There's a real world out there, right now- and very real, very ugly consequences for ignoring its realities.
Jeff D said…
Dude. In real world you really could have dialed down your level of hysteria a couple of levels.
Jeff, the only person I can think of who is less of an authority on the real world than you are is your hero Ron Paul.

Take a look at this before you decide that Mad Mahmoud and his zany crew are just poor, misunderstood humanitarians, eh?

Are you seriously so innocent as to decide on the basis of an NIE that says that Iran quit trying to develop a nuclear bomb three years ago that this is the gospel truth? Like the 2005 NIE that said exactly the opposite? Like all those NIE's that said that Saddam Hussein was developing new weapons of mass destruction!

You, like most naive, trusting souls, simply have no acquaintance with the real world. In fact, the one thing we know is that Iran is currently involved in trying to enrich uranium- to make its development of nuclear weapons only a matter of time.

Better Churchill's "hysteria," Jeff, than the isolationist head-in-the-sand posture adopted back in the '30's by Ron Paul's ideological forebears- the ones who made Hitler possible, and WWII necessary.
Jeff D said…
Jeff, the only person I can think of who is less of an authority on the real world than you are is your hero Ron Paul.

Let me see... Ron Paul...

Is Iraq a real danger to us, or have the war hawks wildly exaggerated the threat posed by this impoverished third-world nation?
September 3, 2002

Claim: The president claimed last night that: "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles; far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work."

Reality: Then why is only Israel talking about the need for the U.S. to attack Iraq? None of the other countries seem concerned at all. Also, the fact that some 135,000 Americans in the area are under threat from these alleged missiles just makes the point that it is time to bring our troops home to defend our own country.

Claim: Iraq harbors al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

Reality: The administration has claimed that some Al-Qaeda elements have been present in Northern Iraq. This is territory controlled by the Kurds – who are our allies – and is patrolled by U.S. and British fighter aircraft. Moreover, dozens of countries – including Iran and the United States – are said to have al-Qaeda members on their territory. Of the other terrorists allegedly harbored by Iraq, all are affiliated with Palestinian causes and do not attack the United States.

Claim: President Bush said in his speech on 7 October 2002: " Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem..."

Reality: An admission of a lack of information is justification for an attack?

October 8, 2002

OR

George W. Bush


Decisions, decisions.
And each of the comments by Paul were contrary to the estimates not only of the U.S. intelligence community, but of literally every intelligence agency in the world.

The answer: Bush was right. The 1991 era WMD are still being used against our troops, and the rest of Paul's arguments are non-sequiturs. Nor did Bush argue that a lack of information justified an attack; the problem was that the information we had clearly did.

Most of the quotes from Paul you give are either non sequiturs or contradict themselves. Israel- our only ally in the region- clearly saw the need to attack Iraq- which negates the rest of the paragraph. Paul's claim that the only place al Quaeda operatives were active in Iraq was in the North, among the Kurds, was simply wrong- as he should have known.

Iraq did, in fact, possess such missles. They were captured after the invasion.

Paul got lucky on the presence of new WMD's. Otherwise, as documented by the statement above, Ron Paul simply didn't know what he was talking about.

He still doesn't.