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Iraq And Iran

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shane

The Options  

41 members have voted

  1. 1. What should we do in the current situation?

    • Withdraw from Iraq and Bomb Iran
      9
    • Do not Withdraw from Iraq and Bomb Iran
      19
    • Withdraw from Iraq and do not Bomb Iran
      3
    • Rely on Diplomacy and the UN
      1


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We are stuck in Iraq. The consequences of a self-abnegating foriegn policy.

Iran has enriched uranium. The consequences of the prior and appeasement.

What does one do?

I advocate a short and well planned withdrawal from Iraq followed by an aggressive and strategic destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities. Failing these, I too will start eating butter again. :worry:

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I advocate a short and well planned withdrawal from Iraq followed by an aggressive and strategic destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities. Failing these, I too will start eating butter again.

Well, I don't think that given the current situation the US is in, a quick withdrawal from Iraq is ideal. The US had basically three (four when they thought up the idea to invade) objectives in mind for Iraq:

1. Oust Hussein, end his oppressive regime.

2. Dismantle any WMD's that Hussein might have. Turned out he didn't really have any.

3. Establish a democracy that allowed its people of differing political/religious standings to express themselves without resorting to violence.

4. Train the Iraqi troops themselves to fend off insurrections.

As far as I know, the US is currently at steps 3 and 4. If we beat a hasty retreat out now, a lot of the work we had wanted to accomplish would have been for naught. I understand the notion of "sunk costs," but I think that we should follow through with policing Iraq until we've trained the domestic Iraqi troops well enough to be able to leave the nation to its own devices.

Basically, the Bush Administration doesn't want a bloody civil war in Iraq, and to maximize the chances of that not happening, US troops really have to stay there longer.

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WE'LL BOMBARD THEM WITH PHYSICS

VTECH JUST KICKED IN, YO

... sorry. >_>

Well, to make at least a somewhat constructive post out of this one, with regard to Iran's enriching uranium: North Korea is threatening (or possibly currently) doing that as well. I don't think that bombing is the best way to solve anything though, as we'll likely not get all of the uranium silos (are they stored in silos?), and will likely trigger a reaction in response.

Edited by Elysium
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Dismantle any WMD's that Hussein might have. Turned out he didn't really have any.
It could be just another conspiracy theory, but I've seen this article around the net:

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets"" released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

If they can bury JETS, they are more than capable of burying a few crates of bio-weapons. It's NOT the rocket that is the WMD. It's the payload...which is about the size of a grapefruit. How many grapefruits could you fit in the same space as a Russian Mig?

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We're not stuck in Iraq.

We are stuck in Iraq. Even with all the progress we have made, we are not getting there fast enough. There is still widespread insurgency, consistent US and Iraqi military casualties, and the Iraqi army is not capable of operating as a independent unit. The only way to solve this problem is to increase the US military presence by five-fold to ensure US Army and the Iraqi Public safety and training effectiveness. Our current Army presence is not enough, and we are putting them in unnecessary danger.

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We are stuck in Iraq. The consequences of a self-abnegating foriegn policy.

Iran has enriched uranium. The consequences of the prior and appeasement.

What does one do?

I advocate a short and well planned withdrawal from Iraq followed by an aggressive and strategic destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities. Failing these, I too will start eating butter again. <_<

We need to engage in brinkmanship with Iran, at the very least. Seems like our current leadership is lousy at brinkmanship.

We need to aim some serious missiles at those Iranian nuke plants, with the aim of destroying them unless Iran meets our demands. To date, President Bush and his administration has not exercised one ounce of courage to stand up to this continual threat to the west.

Edited by Yes
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Do not withdraw from Iraq, bomb Iran, then bomb and invade Syria.

  • The terrorists have been congregating in Iraq, so it would be a mistake to withdraw at this point. Better fight them in Iraq then have them fight us in America.
  • Iran needs to be bombed before they nuke us.
  • Syria is where Saddam's WMDs reportedly are, so we should topple the regime and find the weapons.

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I agree with point 1. I agree that we should bomb Iran, although I think they'd be more likely to hit Israel before us. I don't fully agree with 3. I don't think we can handle another invasion without taking troops out of Iraq and, like you said, terrorists are congregating there, so it would be a mistake. Also, we would probably never find the WMDs there either, so it would be another huge embarrasment for Bush.

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Also, we would probably never find the WMDs there either, so it would be another huge embarrasment for Bush.

The standard of value I used when making my argument was my life, rather than avoiding embarrassments for Bush. :ninja:

We were right to go to Iraq, as we had concluded at that time that there might be WMDs in Iraq. Now, facing the reports that the WMD might be in Syria, the right thing to do is to go to Syria. You make decisions based on what you know before you act--and if the decision is the right one to make on the basis of that knowledge, it will continue to be the right one no matter what you discover after you have acted.

Not finding WMDs in a dictatorship he thought might have them is not an embarrassment for President Bush in my eyes. What I would consider an embarrassment for him would be if he thought a dictator might have WMDs--and did nothing about it.

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I agree with everything CapitalismForever posted to this thread so far. In addition, almost all of the foreign insurgents are coming from Iran and Syria. So, if nothing else, at least decimate the border cities on either side of Iraq. This may not be as politically expedient as full scale regime destruction of both, which I think is a better option.

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We were right to go to Iraq, as we had concluded at that time that there might be WMDs in Iraq. Now, facing the reports that the WMD might be in Syria, the right thing to do is to go to Syria.
There might be a unicorn in my closet, but there probably isnt. Is there any serious reason to believe that Syria has WMD, aside from sourceless internet rumours?

it will continue to be the right one no matter what you discover after you have acted.
Well, we've discovered that the costs of being wrong about a country having WMD are around 300 billion dollars (possibly rising to 1 trillion in the long term). I'm not sure if 'embarassment' is the word I'd use to describe this, but it doesnt really seem like something you should be happy about. There seems to be a lack of realism in this thread, especially amongst the people who are voting to both stay in Iraq while bombing Iran (the Iraq occupation is currently costing around 5 billion a month). Edited by Hal
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From a news-story:

"You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards and among the regime's most powerful figures.
Possibly, this is largely bluster, without capability. Often, such regimes do not even understand their own weaknesses. It would be unsurprising if Sadaam too thought his government more capable than it was, because people under him dared not tell him differently.

However, I think it is reasonable to take Iranian leaders at their word.

Edited by softwareNerd
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The will of the enemy must be utterly shattered via a nuclear bomb. To avoid American casualties and skyrocketing debt in a long drawn-out "war on terror," end it by crushing its heart, Iran. Consider the points made in this article.

With due respect, I don't think that (a) that article regarding bombing Hiroshima/Nagasaki can be justification for bombing Iran, and (B) the notion of "retaliatory strikes" has been entirely unaddressed, and definitely is worth mentioning.

First of all, the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as far as I am aware, have been justified on the grounds that the Japanese were extremely brutal and completely gave up their right to moral treatment when they attacked all those Asian nations prior to the bombings. You will note that if you speak to roughly 90% of the nations in the Asian region regarding Japan, very few of them will have a positive outlook on what they think of Japan. Japan has pillaged, plundered, raided, and raped its way through many nations, and it was those immoral actions that were used for the justification of bombing them at the end of WWII. However, that being what the US government has used for the justification does not make it necessarily so. By that point, the Japanese had already been reduced to inability to fight back. The Soviet Union, in an agreement with the United States, was to invade Japan and basically tidy things up, clean up the war, etc. However, the United States, two days prior to the Soviet Union invading, decided that they wouldn't want the communists to gain anymore relative power than necessary, so the US hastily launched the bombs, the idea being that "if we minimize the amount of goods/power that the Soviet Union can acquire by raiding the Japanese, then the better we will be when we WILL have to face them in the future." The sources for this, in case anyone is wondering, are from the United States officially declassified published records of all international events, which can be found in most major libraries. Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make for this topic is that regardless of the actual reasons for bombing the Japanese, the official justification for the acts were based on morality (e.g. the US wants to just end the conflict ASAP to avoid as little loss as possible, plus the Japanese are bad people and should be punished), and I don't think that Iran has a bad enough track record for us to use the same reasoning to bomb them.

Secondly, at the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States essentially had a monopoly on all nuclear weapons; it could afford to throw them around and get away with it. Nowadays, however, just about every major power and every not-so-major-power has nuclear capabilities. This has been the reason that you do not see a lot of nuclear war in the past 20 years or so. The logic is this: if I attempt to bomb your country with nuclear weapons and try to entirely obliterate you, if any of your nukes survive, they will be fired right back at me. I don't want to suffer the lives of millions of my own civilians for a chance at hopefully destroying ALL of your nukes in my first strike, therefore, I will not risk it. This has been why, you'll note, that we did not dare attempt to bomb Iraq when we suspected that they might have WMD's, because they just might bomb us right back, and we'd end up with a few of our major cities completely destroyed, and by extension, our economies would take quite a few punches to the kidneys. My prediction is that we won't dare to use nukes against Iran either.

Edited by Elysium
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...regardless of the actual reasons for bombing the Japanese, the official justification for the acts were based on morality (e.g. the US wants to just end the conflict ASAP to avoid as little loss as possible, plus the Japanese are bad people and should be punished), and I don't think that Iran has a bad enough track record for us to use the same reasoning to bomb them.

[...] My prediction is that we won't dare to use nukes against Iran either [because of retaliatory attacks].

I don't understand this distinction between actual and official reasons. What, are there conspiracy theories out there saying we did it to test the bomb on actual people?

Anyway, the point is that the principle behind the bombing of Japan can apply to bombing Iran. Japan, a proven threat, was given an ultimatum to surrender unconditionally, which it refused. The Japanese were going to fight to the death, to be 'martyrs', were we to invade. In response, the most efficient, least costly method of taking down the threat was to use nukes. Similarly, we have Iran, the heart of an Islamic culture that glorifies martyrdom, as a proven threat. Iran should be given an ultimatum: surrender unconditionally or be bombed.

I agree with you that Iran has not committed the same injustices on the same scale as Japan. But the difference exists only because Japan was allowed to act out its ambitions, while Iran can't just yet. In principle, however, their ambitions are the same: world domination using a militant flavor of religious fanaticism. And so, in principle, the same solution applies: give up or die.

As far as your second point, I think it's more of a tactical question, not a moral question. We must agree, however, that the most efficient, least costly option that results in the end of the threat is the moral option. If not, we can't discuss this issue. (That is, we can't discuss "containment" for the sake of preserving "economies".)

If we have good cause to suspect that bombing of Iran would induce retaliation by it or other parties, then we cripple all capabilities for retaliation in one truly shocking and awing strike. Additionally, we may beforehand deliver an ultimatum to those who would be insane enough to think of such a notion: you make a single move toward such an act, you will be destroyed.

It is truly a tragedy that non-freedom-loving nations were allowed to get the bomb. It is an indictment of our foreign policy. Fortunately it seems this policy is changing.

Let me add that this is all moot anyway, since there is no way in hell a military guided by Just War Theory will ever act in a wholy selfish way by using nukes to break the will of the enemy.

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Is it just me, or does it seem like the lunatic Iranian leaders know more about America's cultural state than America leaders do? They speak clearly, smilingly, directly. American officials speak vaguely, apologetically, pleadingly. (link)

Iran said it could defeat any American military action over its controversial nuclear drive, in one of the Islamic regime's boldest challenges yet to the United States.

"You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards and among the regime's most powerful figures.

"The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error," he told reporters on the sidelines of a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran.

The United States accuses Iran of using an atomic energy drive as a mask for weapons development. Last weekend US news reports said President George W. Bush's administration was refining plans for preventive strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"I would advise them to first get out of their quagmire in Iraq before getting into an even bigger one," General Safavi said with a grin.

[...]

And hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told AFP that a US push for tough United Nations sanctions was of "no importance."

"She is free to say whatever she wants," the president replied when asked to respond to comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighting part of the UN charter that provides for sanctions backed up by the threat of military action.

"We give no importance to her comments," he said with a broad smile.

On Thursday, Rice said that faced with Iran's intransigence, the United States "will look at the full range of options available to the United Nations."

"There is no doubt that Iran continues to defy the will of the international community," Rice said, after Iran also dismissed a personal appeal from the UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

I'm beginning to get very worried...
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Hmm, maybe we could borrow their PR-managers to crank up the image of the US. Trade them a few intellectuals for it? B)

But on a serious note, especially over here I don't think anyone is in favor of a war there. Most people are still whining over the war in Iraq, and I doubt there will be much support from Europe...

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  • 2 weeks later...
Is it just me, or does it seem like the lunatic Iranian leaders know more about America's cultural state than America leaders do?
They aren't sure how much they can get away with. So, they push the envelope with a new challenge, and they see no negative consequences, so they push some more.

See what Iran gets for its insolence (link to news-article):

Reported by Julie Stahl, CNSNews.com, Jerusalem, April 17, 2006: ... Iran has been elected to a vice-chair position on the U.N.Disarmament Commission...

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