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OraLabora
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Perhaps it will rather be Russia that will want to go to war with the US if its interests in the area are threatened.
This has huge potential for spiralling out of control.
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This has huge potential for spiralling out of control.
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mrad25
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Senator Graham for one. He said he was briefed on the plot days ago, and there were imminent threats. He said so on Fox, CNN too I believe and it’s on his Twitter feed.
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OraLabora
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Are they? To me at least, they have a bit of the aura of the Nuremberg Rallies in the 1930s Germany. I’m not so sure that they are orchestrated, but rather more a case of popular fervour being whipped up by the government using the boogieman du jour, in this instance, the US. It nicely deflects attention from the daily grind of problems that Iranians experience from being part of a theocracy.
It wouldn’t surprise me if many people at the earlier popular protests were now demonstrating against the US.
This is an excellent point; the US has a long history of meddling in Iran’s affairs, to the point of propping up an unpopular despot. So as a result, they paved the way for a popular anti-US despot. That popularity was wearing thin as recent protests showed, and now Trump comes along and cements up those cracks.
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dvdjs
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Thank you for that one.
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niceatheist
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There are serious geopolitical ramifications to toppling the Iranian regime. Sure the US could bomb the regime out of existence, but the cost in civilian lives would be enormous.OraLabora:
Not really. The Iranians aren’t going to do anything to risk provoking a direct attack from us. They know it would be the end of their current government.
Petraeus Says Trump May Have Restored U.S. 'Deterrence' by Killing Suleimani
And then the US has a broken nation it has to fix, one that has no faith in US goodwill whatsoever. Or are you just talking about smashing the Islamic Republic and then seeing what happens next.
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Regular_Atheist
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I mean the United States government hasn’t really shown itself to believe in it either, so there’s probably nothing to worry about there.
Not that an Iranian Syngman Rhee would be desirable, but the United States seems to have a knack for demolishing a country socially, letting things sour, and then going back to do it all over again.
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OraLabora
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This has a huge potential for spiralling out of control.
The Iranians are one thing, but there are other strategic interests at play. One starts with an “R”, the other with a “C”. Not to mention the other two spelled starting with an “I”.
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niceatheist
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Because creating failed states does so much for international security. That’s pretty much what the US did in Afghanistan after it helped boot the Soviets out, and how did that end up?
Going around, wrecking countries and then walking out doesn’t deliver peace, it’s just a down payment on future wars. It’s immoral and absurd.
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JanetF
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Are you sure about this? According to my research we signed it in March of 2009 and it went into effect 3 months later…
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Theo520
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No, that’s imagination
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niceatheist
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The US essentially rebuilt Europe and Japan, so yes, you can wreck countries, but you have to commit to rebuilding them. I think Afghanistan and Iraq are both examples of doing the former, but not putting much effort into the latter. Japan is an example of a country that the US did put significant effort into restoring to international standing, and I think the results speak for themselves.niceatheist:
Neither does spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
However, as a general rule, I think toppling regimes with no intention of sticking around for the long haul is not only likely to fail if the purpose is to secure US interests, and to leave an entire population with government, and likely without even the basic necessities of government themselves, is as vile an act as I can imagine.
My view is the US shouldn’t try to topple Iran at all. I think the effort alone would be monumental, and any attempt at regime change would create a geopolitical nightmare. Iran isn’t a tin-pot dictatorship like the post-First Gulf War Iraqi state was. It is a country of over 80 million people, over twice Iraq’s population. It is a country that run by the Islamic theocrats in no small part because the US backed the Shah from the mid-1950s right through to his downfall, despite every indication that his rule was becoming more despotic and that more and more Iranians had become disillusioned.
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JulianN
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It’s hard to unite around someone who is willing to send our troops into danger and plunge us into war in order to deflect attention from his own impeachment.
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Theo520
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Japan and Europe largely rebuilt themselves. They had the education and culture to get back to business. The most significant thing we did was push them towards a more stable democracy and limited their military.
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niceatheist
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The Marshall Plan dumped significant amounts of money into Europe and Japan. Countries like Japan and Germany had seen much of their infrastructure damaged or outright destroyed during the Second World War, and US and Allied planners were very aware that if these states were to recover in any reasonable timeline, they’d need significant economic stimulus. Yes, Europe and Japan had a lot more local expertise than Afghanistan did, but let’s also remember the Denazification efforts in Germany and similar policies in Japan, because a good many of the industrialists and other experts in both countries had played significant roles in their war efforts.
Afghanistan obviously was little better than a third world country when the Soviets marched in, but it was left a lot worse off afterwards. As to Iraq, well, we know what happened. The US committed enough troops to topple the regime, but it wasn’t until the Surge, when the damage to infrastructure and Iraqi society had already set the Insurgency on its course towards the menace it would become, did the Pentagon seem to realize toppling a regime is the easy part.
As to Iran, at least in the major urban areas, you have a well educated class that could certainly become the industrial and political leaders in a new regime, but if you smash infrastructure to pieces and then go “smell you later!” afterwards, I’m thinking the state that rises out of the ashes isn’t going to be a flowering democracy. That, and you’ll have 80 million Iranians, many of which weren’t all that fond of the US to begin with, that now absolutely despise it.
That’s before we even get into the geopolitical issues. I wouldn’t call Russia and Iran allies, but within certain limited areas, they do cooperate. I can’t imagine Russia would be at all pleased by the US toppling a government that is literally on their doorstep. China is no good friend of Iran either, but has significant economic interests in Central Asia, so it’s likely to become some form of ally should the US and Iran go to war, and both Russia and China, should the Islamic Republic fall, would be in there like dirty shirts, and again, I don’t think the Iranian state that came out of the ashes would be any kind of improvement from the US’s, Israel’s, or Saudi Arabia’s point of view.
Afghanistan obviously was little better than a third world country when the Soviets marched in, but it was left a lot worse off afterwards. As to Iraq, well, we know what happened. The US committed enough troops to topple the regime, but it wasn’t until the Surge, when the damage to infrastructure and Iraqi society had already set the Insurgency on its course towards the menace it would become, did the Pentagon seem to realize toppling a regime is the easy part.
As to Iran, at least in the major urban areas, you have a well educated class that could certainly become the industrial and political leaders in a new regime, but if you smash infrastructure to pieces and then go “smell you later!” afterwards, I’m thinking the state that rises out of the ashes isn’t going to be a flowering democracy. That, and you’ll have 80 million Iranians, many of which weren’t all that fond of the US to begin with, that now absolutely despise it.
That’s before we even get into the geopolitical issues. I wouldn’t call Russia and Iran allies, but within certain limited areas, they do cooperate. I can’t imagine Russia would be at all pleased by the US toppling a government that is literally on their doorstep. China is no good friend of Iran either, but has significant economic interests in Central Asia, so it’s likely to become some form of ally should the US and Iran go to war, and both Russia and China, should the Islamic Republic fall, would be in there like dirty shirts, and again, I don’t think the Iranian state that came out of the ashes would be any kind of improvement from the US’s, Israel’s, or Saudi Arabia’s point of view.
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Victoria33
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Let’s see, blacks, Hispanics have historic rates of low unemployment under this president.
The Democrats agenda is for 33% of all babies born to 12% of the population to be aborted.
That party has a history of lynch mobs too, all America has some history in this but moreso, the Democrats. That’s what this impeachment is. Persecution. What have the Democrats accomplished?
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JulianN
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What in heaven’s name does that have to do with a drone strike on Iran? This isn’t about the merits of the impeachment process, it’s about Trump’s willingness to do anything to deflect negative attention. He laid this out as a strategy he thought Obama would use for political expediency—it’s just that Obama didn’t and Trump did.
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Cruciferi
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To say the least!!
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Regular_Atheist
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I’m happy you at least wear it openly and don’t bother with any performative commitment to “democracy” or “stability” or anything. You just want to destroy and kill, which is more respectable than pretending to be the “good guy.”
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JulianN
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Wampa
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And Secretary of Defense Esper has already essentially said we won’t be doing that. Like you said, it’s Twitter smack talk. It hurts my brain that we have a leader who does this on Twitter, but I recognize it’s not an indication of a possible real action, just like the Iranian threat to attack the White House is smack talk with a 0% chance of happening.
I’m not at all certain that killing Soleimani was a prudent move, but there certainly was justification for it. Reuters is reporting that starting in October he was orchestrating a series of attacks on Americans intended to provoke a military response from us so that Iran could redirect Iraqi anger from Iran to the U.S.
“The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq were gaining momentum, putting the Islamic Republic in an unwelcome spotlight. Soleimani’s plans to attack U.S. forces aimed to provoke a military response that would redirect that rising anger toward the United States, according to the sources briefed on the gathering, Iraqi Shi’ite politicians and government officials close to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.”
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