of Iran and nuclear weapons

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cptmaxon

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just curious to see what are your view points on Iran having nuclear weapons, do you think it will use them? and how about the fact that they are getting longer ranged missiles from N.Korea which can now target parts of Europe ,
do you think the world should stand by? intervene with military action? or continue the ineffectual current course of sanctions and deadlines
 
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Iran isn't suicidal. They want nukes because Israel has nukes, Pakistan has nukes, and America has a habit of invading countries in the neighborhood but only if said countries don't have nukes. You mentioned North Korea -- they're genuinely crazy, far more vicious than Saddam's Iraq ever was, they're McNukes for any budding dictator... and they've been treated with kid gloves. Because they have the capability of killing millions of people from any country that attempts to invade them.

A nuclear-armed Iran might actually calm things down: strategic parity and nuclear deterrence worked between the US and the USSR, so why wouldn't it work between Israel and Iran?

What should the world do?

(1) Recognize the reality that there's not a damn thing we can do to stop Iran from getting nukes if they really want them, other than nuking them first, which would certainly cause any number of other problems.

(2) Give Iran a stake in the status quo. If we drive them into a situation where they have nothing to lose, things will look very bad indeed. If we give them incentives to play nice, they'll play nice.

The fact is that the era of American supremacy, which follows the era of European supremacy, is over. It used to be that "we" could hurt "them" but "they" couldn't hurt "us." (And boy did "we" ever hurt "them.") No longer. Technology, the great equalizer, has seen to that. We had better get used to it.

What we have to do now is find a model of coexistence that allows all of us to go on living here, as far as possible as we like to live. For that, we need to find some common ground. The fact that nobody enjoys the prospect of getting a nuke dropped on them is a good start.

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back. We can try to slow down proliferation, but the only way to get a country to give up its nukes is to put it in a strategic situation that is genuinely so secure that it knows it will never need them. For example, I think that given the right incentives it would be possible to get France or Britain to give up their nukes, but not North Korea, not Pakistan, not India, not Israel, not Russia, not China, not the United States -- and not Iran. Not until everybody in the Middle East sits around campfires singing Kum Ba Yah. Until then, well... "War never changes."

Oh, and the Middle East is fucked for at least a generation. Don't invest any money there, not even Dubai or Qatar or any of the places that are actually doing pretty smart things now. The whole place is going down in flames, and the sparks will get blown far. But nuclear conflict isn't on the agenda, yet, and Iranian nukes aren't bringing it any closer.
 
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So Iran needs nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the US? I'm sure there are plenty of folks who share that point of view, and that's a shame.

For some reason it's considered OK in that part of the world to urge death to people, countries, groups, whatever. NEWS FLASH: In the modern civilized world, it's not. So the people over there keep conflicting with the modern civilized world.

The solution is for them to catch up with the progress that's been made in the rest of the world over the last century or two and stop trumpeting rationalizations for old barbaric beliefs. It concerns the rest of us, and it would concern us even more if nuclear weapons were added to the mix.
 
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Must nuclear power = nuclear weapons?
 
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In case of Iran certainly... for them its either be a rogue-state, have no nuclear Weapons and get invaded by the US like Iraq or be a rogue-state, have nuclear Power and be left alone like North-Korea. Especially since they are attacking israel in helping the Palaestinians with weapons, money and probably training...
 
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So what happens when everyone has their little piece of radioactive security from the U.S.?
They all suddenly learn to peacefully co-exist? I would say"If you want to visit Tel Aviv, Come Soon--Very Soon."

Frankly, I doubt that the U.S is going to be invading anybody again for a long time. Our army is stretched too thin to even keep order in the capitol of a single country.So where are the troops and money coming from to "invade" Iran, Palestine, Gaza, etc.? IMO if Bush had the capability to wipe out all opposition in Iraq it would already be done. The best he can do is provide a set of American and Iraqi targets for the insurrectionists to resist, which only serves to focus their forces and inspire more violence.

No, people in the U.S. are frankly PISSED OFF right now. Approval rating of our government, our president, the war, and our newly elected democratic congress, hovers below 30-40%. We are more likely to be storming Washington DC with pots of boiling tar and wagons of feathers than sending our young men over to be blown into pieces by religious fanatics so some politicians can get richer.>:O:evil::brood:\end rant.

I think it's been too long since Hiroshima, the Holocaust and WWII for many of the people in countries so rife with discord to realize what they're actually getting into.

But I agree that it's too late to stop proliferation now--it's completely out of anyone's control. I can think of only one thing that would do it: global thermonuclear war....which kind of defeats the point...:-/
 
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I'm actually sort of hoping the US will invade Iran. It ought to be a good show, and cut the US down to size for at least a generation or two. Not to mention spawning the best-dressed suicide bombers *ever*.

@Squeek: before getting on your high horse about the "civilized world," I'd suggest you look in the mirror a bit. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is Latin, not Arabic or Farsi -- and if you look at how America glorifies its fallen heroes, you'll find it not much different from the way Hezbollah does. I'm sure that the Hamas would be happy to use cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs if they had them. They don't, so they use whatever they have that is most effective -- which means home-made rockets and suicide bombers.

The Geneva conventions were crafted by the colonial powers to suit their way of making war -- and they dropped them like a hot potato the minute they no longer suited them. Whining about stuff like that is just hypocritical.
 
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hmmm I have a hard time accepting the idea tha terrorist bombing are somehow acceptable, I mean even if they don't have precision weapons...
besides right now they are too busy killing each other in the gaza strip to notice such a small thing as a US invasion
 
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@cptmaxon -- I can understand that. I used to think so too, once.

However, after seeing it up close from the other side for a few years, these distinctions tend to blur, and I don't see any moral difference any more between dropping a bomb on a building from a distance or blowing up the building with a suicide truck bomb. I can either declare both unacceptable, or neither.

One man's terrorist is another one's freedom fighter, and I can no longer see which is which. Last summer, my wife lost a childhood friend to a missile fired from an unmanned Israeli aircraft. The day before yesterday, she lost a childhood friend to a car bomb planted (presumably) by the Syrians. Both are equally dead, and the grief and anger are equally strong.

What then? Same ol', same ol'. There won't be an Armageddon that'll settle things once and for all, just a steady drip-drip-drip of blood and cordite. Those who can, will leave the region. Some will take the blood and cordite with them, and bring the war to us.

Perhaps war is the natural state of humanity. There's certainly been more war than peace over human history.
 
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Human evolution - fighting for as long we have existed, and we still haven't figured out that it leads nowhere.
 
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Iran's days are numbered as long as the Americans don't elect a democrat, in my opinion this is a good thing.
 
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I'm keeping my fingers crossed that America doesn't elect Ron Paul, John Edwards, or Barack Obama. Anyone else is cool with us anti-Americans.

But "Iran's days are numbered?" Get real. Can't you see the way Ahmadinejad the Bearded Monkey is strutting around pointing at his chin and going "Punch me! Punch me! G'wan! I dare ya!" The Iranians are sick and tired of the mullahs, but they will rally around the flag -- and Iran is more than capable of repelling any attack America can muster at this time (short of a nuclear one, of course), while causing any amount of mayhem anywhere else in the world. Politically and militarily, the US is too weak for a full-on invasion, so the best they can do is a symbolic bombing run -- too weak to put a serious dent in the Iranian nuclear program, but just showy enough to give Iran the excuse to destroy what's left of American power in the region.

Ahmadinejad has been put in a total win-win situation: America delivered Iraq to him on a silver platter, as long as they keep posturing he can be the glorious defender of God and the fatherland, *and* he's just *itching* for a chance to try some of those nice Silkworm clones on the wonderful fleet of Yankee ducks sitting on that pond of a gulf right there. All he needs is an excuse, like an unprovoked attack.

Did you know that during naval exercises a year before the Iraq invasion, opfor (playing as Iran, with Iranian assets and tactics) sank two thirds of the US surface fleet within hours? The exercise was halted and the fleet was "re-floated." I bet that'll work great in real life.

Again, I'm sorta hoping they'll do it. It'll be a great show, and the Persian Gulf sharks could use a couple of solid meals of beef-eating American sailors.
 
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Prime Junta, I agree with your analysis. Why do we fight war? The immediate gratification of profits... for a few like Federal bankers and defence contractors, while the rest is too gullible, uninformed. We put GW up there, maybe just have to deal with the consequences.
 
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I think a nuclear strike would certainly be on the table if Iran openly displayed that it had nuclear weapons and was willing to use them.

I don't think a Naval exercise has much relevance when if America did decide to do a full invasion against a country like Iran if would be a full strike involving a huge amount of air power with support from Israel. Iran would be bombed back into the stone age within a few days.

Iran has an extremely outdated supply of weaponry, their air defence while much greater than Iraq's is till based on aging technology like HAWK TMD's. During the invasion of Iraq not a single one of these downed an American aircraft. It's fighter craft consist on mostly craft that saw service in the 1960's like the F4 with completely outdated avionic systems. A single Israeli F16 could probably ground half of their airforce.
 
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bjon, first of all Iran air defenses have been upgraded very throughly by the Russians , I think Russia wants a rematch for global supermacy, it's amazing how things change and yet stay the same.

Prime Junta, I think the problem is intent, the Isralies did cause civilian casulties but the intent was the hit the fighters and like any army they will try to limit the causlties in the non combatant pouplation. terrosits set out to hurt civilian and for them the more they hurt the merrier .... the difference is profound

a nuclear middle east will be horrible it's the surest way to global nuclear war, fanatics with nuclear weapons (heck any weapon) should be the worlds greates fear and concern in my opion
 
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I'm not going to try to reason with or otherwise engage anyone who rationalizes terrorism, Prime Junta. You're entitled to your opinion, but there's just no point discussing views that extreme. Now that I understand where you're coming from, I'll excuse myself from this conversation.
 
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Prime Junta > You're saying it's the same for the victims. There is a big difference between suicide bombing and targeted air-strikes though. The only thing that is the same is that people die. There are significant differences though. Like cpt mentioned, most military armies won't engage to hurt as many civilians as possible. They will try to minimize civilian casualties and maximize military and/or fighter ones. Instead of doing that, suicide bombers try to kill as many civilians as possible.
You talked about Lebanon. Soldiers of a certain country can easily be identified through their uniforms (that's how war used to be fought : The Reds, English, fought the Blues, French....). Terrorists however don't wear uniforms, you can't discern (I don't know if this is the correct word) between fighters and non-fighters, so even when the military does try to minimize civilian casualties, mistakes (or more mistakes, I should say) will be made because of the problem of identification.


Again, I'm sorta hoping they'll do it. It'll be a great show, and the Persian Gulf sharks could use a couple of solid meals of beef-eating American sailors.

And you think seeing people die is a show ? You're either a psychopath or a child who watched too many movies and thinks people who die will play in the next movie.


The only thing I believe you are right is saying that Ahmadenijad is in a win-win situation, except that he could also be killed in a coup.
 
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Iran is not a problem, presently. People should be more concerned with China, but thats another topic...

I think that we should all accept the fact that Iran will have nuclear power. We should even help them along to 1) make sure they don't screw it up and 2) keep an eye on it. Seriously, if we just sent a team to assist them in creating nuclear power plants both parties would realize, "Hey, maybe these guys aren't so bad after all..."

Terrorism. Well, I'm not going to be strapping a bomb to myself but I understand the motivations. It's not just Islam. It's everybody. A majority of people are just plain stupid and are easily brainwashed into an extreme such as killing people in the name of god. PJ is right, they are just using the weapons available to them. Even if they kill/target civilians it doesn't matter in their eyes because to them the innocent are sent to heaven and the evil are smote; it's the will of god because somebody told them it is. Also, if America were to be invaded don't you think we'd fight tooth and nail to protect our homes? Thats a good reason for the second amendment, the right to bear arms.

And finally, as a "Beef-eating American sailor" I'd like to point out that to my knowledge that exercise was never canceled. It was a played out and assessed. The USN does have a lot of fucktards but that doesn't mean the people in charge are going to deny the obvious truth that they got slaughtered in the exercise. If they didn't want to be ready for a confrontation they wouldn't have bothered with the exercise. Instead they allowed themselves the opportunity to learn new tactics before a possible confrontation.
 
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@Pladio, @cptnmaxon -- the people killed by the Israeli airstrike were refugees fleeing from Marjayoun, following the IDF's orders to evacuate before their assault. They had contacted the IDF and their convoy had been cleared to leave. They were tracked by Israeli drones for about 35 kilometers. Then some pimple-faced teenager in a bunker somewhere pressed the red button on his joystick, and people died. So now who's the one who thinks war is a video game?

The other guy that got killed got killed because he happened to be the son of an anti-Syrian MP who was on The Good Doctor of Damascus's hit list.

I don't see any difference, moral or otherwise, between these two acts... unless it's the difference between a mob hit and a school shooting. You may believe your propaganda about armies trying to avoid killing "innocents." I don't buy it. If they think they're in danger, they'll shoot first -- that's what they're trained to do. I'm sure whoever gave the order to the pimply-faced teen had his reasons too; perhaps he thought he saw something in the convoy that looked like a shipment of rockets; perhaps that's why it took so long until they actually pulled the trigger. Hell, for all I know, perhaps the Hezzies did sneak in a shipment of rockets (or fighters) in there; I know that I would have, in their position.

And, of course, terror against civilian populations is a tactic that has been and is widely used by militaries all of the world and all through history. What else was the London blitz, the Dresden bombing, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the rape of Nanking, the leveling of Groznyi, not even to mention the shit that's going down in the Middle East right now? Pick any major war in history, scratch the surface, and you'll find armies terrorizing civilian populations for any of a number of reasons. How is this different from terrorizing the population by blowing up teenagers in a disco?

Militaries don't give a flying fuck about civilian casualties. The only thing they care about is executing their orders and coming back alive. Anything else comes second. And generals care about civilian casualties only to the extent that they affect their strategic position -- if they feel it's strategically advantageous to wipe out a couple of cities, they'll do it (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Carthage, Groznyi, Halabja) but if they feel it's in their advantage to court the civilian population and play nice with them, they'll do that too (although, strangely, I can't come up with any examples right now even though I'm sure there is one, somewhere, some time). But it sure as hell isn't from some deep humanitarian impulses. Generals play to win. Any general who doesn't has no business being a general.

@Korplem -- if you do get in a scrap with Iran, may you keep your life vest and shark repellent handy, 'cuz you're OK. I hope you lose this war and get hurt badly enough not to start a new one in a while, not to mention getting the fuck out of the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, but I've nothing against you personally. Nor any of your compadres, for that matter, other than the ones who sent you there -- or elected the ones who sent you there.
 
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