On the day the Colombian military freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other long-held hostages, the Italian Parliament passed yet another resolution demanding her release. Europe had long ago adopted this French-Colombian politician as a cause celebre. France had made her an honorary citizen of Paris, passed numerous resolutions and held many vigils.
Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic. Betancourt languished for six years in cruel captivity until freed in a brilliant operation conducted by the Colombian military, intelligence agencies and special forces -- an operation so well executed that the captors were overpowered without a shot being fired.
This in foreign policy establishment circles is called "hard power." In the Bush years, hard power is terribly out of fashion, seen as a mere obsession of cowboys and neocons and Rantburgers; but I repeat myself. Both in Europe and America, the sophisticates worship at the altar of "soft power" -- the use of diplomatic and moral resources to achieve one's ends.
Europe luxuriates in soft power, nowhere more than in l'affaire Betancourt in which Europe's repeated gestures of solidarity hovered somewhere between the fatuous and the destructive. Europe had been pressing the Colombian government to negotiate for the hostages. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez offered to mediate.
Of course, we know from documents captured in a daring Colombian army raid into Ecuador in March -- your standard hard-power operation duly denounced by that perfect repository of soft power, the Organization of American States -- that Chávez had been secretly funding and pulling the strings of the FARC. These negotiations would have been Chávez's opportunity to gain recognition and legitimacy for his terrorist client.
Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative and close ally of President Bush, went instead for the hard stuff. He has for years. As a result, he has brought to its knees the longest-running and once-strongest guerrilla force on the continent by means of "an intense military campaign [that] weakened the FARC, killing seasoned commanders and prompting 1,500 fighters and urban operatives to desert" ( Washington Post). In the end, it was that campaign -- and its agent, the Colombian military -- that freed Betancourt.
She was, however, only one of the high-minded West's many causes. Solemn condemnations have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness -- the European Union, the United Nations, the G-8 foreign ministers -- demanding that Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe stop butchering his opponents and step down. Before that, the cause du jour was Burma, where a vicious dictatorship allowed thousands of cyclone victims to die by denying them independently delivered foreign aid lest it weaken the junta's grip on power.
And then there is Darfur, a perennial for which myriad diplomats and foreign policy experts have devoted uncountable hours at the finest five-star hotels to deplore the genocide and urgently urge relief.
What is done to free these people? Nothing. Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy -- Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about -- the only solution is foreign intervention.
And who's going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the past two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor -- the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world's first democracy -- and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.
And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done -- often with the support of the American military. "Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work," explained The Post. "It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces . . . a vast intelligence-gathering operation . . . and training programs for Colombian troops." The Washington Post? Charles must've gleaned all the grain andshoveled out the chaff in the article for his quote.
Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States. Wha'd you expect. She's a politician, yes?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008 06:27 ||
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#1
What about the all time classic, Tibet?
Have these people ever stopped to consider why their methods don't seem to get anything done?
The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades. Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing. Not this conservative, E.J.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to "grow the pie" is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is "protectionism." Yup, yup.
The old script is in rewrite. "We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview. A liberal speaks, and conservative principals are in free-fall?
He noted that in 1999 when Congress replaced the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act with a set of looser banking rules, "we let investment banks get into a much wider range of activities without regulation." This helped create the subprime mortgage mess and the cascading calamity in banking.
While Frank is a liberal, the same cannot be said of Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet in a speech on Tuesday, Bernanke sounded like a born-again New Dealer in calling for "a more robust framework for the prudential supervision of investment banks and other large securities dealers." Bernanke said the Fed needed more authority to get inside "the structure and workings of financial markets" because "recent experience has clearly illustrated the importance, for the purpose of promoting financial stability, of having detailed information about money markets and the activities of borrowers and lenders in those markets." Sure sounds like Big Government to me.
This is the third time in 100 years that support for taken-for-granted economic ideas has crumbled. The Great Depression discredited the radical laissez-faire doctrines of the Coolidge era. Stagflation in the 1970s and early '80s undermined New Deal ideas and called forth a rebirth of radical free-market notions. What's becoming the Panic of 2008 will mean an end to the latest Capital Rules era.
What's striking is that conservatives who revere capitalism are offering their own criticisms of the way the system is working. Irwin Stelzer, director of the Center for Economic Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute, says the subprime crisis arose in part because lenders quickly sold their mortgages to others and bore no risk if the loans went bad. "You have to have the person who's writing the risk bearing the risk," he says. "That means a whole host of regulations. There's no way around that."
CEOs "benefit substantially if the risks they take pay off" but "pay no penalty" if their risks lead to losses or even catastrophe -- another sign that capitalism, in its current form, isn't living by its own rules.
Frank also calls for new thinking on the impact of free trade. He argues it can no longer be denied that globalization "is a contributor to the stagnation of wages and it has produced large pools of highly mobile capital." Mobile capital and the threat of moving a plant abroad give employers a huge advantage in negotiations with employees. "If you're dealing with someone and you can pick up and leave and he can't, you have the advantage."
"Free trade has increased wealth, but it's been monopolized by a very small number of people, if you leave out the Chinese and Indians," Frank said. The coming debate will focus not on shutting globalization down but rather on managing its effects with an eye toward the interests of "the most vulnerable people in the country."
In the campaign so far, John McCain has been clinging to the old economic orthodoxy while Barack Obama has proposed a modestly more active role for government. But the economic assumptions are changing faster than the rhetoric of the campaign. "Reality has broken in," says Frank. And none too soon.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008 07:06 ||
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#1
EJ Dionne is frequently a good barometer for the truth. Read his column, and the truth is usually the opposite. I hope Barney gave him a reacharound
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 9:02 Comments ||
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#2
ARRRGGGHHHH
It's not capitalism that caused this it's the fucking govenemnt regualtor of money!!!!!!!
The engineered a credit explosion, that seperated the financial economy from the real economy and caused vast amounts of mal-investment. These investments are now negative yeilding and thus worthless.
The credit bubble caused a huge amount of inflation (destroying house price affordability and crushing rental yields), but that was masked by the deflationary effect of chinese imports.
With the weight of these negative investments killing the dollar, and now chinas internal growth stopping the deflation effect we are seeing inflation on imports and deflation in houses.
How to prevent this in the future?
A LAND VALUE TAX to keep the ratio between earnings and land prices stable.
The federal reserve to raise the reserve requirements in response to rising credit cration.
Keep interest rates targeting as is (i.e. slight financial expansion to stop people sitting on their currency instead of investing it).
#3
I would say overregulation is a huge part of the problem. Maybe that's not the right word but preventing drilling and building of nuke plants for the past few decades has not helped the current energy problem and the cost of oil is effecting prices accross the board.
We'd ride the mortgage problem without a hitch if hte energy crisis wasn't happening at the same time.
#4
I am afraid that USA is heading in this stupidity since this idiot like many others doesnt grasp that it was THE STATE(FED) REGULATION OF RATES that made the subprime.
He also doesnt grasp that the increase in income all over the world due to increased trade.
But i am not afraid, all Eastern Europe is much more capitalist than USA and even parts of Asia is getting deregulated. What happens in US doesnt have the impact it had in the past.
#6
Before everyone gets the idea that laissez faire and non-federal regulation is the answer, you better go back and read up on the multiple economic crisis of nineteenth century [the Panic of 1857, Panic of 1873, Panic of 1893, Panic of 1896, and Panic of 1907] and their impact on the economy and the society. Thinking you don't need some of this is like parents who think their kids can do without inoculations cause they haven't lived through the real alternative.
Can it be better. yes.
Can it be perfect. no. More often than not, the problem is the same one as at Three Mile Island, humans ignoring the warnings and doing things [or not doing things] they're suppose to do. The tools are often already in place to address the pending crisis. Its stupid human tricks that create the folly.
#7
The credit bubble caused a huge amount of inflation (destroying house price affordability and crushing rental yields), but that was masked by the deflationary effect of chinese imports.
Inflation by definition is excess credit.
We don't have that. Banks ain't lending and interest rates irrespective of the rate at any discount window is about to skyrocket.
We have deflation.
How to prevent this in the future?
A LAND VALUE TAX to keep the ratio between earnings and land prices stable.
The federal reserve to raise the reserve requirements in response to rising credit cration.
Keep interest rates targeting as is (i.e. slight financial expansion to stop people sitting on their currency instead of investing it).
Taxes are very poor policy, and increasing them is even worse policy. The folly here is that anything the government can do in its tool bag ( fiscal and tax policy) can prevent anything except prosperity, the one thing government and its policies can damn sure do in the shortest amount of time.
Cut government spending to the bone and lower taxes even more. The whole problem with China making our goods is that companies which invest in China are backed by the knowledge the government will always overspend and thus will go borrow money to make it through the next crisis.
Treasury bills will always be there to back any export/import policy including jobs.
the ONLY solution is to reduce the absolute size of government at all levels and make it illegal for congress to mandate anything except only those matter which actually affect the federal government.
Because it its oversize appetites, the federal government and state government have become monsters in the way of genuine prosperity domestically.
Reduce federal government size and power and you will see these problems go away.
#8
multiple economic crisis of nineteenth century [the Panic of 1857, Panic of 1873, Panic of 1893, Panic of 1896, and Panic of 1907]
The Great Depression, the recessions of 1946, 1958, 1960, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1987, 1993, 2001. The bubbles of 1987, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2007 and the current commodities bubble. Guess what? Even more bubbles and recessions than ever before. If this is progress, then that explains why liberalism is which a contradictory and dishonest political economic philosophy.
#9
Reduce federal government size and power and you will see a LOT problems go away, Bad.
Let's start with Health and Education. Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal gummint the right to meddle in either of these areas. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/12/2008 12:50 Comments ||
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#10
If this is progress..
Well, growing up in lower middle class from the early 1950's, even with those 'bubbles', I certainly see things better per capita for people in similar strata today than we 'enjoyed' back then. People bitch and moan, but by large extent we are certainly better off. For example, back in the early 60s, 30 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning. Today, its 30 percent of all classified as POOR who have air conditioning. Multiply that by all measure of living [to include life expectancy] and the doom and gloom doesn't match up. That is progress.
#11
The problem began with Frank Roosevelt. His solution to too much easy credit, which caused stock purchase on margin, resulting in the collapse of the stock market, was itself vast amounts of easy credit.
It mortgaged the future to pay for the present. And though it benefited the present very much, we are now living in the future, and the bill is due.
What is happening is a worldwide credit collapse. The eventual result is a foregone conclusion: you can no longer buy what you cannot afford. This applies from the individual level all the way up to the national and international level.
It is hard to imagine how different the US will be when it has to have a balanced budget, because no one will loan it money. The last time the US government ran out of money, J.P. Morgan, the man, stepped in to keep it from default.
The Laffer curve still applies, which even the US government has learned must be obeyed, because there will always be tax avoidance available to the wealthy. This means they cannot "tax America into prosperity", as Rush Limbaugh points out.
In practical terms, those parts of the economy that have real value based products and services will continue. But those parts that are based in economic leverage are doomed.
The old saying will again apply, that "You can only have credit if you don't need it", with 100% or *more* collateral, carefully assessed for value and even put in escrow, prior to your receiving credit based on all or some part of its value.
For most people this means they will only have debit, not credit. And those that have credit will have a limit based on cash they have on deposit with the credit issuer. So why have credit at all?
I suspect that with the international credit crisis, the US will fractionally redeem its international debt in exchange for food. That is, $10 bushels of produce for $10 cash, or $100, if they pay in relieved debt. And purchasers will have no choice, if they want to eat, yet have no cash, which most of them won't.
This will also mean stiff trade tariffs. If some manufacturer wants to sell it here, they will have no choice but to make it here. Imports will be raw materials for food, exports for cash only or relieved debt.
The salad days of speculation will be over for decades, and speculative corporations will fold.
#12
Mostly excellent analysis, Anonymoose. Before the 1930's most people, even most who were reasonably well off, lived in rented housing. The mortgage structure we have now simply didn't exist. Yes, I understand that there are positive intangibles regarding ownership vs renting. I am not sure that having as many people owning as we have the past twenty or so years is ultimately a good thing, though. I guess there will always be a certain percentage of folks who just can't manage their lives that way, for a host of reasons.
It is in fact a government intrusion into real estate (subsidization via mortgage interest deduction) that is ultimately to blame for the level of speculation we see now, not deregulation. If housing were treated simply as a sort of "durable good" and not an investment, there would be a lot less speculation.
I've always suspected that the changes in finance that led to the Depression were never really addressed by the New Deal, that the New Deal approaches were mere bandaids until the industrial runup in WWII.
The 50's were good in spite of those programs and attitudes persisting, due to the fact that we had an intact industrial base and trained workers, and nobody else on the planet had that combination. Things started going south by the late 60's, and have continued to deteriorate since then (I'm talking economics, not social/cultural stuff which has gone down, too, but that's for a different thread).
It is a physcial impossibility to tax and regulate an economy into wealth, and yet there are always those who try. Why? All of the data sets we have say it cannot work. Some regulation may be necessary, but always at a cost of economic growth.
I'm not sure about the tariff thing, that actually made the Depression far worse. Trade isolationism contributed to collapse before, and it could again.
As you've correctly pointed out, we have lots of food, and that is ALWAYS valuable. I like your plan to eliminate our debt. If everyone stays peaceful, that is.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/12/2008 16:36 Comments ||
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#13
(I'm talking economics, not social/cultural stuff which has gone down, too, but that's for a different thread).
No, it's the same thing. That's why the subject is properly called Political Economy as opposed to domestic economy or industrial economy.
And if you want to find the real beginning of the down slope it is the XVI Amendment, passed by the populist states of the west and south eager to tax speculators and evil Wall Street, that started tremendous changes that culminated in the Great Depression which has not yet been fully analyzed. Some people never learn.
#15
We could always go with the Wizard of Oz and free silver...
Investing is easy for those with a computer and web access, speculating is an adrenalin-high causing game, and lots of people aren't quite as smart as they think. The suckers get skinned as always, and the innocent pay the price when the problem is big enough to affect the economy. My father got caught in the stock market crash in the 1970s; he'd got a new Rolex watch and a stereo out of it before the sudden margin call ate our college money. Brilliant man -- a biochemistry research professor -- but he didn't then understand that people aren't like chemicals, therefore previous performance does not indicate future trends. I'll take regulation and an overblown government over another Great Depression, though.
#19
trailing wife: It's not an either-or scenario. Government and business are only constrained by factors beyond their control. In many ways, it is like the Panic of 1893.
The post WWII paradigms of our economy are collapsing, and we need a return to the stability of the early 20th Century.
This means the whole modern mindset of how to deal with the problem will not work. Government can only spend tax money, and once it is gone, there is no more money to spend. They cannot just raise taxes, or else they will have LESS money. They cannot have a deficit, because no one will underwrite it. If they cannot pay, they are bankrupt.
They must resolve their current debt to function, or it will take all of their revenues. Their two choices are to renounce their international debt, or to exchange it at a high rate for food, our most fungible commodity.
Initially there will be high inflation, because that is how they got out of this type of mess in the past. But it will not work, so it will likely be followed by high deflation. Instead of the currency being backed by credit, it will have to be backed by paper. Every dollar will have to have a paper equivalent. Imaginary money on computer will no longer work except in very transitory circumstances.
If a bank has $10B in deposits, it will have to have at least $10B in paper money. More if it wants to loan cash money.
Fortunately, paper checks still exist as a system, but they will function as debit instruments, requiring instant checks to insure they are solvent. They will act like debit cards.
The politics will be interesting. The winning political party will realize that it is a whole new ball game, and will do what it must to insure that the public does not starve and has a place to live. Any idea that does not have this as its first axiom will fail, despite best intentions.
Top down economics will be dead, as will efforts to restore easy credit. Efforts at inflation will also taint those responsible, but protectionism will be rewarded. A big plus to whoever gets industrial production working again in the US. The throttle for agriculture will be wide open.
My guesstimate is that 1/3rd to 1/2 of the government will have to be let go. The same with State and local government. Public education will be limited to in-State students, and tuition will be slashed to cash in hand.
Social Security, except for the poor, and Medicare will be over, with direct medical provision without paperwork, aka County hospitals. Insurance will be a shadow of itself, and private doctors will be cash only.
Quite possibly there will be the return of the poor farm and the orphanage. Prisons will be limited to violent offenders and white collar criminals, whose number will jump for a while.
It will be painful, but the gains of financial stability will soon be evident. The biggest regulation in the future will be in both credit and speculation, which will remain under tight controls, and only slowly allowed to rise to a fraction of their former glory.
#20
Regulation and overblown government brought you the last depression and they're doing their best to bring you another. Things were better before the Fed.
#21
The post WWII paradigms of our economy are collapsing
American Industry is no longer..."On Parade." We're buying everything overseas. Bloody EVERYONE cannot work for the government... or sell insurance. Somebody has to actually PRODUCE something. We're not doing much of that here anymore. It frightens me.
#1
News today that al Qaeda is now reeling even in Mosul, their last stronghold, should make us all stop and ponder. For all the talk of a worn-out military, a cruel Pentagon that treats its veterans poorly, and the general Democratic notion of our soldiers as victims of an immoral war and brutal militarism, a few thousand Americans, with vast odds against them, have nearly crushed Islamic fundamentalists, won the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims in the ancient caliphate, stabilized a constitutional government, and silenced their critics here at home and abroad. The American expeditionary army and marines in Iraq, and its commander David Petraeus, surely must be regarded as one of the most capable militaries in recent memory - all to the relative silence in our mainstream newspapers, network news, and opinion journalists.
The swelling forces of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan's border region pose a grave threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. They also pose a grave threat to the Pakistani people. Pakistan's Taliban militias, like their Afghan counterparts, are trying to impose their harsh medieval version of Islamic law. More than a thousand Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks in the past year, mostly in the border areas where radical Islamic fighters are strongest.
Pakistan's new military and civilian leaders, caught up in their own power struggles, have been dangerously derelict in acknowledging and confronting the threat. Instead, they have deluded themselves that they can negotiate a separate peace with fanatic Taliban leaders. Bitter experience has proved that will not work.
Sending United States troops into Pakistan's border regions to try to clean out Taliban and Al Qaeda forces is also not the answer -- and would provoke even fiercer anti-American furies across Pakistan. The poorly paid, ill-trained and uncertainly loyal Frontier Corps in Pakistan is not up to the job.
Pakistan's civilian leaders and the new military commander, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will need to commit to fighting the extremists -- for the sake of their own country's stability -- and to sending in elite units specifically trained in counterinsurgency techniques. Local tribal leaders also need to be weaned away from the Taliban. That would only happen if Islamabad and Washington back their exhortations with substantial economic assistance.
The United States has showered Pakistan with more than $7 billion in military aid over the past six years, with little of it actually being used for counterinsurgency purposes. Over the same period, Washington has provided less than $3 billion in all other forms of assistance.
This month, Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar plan to introduce sensible legislation that would provide up to $15 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next 10 years for economic development, health and education. Congress should move quickly to approve the aid.
The United States also needs to work with Pakistan's new government to establish spending priorities and to ensure that any future aid is channeled in ways that would strengthen the civilian government and allow it to regain control over a military that has too often been a law unto itself and intelligence services that seem far more loyal to the extremists than their own government.
When Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, visits Washington later this month, President Bush should offer him strong political and economic backing in exchange for a firm commitment to support Afghanistan's embattled government and fight Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorism in Pakistan.
Washington has made a lot of policy mistakes in Pakistan -- most notably supporting Pervez Musharraf for far too long. It has forfeited most of its credibility with the Pakistani people and reinforced their belief that the fight against extremism is "Washington's war" and not also their own.
Both countries have a common and increasingly urgent interest in rolling back the power of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and working together to promote democracy and development in Pakistan. President Bush needs to persuade Pakistan's leaders of that -- and he needs to do it now, before Al Qaeda and the Taliban get any stronger.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG > AL QAEDA: OSAMA WANTED TO FIGHT SADDAM.
#2
The Iranians are killing two birds with one stone here. The Basiij have been given both heavy weapons and extensive training in urban areas warfare. Both are applicable for civil uprisings and national defense.
I'd say the Iranians learned something from their consultants.
[..]
I posted some comment to that effect on Dr. Barnett's blog, and thank goodness that blog is moderated, because 10 minutes later I realized the conditions for war are indeed being met. China, and Japan have weighed in.
[..]
Last Friday, Iran delivered a letter of response to a package of incentives proposed by the six countries -- the permanent UN Security Council members Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States, as well as Germany, aimed at persuading Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
Liu confirmed Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had received a letter from his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, which said Iran was ready to hold constructive negotiations as soon as possible with the European Union and the six countries.
[..]
Last week we discussed the negotiations package offered to Iran and why the details are important. Iran appears to have accepted the negotiated package, and with that comes a condition that simply didn't get enough attention in the media.
The Foreign Office in London tonight confirmed to The Times that the major world powers would refrain from any further action against Tehran at the UN Security Council if Iran refrained from any new nuclear activity, including the installation of more centrifuges for uranium enrichment. This offer was part of an incentives package offered to Iran last month by the US, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany.
It was part and parcel of any pre-negotiations which would be limited to six weeks to prepare for the opening of any formal negotiations, the Foreign Office spokesman said.
We see this as a built in time table, essentially a loose countdown towards war. During the "process" Israel is expected to show restraint while the six party talks attempt a diplomatic solution. We expect this six week time period of pre-negotiations will begin soon, if not already, because another important condition was met today.
#1
ION NOSI > AIR FORCE MAGZ > US NAVY- PACIFIC CHOKE POINT [Straits of Malaccas]. USN now needs to keep an eye on same.
Lest we fergit, PHILIPPINES MIL CHIEF: ARMY CANNOT PROTECT/DEFEND THE PHILIPPINES; + Manila is antipating increases in Islamist and aligned violence and terror.
#2
If everyone, presumably to include Iran, knows the strike is coming does Iran target Israel pre-emptively rather than wait and hope it's only their nuclear facilities that are destroyed?
#3
Iran targets Israel pre-emptively with what? If Iran attacks Israel it will cease to exist and the MM know it. They cannot attack Israel until they have nukes, and even then it would be a nation scale suicide bomber.
#4
Spoken like a rational western thinker NS. How certain are you that the MMs and/or Ahmadinewhackjob are rational players rather than religious zealots? If they're the latter do you suppose that might have some impact on their ability to plan effectively and recognize the likely consequences of their actions?
#5
Quite and no. From the MMs point of view I am irrational secular zealot infidel instead of a rational tool of Allah. It is as much a mistake to assume your enemy is less rational than you as to assume that they, or you, will analyze the situation correctly.
The Iranian strategy of attacking Israel with it's Hezbollah proxy was well conceived and executed. Why would Iran choose to confront Israel directly when it has no means to do so in an effective manner? That is one among many reasons why they are developing nukes.
#6
I agree with Nimble. Persians were playing chess a very long time ago, and typically they intentionally do not speak with one voice, so part is belligerent, part is diplomatic, and part are off on some tangent.
Everything would be far easier if we could arrange for them to make an ineffectual attack when we are ready, and they are not, and against a strong part of our prepared defenses. Hopefully such an attack, if we could properly orchestrate it, would involve antagonizing neutral powers as well.
Say if one of their missile launch sites fired a series of missiles at Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Istanbul, Paris, Cairo, Baghdad, and the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier group. Without success, natch.
Unfortunate that they do not as yet have the range to target Moscow, as that would be the yummy iced topping on that cake. And their tap dance to explain that they didn't order those missiles to be fired would make funniest home videos.
#7
I wish I was as optimistic as you guys that they're just a bunch of cynical politicians squawking loudly in order to secure the maximum concessions from the West.
NS - point well taken as to the frame of reference being a necessity when considering the rationality of the actions of others, I think that's more-or-less inherent in the use of a term like 'rational' though. You asked why Iran would attack Israel when they lack an effective means to do so which question implicitly assumes the same sort of western rationality you chastised me for incorporating into my earlier statement.
When considering what, if anything, Ahmadeniwhackjob might actually do I think it's important to keep the apparent tenants of his faith in mind. It doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that both he and senior members of the Iranian government are part of a doomsday cult so extreme that was banned following the Islamic Revolution.
To revisit the question of why Iran might launch the attack: doomsday cultists may be in control of a large enough chunk of Iran's military to carry out such an attack. If they feel that their tenuous grip on power is threatened they might view this as their last moment to act. Given Ahmadeniwhackjob's reported beliefs he might accept the complete destruction of Iran and could even see it as a positive if he views that sort of war & chaos as the type most likely to bring back the 12th Imam. Insane by our standards, possibly quite rational by his.
I suppose it all depends on whether a significant number of their missiles can reach Israel; what sorts of goodies they have available to load them with; and whose finger is on the button. Color me not optimistic.
#8
There's little to be optimistic about in this persian mess, but Moose's analysis seems most likely. I wonder if any missiles will be involved at all - more likely more and coordinated deadly proxy attacks. That said, I still wonder if they're so far out on the limb that some other actor will pull something which leaves them the obvious culprit - an unclaimed terror action somewhere peripheral - an embassy, military base outside the ME, etc..
Many forces seem primed for such action, and the diplomatic test will be the extent to which it can trigger internal persian civil war.
While the MSM is absurdly focussed on Iraq, Iran and Israel - and to some extent the "surge", I wonder the extent to which we've created and spread proxies through the region, even sub-proxies. We obviously have deals in newer conditions with India, the Kurds, Misc. Stans, etc., and there's very little coverage of these as little as happened.
Iran is surrounded, they know it, they know there's little they can do about it as long as the MMs are in charge, the pressure is high, and an obscure pinprick may burst it all.
Let's hope it implodes rather than explodes.
Posted by: Pearl Jeager2939 ||
07/12/2008 22:20 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
