I can’t help but think that he’d have not been elected or been assasinated by now had we not sqaundered political capital re: Iraq.
Any other president would have removed him and his country’s nuclear ambitions by now, but I’m wondering if Bush’s silly forein policy blunders have left him in a state of impotence.
If Gore was president, I’d think that an Israeli strike or even an American strike could have been feasible by this point. My premise is that Bush threw away the credibility and influence of the US, thus allowing the Iranian president and his nuclear ambitions to survive to this very day.
Also, if my premise is true, which I suspect it is, this president will go down as a medium to lower medium president in foreign policy issues. He can’t touch Carter, but he’s as damaging as Johnson, maybe even Wilson.
IMHO, no, I think zuma was just suggesting that someone like Ahmedinejad would have been politically completely unacceptable to the Iranian people, if it hadn’t been for the nationalistic fear and fervor provoked by American anti-Iran “axis of evil”-type rhetoric.
I’m not sure I agree with zuma on that, though (assuming for the sake of argument that that is what zuma was really saying). An Iranian colleague of mine says that the real reason an oozing pimple like Ahmedinejad was able to get the presidency was that the pro-reform voters were split among various more or less reformist candidates to succeed the fairly reformist Khatami. And I think that could have happened no matter what Bush was saying about Iran. Anti-US resentment probably did boost Ahmedinejad’s candidacy somewhat, but I’m not convinced it was a decisive factor.
Actually, on more carefully rereading what zuma said about “strikes”, I guess Fear Itself is right and zuma really is saying that the US should attack Iran, instead of just saying that the Iranian people shouldn’t put up with Ahmedinejad.
I completely disagree with zuma on this one, then.
Actually, on more carefully rereading what zuma said about “strikes”, I guess Fear Itself is right and zuma really is saying that the US should attack Iran, instead of just saying that the Iranian people shouldn’t put up with Ahmedinejad.
I completely disagree with zuma on this view. But I don’t know if zuma is right in saying that a different US president, one who hadn’t started a war in Iraq, would or could have taken out Ahmedinejad.
When was the last time we “took out” the president of another country. Obviously Saddam Hussein counts, but that action doesn’t support the OP’s thesis. Noriega? Not really-- we arrested him on drug charges and he’s in a US prison.
I think the OP needs to give us some examples of when this type of thing has happened before to substantiate that Gore would’ve “taken out” Ahmedinejad.
As for Ahemdy not being elected, that’s pretty ridiculous, too. The elections are tightly controled by the Council of Guardians (unelected clerics). In fact, calling them “elections” is highly misleading.
If anything, I think our Iraq adventure has proven how foolish it is to think we can “easily take out” any Middle Eastern leader under any circumstances.
There was just the little problem of this involving an illegal invasion that killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians. Minor stuff that the US doesn’t concern itself with.
Think about how difficult the task of “taking out” Saddam has been.
Why did we go after Saddam first? Because he was 100 times more vulnerable than any other dictator in the world. Iraq was friendless, without an open ally anywhere. All of Iraq’s neighbors…Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia…hated and feared Saddam. He was a secular dictator without the figleaf of religious authority that other regimes had. He was universally unpopular in Iraq. We knew his military could be beaten because we had tromped them easily in Gulf War I. There were already large parts of Iraq that were already de facto independent, so we had guaranteed assistance of the Kurds. We had military assets in place, and were engaging in sporadic warfare already to enforce the no-fly zones. Iraq was an economic basket case from 10 years of sanctions. Saddam was reveiled around the world as a brutal and genocidal bastard.
We chose to depose Saddam because he was perceived as being in a uniquely weak position.
Iran may be much weaker than the United States, but they are still many times stronger than pre invasion Iraq. So how is taking out the Iranian regime going to be any easier? Assassinating Ahmedinejad accomplishes nothing, since he bears the same relation to Iran’s real power brokers that Tony Snow does to the Bush administration. He is a spokesperson and public face who can be replaced at a moment’s notice. You’d have to invade Iran to depose the mullahs. You really think Kerry would have the huevos to do that?
Actually, according to the Iranians I know, that’s not entirely true. They do seem to think that if one of the reformist candidates had got enough of the pro-reform votes, that candidate would have become President. The Guardians do exercise a lot of undue influence and do “weed out” people they consider really unacceptable candidates, but it’s not as though they can simply put somebody in office completely irrespective of what the voters do.
If you expect me to defend the action the US took in Panama, you’ll be disapointed. I didn’t approve of it when we did it, and I don’t approve of it now.
Way, way off base.
First of all, the US hasn’t had the clout to to control the Iranian government since 1970+ or -. Khomeini, you may recall, wasn’t Carter’s man in Iran, and since then, American capital hasn’t increased substantially.
No other president would have removed him. The days of Executive Action certainly are over. If they aren’t, the Executives being acted upon aren’t names that you’d recognize.
Irrespective of who is US President, technology was making a nuclear ambition a dead certainty. Every ME nation has/has had nukes on the brain ever since Israel got them 30 years ago. Ten Clinton’s and five Gore’s will never remove a nation’s nuclear ambitions. What on earth are you thinking?
The POTUS may be in a state of impotence, but any other Prez would be in the same boat in re: Iran. Pro-Iranskis would have their heads handed to them on a plate, and even if not, who can say whether any attempts at accomodations would end up like Reagan’s fiasco (can’t remember: weapons for something-the Iranians took the weapons and told the US to take a hike-something like that.), and nobody would be willing to take the risk.
If Gore was president, Iran would already be nuclear. A major impetus in Iran’s nuclear ambition was the quantum leap in missile technology that they got under the Clinton/Gore regime.
just my take,
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…from Israel? In the days of the Iran-Iraq war, Israel had a covert policy of supplying Iran with various weapons systems. I believe some of that included surface-surface guided missiles. So, is the “Shahab” missile an outcome of Israeli largesse?
As far as the nuclear stuff, I’m sure that Pakistan played a big role in getting Iran what they needed.
That’s not entirely true, either. If a “reformer” gets in office and does too much reforming, it’s likely that the next batch of candidates will be less reform minded. And I use the term “reformer” losely, since a real “reformer” would never be allowed to run in the first place.
That limits who gets on the ballot, but I’ve never heard that they’re total sham elections like Hussein used to have. Who the Iranian people vote for (among the choices offered) really does make a difference, AFAIK.
The point is, just because Noriega was arrested on drug charges doesn’t mean that wasn’t the case of the U.S. using armed force to “take out” a foreign leader. It was exactly that.
I’m not convinced that Gore would have avoided the invasion of Iraq. If you believe his pre-war rhetoric, wasn’t Gore in favor of ousting Hussein? Ditto re: Kerry?
Or do I misunderstand your premise? Are you arguing that Bush screwed up some way other than the invasion of Iraq?
For practical purposes, everybody liked regime change as an idea. Neither Gore nor Kerry would have actually invaded the country; that was the Bush administration’s obsession.