Pre-emptive ‘the sky is blue’ cite for Gomi
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Palestinian deaths rose in 2006]Palestinian deaths rose in 2006
So long as we have a blinkered black and white view of the middle east the root causes of Islamist terrorist activity, Israel/Palestine and the ongoing western backed suppression of democracy in the Middle East are not going to be solved.
This is very true. While there are some good non-realpolitik reasons for not letting Iran have a nuclear program, it really just boils down to geopolitical concerns. Being in the nuclear club equals power, and all states in the international system are trying to constantly increase their sphere of influence and power, this is the real reason the nuclear gang really doesn’t want more members.
There are side points, Iran would be more likely than say, the UK, to sell one of its nukes to a terrorist group, or give them to a terrorist group. But it’s questionable how “safely guarded” a lot of Russian nukes are, and there is so much corruption and general malaise in the Russian military that there’s a not-insignificant chance if a nuke was ever sold to a private entity it could happen in Russia. Pakistan is likewise not exactly the most stable country in the world and they are in the nuclear club.
What it comes down to is, the genie is out of the bottle on nuclear weapons, so arguments focusing on humanitarian desires for peace and etc. don’t hold a lot of water to me.
That being said, do I support Iran having the bomb? Nope, sure don’t. As an American I also want my country to be more powerful, not less, and one of my country’s biggest enemies getting the bomb is a blow to us.
I’m guessing you’d support a Native American terrorist group that was attempting to topple the United States government?
The history of Israel is not one of conquest. It is one of migration, and legal land purchases, it was not the fault of the Jewish settlers that the people who owned the land they bought were wealthy absentee Ottoman land lords, but by rights much of the land of present day Israel was bought in an entirely legal manner from the Ottomans who legally controlled it.
It’s a bitch for the native Arabs in the region (who traditionally have not self-identified as “Palestinians” til after the “evil” Jews came around) that they’ve been conquered and reconquered more times than people can count. But we can’t justify the wholesale murder of civilians just because people are mad about stuff that happened before most people involved in the conflict were born. The cycle has to stop somewhere, if you are going to get caught up in “that was originally my land!” sort of arguments you’d have most of Europe constantly going to war, Germany with Poland and France, France with the Netherlands and Belgium, the UK with France, Austria with the entire Balkans and much of eastern Europe, and etc.
In fact, here, simply too easy a task:
Can ‘terrorists’ be turned into allies?
Terrorist Group Supporters Meet in Washington
When Making a Revolution, Allies Matter
Friendly fire and the US in Iran
BTW, there’s also a Kurdish terrorist group being funded/trained by the Israelis. Forget their name at the moment. Will post on it when I recall.
Well, how about trying to make them your friends then? How about living up to your own reciprocal obligations under the non-proliferation treaty you try to hold Iran to?
So long as the West acts as Islamist terror’s number 1 recruiting officer by it’s own stupidity the closer the day comes that one of Russia’s nukes goes off in our back yard.
The unipolar world is an illusion. In a century when any postgrad student with basic lab facilities can knock up a plague the important thing is to address legitimate grievances even if short term sectional interests suffer.
And the brute fact is the West’s narrow pursuit of its own self interest, as defined by those who hold power, creates and empowers its enemies.
Why? In this particular case I don’t think us being their friends is going to solve our problems. International relations isn’t about being nice to people, and it never has been. That’s not the game ANY country plays.
Islam and the West not getting along goes back to the very beginning of Islam, I’ve seen no historical evidence to support the idea that we’re all just going to get along if we just bend over for Islamic terrorism. In the past the West and Islam fought on more even grounds because the two sides were closer to equal (Empires like the Ottomans actually being clearly superior to many Western states which they outright conquered for many centuries), now Islamic states uses terror because they can’t stand up to us any other way.
It’s not an illusion, it’s something that was short lived following the collapse of the USSR (when previously we had a bipolar world.) We’re moving to a multipolar world, and that’s unfortunate because most of the most horrible conflicts in human history have happened in multipolar state systems, a unipolar system has more stability.
No, it doesn’t. The conflict is because every one pursues their self interest. You try to act like you’re looking at this as an impartial observer but you are not. An impartial observer realizes that Islamic states approach the geopolitical system just like Western ones, just unfortunately for them, they are weaker states so have to use different tools than we do.
The interconnected world adds in other things, like Western cultural imperialism that we can’t “turn off” other than by changing our culture and refusing to interact with the rest of the world, which just isn’t going to happen. While specific actions by the West may fuel specific people to take to terrorism, the bigger picture has little to do with any of that. A student of history recognizes that Islamic states and the West will not got along because their interests bring the two sides to conflict.
What I don’t understand is, why didn’t we quietly but firmly tell Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups? After 9/11 there was a global backlash against terrorism and a wave of sympathy toward the US (including a huge candlelight vigil in Teheran). But instead of riding that wave and carrot-and-sticking Iran back into the fold reponsible nations, Bush wasted no time seeing to it that there was a backlash against the US for Iran to ride.
Squeaky Wheels: Monday Morning in the Middle East
Did you read your own links?
From your second cite (dated March 10, 2007):
Is there definitive evidence that Iran supports terrorism?
I dunno why this bothers me, but it does. It seems that throughout the 20th and 21st century, Iran has essentially been bullied by the West. I see no definitive links to terrorism, use of weapons of mass destruction, or the desire to build an nuclear weapon. It seems that everyone takes these accusations as the gospel and woe to those who actually asks whether these accusations are substantive.
The only bullet point that seems to have an arguable consensus, is Iran’s call for the destruction of Israel. Though, after watching the interview with Mike Wallace, I am convinced that the quote was taken out of context. Just my interpretation, though.
Unhistorical nonsense. I’m sorry - if you don’t know anything about the Middle East in general or the history of Israel and Palestine in particular you should just be reading these threads, not participating.
But while you are here - perhaps you’ll explain how the West Bank settlements, on conquered land in direct defiance of international law, fits into your rosy view of things.
Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing as much as it was on anything else. Or were the Stern Gang just a myth? People just up and left their villages for no reason? Just cunningly massacred themselves at Safsaf?
I fully support the right of Israel to exist within its original borders but the Jewish people had no more claim to a state in palestine than they had on any other part of the planet. That claim lapsed 2000 years ago.
I can fully understand the Arab’s asking why they had to pay the price for European misdeeds. I’d have handed over Bavaria.
Hmmm…my memory is not as bad as I thought. Here you go:
[PLAN B - The Kurdish Gambit
by Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker](http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/2004/en/0621_hersh.html)
There was also the recent Turkish threats to go in and clean house in northern Iraq if the USA didn’t stop arming and training Kurdish terrorists.
But hey, if it’s Israel or the USA pulling shit, it smells sweet. It’s only when the bloody Arabs and Persians squat on the pot that there’s a stink.
It all stinks to me. The Palestinians should realise they’ve lost and immediately recognise Israel within its original borders and give up the right of return. Israel should pull back to those borders and we should stop holding the world to standards of behaviour we aren’t prepared to meet ourselves.
The Iranian regime will collapse on its own sooner or later. But much later if we keep on playing into their hands.
Precisely.
What I find disappointing about international politics is that there is not a shred of honesty or shame. Indeed, if it boils down to Iran not allowed to join the l33t nuclear club, why doesn’t the West just strip away the ridiculous pretense and just say just that. Hell, they did it with North Korea, why not Iran? It’s a pity, too. The United Nations is such a cool concept. Why demean or reduce its significance by using the UNSC as a political instrument?
Perhaps I’m too young, too naive, but this all seems frivilous and unnecessary. If in the event that Iran does successfully (or attempt to) make a nuclear weapon, the world’s condemnation would be overwhelming. No one wants to see another country get nuclear weapons. No one. But these resolutions don’t appear to focus on that, rather, these sanctions seem to be narrowly tailored in preventing Iran from using nuclear power to generate electricity.
Well, I’m not sure how you can say something is unhistorical nonsense which is complete historical fact. Are you aware of the fundamental aspects of the Zionist movement and Jewish migration to the region (which was underway in the late 19th century?)
You should read the book “The Haj” sometime (admittedly a work of fiction, but based on how things actually happened.)
Read the history of some of modern-day Israel’s earliest settlements, pre-dating the official establishment of the state by over fifty years. They purchased land and settled in places, in accordance with the laws of the Ottoman Empire. Importantly, by and large, the Jews were acting within the legal system of the Ottoman Empire and with the approval of the Sultan. That doesn’t sound much like an “armed invasion” of Palestine to me. In fact, unless I’m dreadfully mistaken Palestine was just a part of a larger empire, so one would have to argue that a few Jews conquered Palestine from right under the noses of the Sultan with nary a bit of resistance from the Ottomans, who were still a relatively important regional power at the time if you’re going to say my assertions were unhistorical nonsense.
This is a completely separate issue, I never said Israel didn’t conquer/occupy lands, I just said the founding of Israel wasn’t a “foundation of conquest.” It was one of mostly peaceful migration and legal land purchases. You’re confusing the mechanism by which most of the Jews who founded Israel got there in the first place with things Israel did after it officially became a state.
I’m not saying Israel was founded without any bloodshed. But by and large the Jews came to Palestine peacefully at first, and conflicts did not begin to seriously boil over on a large scale until the Arabs got mad about there being too many Jews around. A similar situation hit America in the 19th century with German, Irish, and Italian immigrants, but for a multitude of reason we just let them come and integrate into our culture instead of taking the route the Arabs in Palestine did (it’s not an entirely poor comparison, either, many of these new immigrants in America were Catholic in what was until then an overwhelmingly Protestant state, and the new immigrants eventually outnumbered the original English-ancestry Americans.)
If you’re going to argue that the Stern Gang is reflective of Israel as a whole then are you willing to stipulate the same thing about several prominent Palestinian terror groups?
Like I said, I’m not saying violence didn’t happen. But I am saying that by and large, before the 1940s and the subsequent wars, I can’t see anything other than a peaceful migration on the part of the Jews.
And what right did the Arabs have to their own state? Did their claim not lapse when they failed to avoid conquest by the ever-changing power brokers in the Middle East?
How exactly were Arabs “paying the price?” It was the Arab’s own leadership which allowed the Jewish migration to even start, if the Ottomans had decided they weren’t going to allow it, in all likelihood it wouldn’t have happened. A few scattered Jewish settlers in the late 19th century would have no ability to resist an eviction by the Ottoman Empire (in decline but not that much decline), nor would they have even had those settlements in the region in the first place if they had not tacitly allowed it. In fact, in the case of the founding of Petah Tikva, the Sultan even specifically forbade Jewish settlers from establishing a settlement in a certain region, showing he did have the authority/power to do such a thing. He did, however, allow them to settle in a different area (which happened to be a swamp.)
Of big issue is, why does it really matter who started what and when? We don’t live in the past, we live in the present, and in the real world you can’t just evict the Jews because you don’t like their state or because you like the Palestinians. Also, in the real world people who lose wars tend to lose land, so I have a hard time looking negatively at any Israeli occupations, they occupied land they conquered, conquest is the typical mechanism by which a state acquires land. And in the major wars Israel has fought, they most definitely were either not the ones to start the war or they had legitimate casus belli.
This should be framed and hung prominently in every Middle East-related debate.
That statement I fully agree with, and is in large part the reason why I am so upset at the Bush Administration handling this so poorly. The fundamentalists were on the brink of being chucked out on their ear and the moderates were gaining ground until this Axis of Evil nonsense and the Iraq invasion. Not smart politics.
I also agree that Israel should pull back to the internationally recognized 1967 borders if they have any hope of living in peace with their neighbors and the Palestinian population. But Hamas and Hezbollah have to recognize Israel or it’s moot. And that ain’t likely to happen as long as they are still funded by Iran to keep shooting at them.
Why yes, in fact I do. Do you? Or does ‘diminished’ no longer mean ‘still continuing but in smaller amounts’ like it used to? Or do the following reports saying recently Iran has increased it’s support of Hamas and Hezbollah as well as evidence of them supporting insurgent groups in Iraq (bent on not freeing their countrymen from Western Aggression but dominating them and enacting ancient grudges) not mean anything? Iran is Shi’a. Iraq’s leading party was Sunni. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but those two particular groups don’t get along very well.
Just cause for grievance against the West or not, Iran’s administration supports, funds, and protects terrorists. It is a fact. And one they don’t even deny.
Iran isn’t allowed to join. And the reasons are quite simple - we got here first, with our nuclear ‘buddies’ (some of whom aren’t very much our buddies at all) and we don’t trust them to be nice guys if they get here, and we got together to try to protect ourselves from anyone else who wants to join the club. Because we don’t trust them to show the restraint of us grown-up club members and not actually use them. We also don’t want to give up the biggest club in our bag to defend ourselves. Without nukes, we’re just a big bad junkyard dog. With nukes, we’re a big bad junkyard dog with rabies and a mean spikey collar.
International condemnation is useless - international condemnation didn’t stop India or Pakistan from going nuclear. It didn’t stop North Korea. Why would it stop Iran? As for the sanctions, there is a razor-fine line between generating nuclear energy and building a bomb. If you can prevent nuclear-generated electricity, you make it that much harder to build the breeder reactors required to build a bomb.
A lot of different reasons. Firstly, I do not believe most people are consciously aware of the fact that States, as entities are entities which act in a world based solely on self-interest. I think most of the major world leaders aren’t motivated in that way, and I think the rhetoric tends to be created by the very same forces at work in the geopolitical system that causes states to act as entities of self-interest in the first place.
IR realism isn’t something the American people are ready for, or most people for that matter (look at most of the posters in this thread who are making mostly moral arguments about an IR issue.) Realism in IR is a cold, unhappy world. It means realizing that things like human rights, trying to spread wonderful ideals and giving a helping hand to other countries are all acts of self-interest. It’s realizing that the United States and other major world powers don’t give millions to billions of dollars to stuff like the tsunami relief efforts because of a genuine concern for the human suffering but because of the fact that to not do so would hurt the standing of said countries in the world and thus would harm them in the “great game” of international relations.
It’s easy to take the side of the “little guy” in these things like tagos does, but the little guy plays the game just like the big guys, they just don’t have the resources to play it as well. Arguments about what is right/good are completely pointless in discussions of international relations, it has to boil down to what is in the best interests of the countries in question, and how will their leaders move them towards that.
A very good point. I heartily agree.
I am a citizen of a country (even though I don’t actually live in it) that I feel is usually motivated by what is right, because our citizens are on the whole decent people, and that is what we want our leaders to do. The few times we’ve strayed from this path of being basically good, we’ve self-corrected. And at least we have the honorability to feel guilty when we screw something up.
To pretend this basic goodness is anything but self-interest is naive.
And I suppose, you, the “Big Guys,” get to decide what the “best interest” is for the “little guy.”
What a bunch of hubristic BS.
Fact: The US comprises approximately (and barely) 5% of the world’s population, yet, according to your Big Dog Theory (as spoused Scylla at some point on this board BTW) you get to tell us, 95% of the world, what’s “good for us.” Meanwhile you’re openly admitting that what you’re really looking our for are YOUR OWN INTERESTS. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
In a pig’s eye. Because if that’s the case, get ready for WW-III. I promise you, you won’t like it either.
Or else, you could simply climb off your high-horse and try to get along with the rest of humanity.
If your intent is to be as insulting as possible, you’ve achieved it.
If, on the other hand, you’re trying to prove a point, then it’s up to YOU to prove your premise. I simply asked for a cite.
On to the meat:
So Iran complaining about intelligence overflights proves exactly what? It’s no secret we’re watching Iran. We think they’re trying to buld the bomb. We’re watching them.
You’re saying it is perfectly acceptible for Iran to support terrorist groups, as they publicly have admitted, but it’s not acceptible for the US to even talk to those who oppose the Iran regime?
Turkey has always opposed the Kurds. I don’t think you’ve bothered to actually read about it, but there is a strong and long-running insurgency in southern Turkey run by the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group intent on carving out a separate state for themselves using chunks of Northern Iraq and southern Turkey to do so. Of course, since they’re the underdogs, perhaps Turkey should just roll over and let them carve big chunks out of the country to set up their own homeland.
As for the rest of your idiot premise, all I can say is ‘Meh.’ You should read the news yourself, or have you forgotten Ahmenijad wanting to drive Israel into the sea?