I want to make sure he doesn’t. Part of that is reminding people that a vote for McCain means four more years of stirring up shit in the Middle East.
For a very interesting and unconventional approach to the ongoing feud between Iran and the US, read this article by Francisco Gil-White.
Can it really be so? I have severe doubts, but have to admit he has some good points.
:dubious: What sort of “scientist” is this gentleman and why does he think his scientific background is relevant to the prediction of geopolitical events?
Too late.
yeah, I know that was a freudian typo.
You misunderstand me.
I’m not saying that we can bomb Iran and keep it secret afterwards, merely that if we plan to bomb Iran we could keep the bombing plans secret until the bombers are in the air and the bombs start dropping. This is what happened when we bombed Libya. Reagan ordered the bombing, and the rest of us found out the next morning in the New York Times.
So Bush could order a bombing strike on targets in Iran and the Air Force could keep the plans secret until the bombers cross into Iranian airspace and were picked up by Iranian air defense forces. Of course it wouldn’t be secret after that, unless somehow the Iranians also wanted to keep it secret, like that incident a few months ago when the Israelis hit a target in Syria and Syria pretended that nothing happened. That seems unlikely in the event of a US attack on Iran, since at the very least the Iranian regime would find it very useful shaping domestic Iranian public opinion.
Slight nitpick, Lemur, but I’m pretty sure something like that gets announced in a press conference shortly after it happens, and usually by the president himself, so we don’t have to wait to read about it in the papers the next day.
No, contrary to popular belief, Bush isn’t the only person in the world that beats the drum for Iran. There are a lot of people in the back channels in washington, conservative hawks who want to make a case for bombing Iran.
Unfortunately, the important context of the OP was ignored. That 'General Petraeus’ sees this as an escalation by Iran. I think people are being a little naive to think that Iran won’t go to war with the US. A war with Iran won’t be Iranian bombers over the US, it is starting as a proxy war for regional hegemony. If Iran were to get nukes, they could step up their conventional aggression. This is what people who don’t want Iran getting nukes talk about. Go check out people like Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Lind and other neocons, read what they say about Iran. Bush leaving office won’t make these guys suddenly vanish. Obviously they all have slightly different views on Iran, but there is pretty wide agreement that nukes will give Iran the regional balls that they currently lack.
Iran seems to want the Shia portion of Iraq. Not everything in world politics is determined by Bush and his croneys, so please stop fellating your straw man.
It isn’t merely ‘paranoid conjecture’ to wonder if war with Iran is possible. It depends on what happens. Could Sadr’s people disarm? Or could Iran offer them greater support and make a new push in the vacuum of power created by a reduction in US troops. That and from what I hear Iran is playing both sides on this one. They are playing by Imperial rules, and want to carve out a large domain. Iran has a say it what happens too. War with Iran isn’t as simple as them coming after the US, but as them playing regional hegemon in a way that we decide is beyond the pale.
Shia Iran wants NOTHING to do will occupying the mixed ethnic state that is iraq. They would be immediately aatcked by the Sunnis, and would not find the Kurds too friendly.
All this talk of war with Iran-totally foolish.
That’s quite a bit different from what you said in the OP, when you asked if war with Iran was “imminent”. In the future, perhaps you should include more in your OP than a link to an article and a title.
I figured people could read the context of the article, being that it’s not a generalized overview of what’s going on over there, but specifically about a new development than Petraeus finds significant. I’ll try and keep in mind that I shouldn’t assume such in the future.
But there is nothing in the article to indicate war with Iran is “imminent”, which is the question you posed. In fact, it doesn’t even give an impression that “war” with Iran is on anyone’s mind.
Its on my mind, does that count? A poor thing, perhaps but mine own.
Do you know the difference between a question and a statement of fact?
Iran does not want to occupy Iraq, it merely wants Iraq to be part of its acknowledged sphere of influence, in the sense that the U.S. sphere of influence includes Canada, Mexico and most of the Caribbean and Central America. They can get that without invasion or occupation; they merely need a sympathetic Shi’a-dominated government – which is pretty much the only result genuine democracy in Iraq would produce anyway.
Yes.
Michael Lind is not a neocon, in fact he is extremely hostile (in a purely intellectual sense) to the neocons (and the feeling is mutual*), and has very different views on foreign policy. He usually calls his position “liberal internationalism” and expressly prefers a “concert of powers” system to American hegemony. See this thread. See also Lind’s own recent articles, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
- Regarding said mutual sniping, see this thread, and this article, this one, this one, this one, and best of all,
this one.
Sure, but they hold that press conference after the bombers have headed back to base.
It’s just compare and contrast with the invasion of Iraq. With Iraq we had troop and supply buildups for months, we had intelligence reports being cooked up, we had UN meetings, we had the usual talking heads on every media outlet in existance making the case for war. The exact day the tanks roll across the border was an operational secret, but the fact that the tanks were ready to roll across the was not and could not be a secret.
Contrast that to the bombing of, say, Libya. The planes were made ready, they took off and bombed Libya, and they held a press conference after the planes were headed home telling the American people that we had bombed Libya. The preparations for bombing Iran can be kept secret and the American people can be kept out of the loop until we read about it in the papers the next day. The tanks, not so much.
Of course, Bush can order such a bombing campaign, but the trouble is that there’s no telling what the Iranians might do in response, and so we’d pretty much have to beef up our ground forces and naval forces in the theater before we engaged in such a provocation, and there’s no way to keep such beefing up operations a secret, in fact, said beefing look pretty much the same as the aforementioned ground invasion preparation.
We don’t “have” to do it at all. It would be the prudent thing to do, of course, but this is Bush.
And Gates just said, “I think the chances of us stumbling into a confrontation with Iran are very low. We are concerned about their activities in the south. We are concerned about the weapons that they are sending in – that they continue to send in to Iraq. But I think that the process that’s underway is, as I said, headed in the right direction.”
That’s some real warmongering there, I tells ya.