Comments on: Time To Get Tough With Iran

National Review: Enough Diplomacy! Address Iran Before Another 9/11 Happens

[rafterman1]

"and on the opposite end of the spectrum the left would wait until the missile hits U.S. soil killing hundreds of thousands."

This policy worked with the Soviets for 50 years. And the Russians had a h3ll of a lot more nukes than Iran could ever hope to produce. Iran won't attack he US directly because they know what would happen in retaliation. And Iran won't give the terrorists a nuke because, well, they know what would happen. It wouldn't be hard to connect the dots and trace a nuke back to Iran.

And don't give me cr@p that the Dems are pacifists as all you righties like to claim. I've heard too many times from you guys on how the Dems want to "surrender". When the Dems thought Saddam had a nuke program as was the story told by Bush, they voted along with Repubs to give Bush the war option. That doesn't sound so pacifist to me. And when we went to war with Afghanistan, again, because Afghanistan supported OBL, who did attck us, Dems supported that too. So Dems will fight just as hard to protect this country. But when it was found out that Iraq had no WMD and it was all just bullsh1t, that's when Dems opposed the war. That's because we support military force when it's appropriate, not as a sledgehammer just to prove how tough we are.

[fascistusa]

GOVERNMENT PROPOGANDA. HITLER STYLE. FASCISM.

DO YOU SEE IT??

THIS STORY IS NOT TRUE!! NOT TRUE.

THIS STORY IS A LIE!!

HOW CAN YO MAKE A DECISION ON WHAT TO SUPPORT WHEN THE INFORMATION YOU ARE GIVEN IS A LIE???

[gdmoore2]

notblue: Has any negotiation ever worked with any extreme Islamic regime? Good question. The keyword there is "extreme", and the answer is yes, but only when the dialogue had a moderate Islamic intermediary. If you are trying to make the point that negotiation is dangerous and uncertain and fraught with risk and possible deceit, then yes, that is true. If you are trying to say that potential nuclear terrorism adds to that risk, then yes, that is true also.

What will it take for America to unite against a threat like Iran? Well, I think a trusted leader is required. If we are able to drop the automatic polarization for a moment, whatever either of us think of Bush, he has not been able to earn our country's trust. The divisiveness is serious, with fear and loathing on the side that objects to Bush. Maybe we need a bipartisan ticket for the President and Vice President? This is a tough time to be divided, but here we are.

[exusmcsgt]

"Things are never the way we expect they will be, and so it is today, as we stagger and blither our way toward the inevitable decision about Iran."

Only a devout neocon or Zionist could write such drivel.

[jimfinster]

Yeah, great idea. Once again attack ANOTHER nation, based on all the great intelligence gathering. Sounds like Iraq all over again, hmmm?

[clemenhagen1]

Posted by NOTBLUE: Haven't the Iranians ignored negotiating with the rest of the world since the revolution of 1979?

You might want to rethink this line of reason there big blue. If memory serves the Iranians negotiated with Reagan to not release the hostages until after the election. Then the Iranians negotiated again with Reagan. Let me see...oh right. It had something to do with buying weapons for hostages, the profit to go to fund a dandy set of terrorists in Latin America. I believe it was something like Iran-Contra Scandal? They will negotiate, you just have to have a State Department and executive branch that understands the language of diplomacy. Now there lies the rub.

[kreuz4]

Airstrikes? Symbolic, but probably insufficient to do any good, and might provoke a dangerous response (closing the Straits of Hormuz, etc, forcing our hand to escalate or retreat).

Invasion? Not likely. We'd be forced to hold everything from Saudi Arabia to almost the Indus river, throwing more gasoline on the Islamic world and giving proponents of the American-Zionist conspircay camp such as Al Qa'ida all the more credibility.

The fact is, we're bogged down in Iraq and don't have the forces needed to sustain our operations there (Air Force and Navy personnel are having to fill Army billets there just to keep up with current ops tempo). Bush and the neocons who actually are in postion to influence policy won't make a move more than airstrikes for one simple reason: they can't. Doing so would push our armed forces well past the breaking point, likely require a draft, invite more debate over the reasoning for the Iraq misadventure, and show a foreign policy team with no direction and no answers other than overwhelming force which is much more limited than the right likes to acknolwedge (the perception of invincibility only works when it remains a theoretical; this is why Iraq is so bad, it undermines our deterrent capability).

[kreuz4]

So now Bush, etc., are timid and unwilling to engage an enemy of the US? Hmmm, let's think about why that may be....

For a moment, let's set aside the argument over how real a threat the Iranians are and how much they are involved in Iraq. I personally think they are meddling there, but it's likely only to gain some influence iwth radical Arab Shi'ite elements who they see being the future leaders of Iraq when everything is resolved, as opposed to mounting a "proxy war" with us as it's been deemed. Let's say, though, that this is a proxy war and that they will go nuclear sometime soon (also unlikely, given Ahmednejad's falling support, Khemeni's distrust of him, and a desire to focus domestically, etc).

(cont)...

[spetiya]

This is the crowd that wanted us to go to war in Iraq, and they got it. Ironically enough, Iraq is exactly why there is no earthly way we could think of going to war with Iran, it would be umpteen times worse.
Most of the violence in Iraq now is sectarian, and while some insurgent groups have some ties to Iran and Syria, the insurgency is mostly not foreign-directed or elements of Saddam's regime, they are regular Iraqis who want the U.S. out of their country.

[johnshaft4]

Notblue-
Why don't YOU go over to Iran and Syria and convince them that THEY have nothing to fear from the Israeli Jew nukes pointing at THEM?