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Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War
Hugh Pickens writes "The high stakes standoff between Iran and the U.S. over the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world's oil, escalated this week as Iran's navy claimed to have recorded video of a U.S. aircraft carrier entering the Port of Oman and the deputy chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami rejected U.S. claims that it could prevent Iran from closing the strait. To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada while in a report for the Naval War College, U.S. Navy Commander Daniel Dolan wrote that Iran has acquired 'thousands of sea mines, wake homing torpedoes, hundreds of advanced cruise missiles (PDF) and possibly more than one thousand small Fast Attack Craft and Fast Inshore Attack Craft.'" (Read more, below.)
Hugh Pickens continues: "The heart of the Iran's arsenal is its 200 small potential-suicide boats — fiberglass motorboats with a heavy machine gun, a multiple rocket-launcher, or a mine — and may also carry heavy explosives, rigged to ram and blow a hole in the hull of a larger ship. These boats will likely employ a strategy of 'swarming' — coming out of nowhere to ambush merchant convoys and American warships in narrow shipping lanes. But the U.S. Navy is not defenseless against kamikaze warfare. The U.S. has put more machine guns and 25-millimeter gyro-stabilized guns on the decks of warships, modified the 5-inch gun to make it more capable of dealing with high-speed boats, and improved the sensor suite of the Aegis computer-integrated combat system aboard destroyers and cruisers. 'We have been preparing for it for a number of years with changes in training and equipment,' says Vice Admiral (ret.) Kevin Cosgriff, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command."
The US should have spent the 500 Billion or so it wasted on lies about Iraq on researching renewable energy, and the Middle East would have returned to its peaceful irrelevance as oil would no longer have been strategically so important.
Even if the US whould have invested 500Billion in a meaninful way in the Region, the world would be better off.....
I tend to hear this accusation a lot but still have no idea what exactly where it comes from. Could someone please tell me whose oil the US has stolen?
Their primary naval weapon is a missile that can get into ballistic mode before a ship's countermeasure can intercept it. From what I read, the strategy behing "suicide boats" is not the kamikaze strategy of crashing a boat inside an aircraft carrier but rather to be used as the launchpoint of a single anti-ship missile. The launching boat will be easy to sink, but very cheap to replace. If two or three of these boats can sink one large US ship, that is a net win for Iran.
You can't escape a missile with a ship, and no 100% efficient counter-measure exist yet. If Iran strikes first, no big US ship should expect to survive the first wave.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Given the US withdrawal in Iraq, engaging in a war with Iran won't be easy or popular. Lately they've managed to capture drones and threatening the shipping will let them achieve their own goals with the least risk of provoking a US response.
I guess the real question is, what will the US do if it is attacked? In all likelyhood, they will be buzzed by Iranian boats without actually being attacked. But how close will they let such boats approach?
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
For a start, read about how our CIA led a coup to overthrow an elected leader who wanted more profits from the oil companies to go to the people. It was called Operation Ajax. We have a history of meddling in nations when leaders nationalize resources we want (Vietnam and Nicaragua, too). In Saudi Arabia we support an oppressive *monarchy* (i.e., NOT a democracy), apparently because we like their oil. Our presence there was a stated motive of Al Qaeda. So it's not so much stealing the oil as it is trying to control the government which gives us a good deal on the oil.
Gee, I dunno, maybe because there are dozens of dictators, generally dangerous countries and places that really needed some help getting their revolution groove on...
But the US only seem to find a reason to get into armed conflict when there is oil involved. They don't literally steal, they just help you "conquer" your country back and then "request" "payment".
I know I'm going to get the flamebait mod, but this is actually the general opinion of the rest of the world about most of US wars.
Iran unlikely to block oil shipments through Strait of Hormuz, analysts say.
From the linked article: And Iran — which has enjoyed record oil profits over the past five years but is faced with a dwindling number of oil customers — relies on the Hormuz Strait as the departure gate for its biggest client: China.
“We would be committing economical suicide by closing off the Hormuz Strait,” said an Iranian Oil Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “Oil money is our only income, so we would be spectacularly shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that.”
Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a political scientist running for parliament from the camp of hard-line clerics and commanders opposing Ahmadinejad, said it is “good politics” for Iran to respond to U.S. threats with threats of its own.
“But our threat will not be realized,” Ardestani said. “We are just responding to the U.S., nothing more.”
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Malcolm Gladwell touches about a similar situation in his book Blink. He talks about the largest ever war exercise called the Millennium Challenge. In short, the US hired a badass ex-Marine named Paul Van Riper to command the OPFOR. This guy wrecked havoc on the US Navy by using speed boats and cruise missiles. It was so bad, the US had to stop the exercise, refloat their boats, changed the rules of engagement, then did the exercise ever again. Of course, the blue force won the second time and they claimed a huge success.
I agree, although the USA is not alone in misguided attempts at nation building (USA's biggest failures: Supporting Saddam, training Osama, supporting the Taliban etc). Britain (to pick one) has a fairly glorious history of screw-up in this department, who do you think carved up the Middle East to cause many of the preblem we now face? Basically when any nation for a very different culture tries to "help" (for relatives values of "Doing whatever Big Money wants") it seems to blow-up in their face about 15 years down the line.
Maybe there's a lesson here?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html
Take a look at a map. The UAE or Omar could build a sea level canal right through the peninsula . Heck the UAE is pretty good at earth moving. They could use the extra dirt to build even more islands.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War"
It's no wonder the Iranians are deeply upset by the sanctions. Surely some people do realise that economic sanctions will likely kill an awful lot of the poorest people in Iran and the sanctions are in themselves, a declaration of war. Theses sanctions worked so very well in Iraq with estimations of up to 1.7 million civilian deaths as a direct result of these sanctions by 1995. http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq17.html.
Like with Iraq, there is no direct evidence of a reason for war and we have already seen the political posturing and powers that be, who already have Iraqi blood on their hands are still lying to us with articles such as this http://www.adl.org/main_International_Affairs/ahmadinejad_words.htm.
For people who don't see how sanctions can kill so many people (taken from UNICEF report 1995 (sorry original link to the report is no longer working ) “Sanctions are inhibiting the importation of spare parts, chemicals, reagents, and the means of transportation required to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq... What has become increasingly clear is that no significant movement towards food security can be achieved so long as the embargo remains in place. All vital contributors to food availability - agricultural production, importation of foodstuffs, economic stability and income generation, are dependent on Iraq’s ability to purchase and import those items vital to the survival of the civilian population.”
You really can't be that stupid can you?
Did you ever here of the North African Campaign.
Why did you think the Germans were in Africa? Looking for the Lost Ark?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Learn something about blowback and US involvement in destroying democracies around the world to install dictators starting all the way back in 1953
Imagine if it were Texas.
You can't handle the truth.
That war was neither good nor evil even if the reasons stated were dishonest and later recanted.
What made it irrelevant was the stupid, demented and criminally negligent notion that earts and minds would be instantly won. That was beyond moronic. If you want to change how people think and feel then you need to invest a whole generation into that. Europe after WW2 was a full success financially and culturally due to how freaking long US troops were stationed there(amongst other things like the US are a culturally descendant of Europe).
Imagine two persons. Their ultimate aspiration is to live a happy life but how they plan on doing that is different. Owning land and breathing free air for one, convenience for the other. Now imagine a whole room full of people. For each and every one of them their plan for their puruit of happyness is different. Now imagine a town square of peole. The mind starts to boggle. Now imagine millions and millions of them. Each from a cultural background so diverse it would take a lifetime to understand it all. Each has a different plan for life. Ranging from owning enough goats to feed the family to designing the ultimate iDevice. Each and every one of them is entitled to pursue their goals if it is not to the detriment of others.
If you elect people who claim to have easy answers and paint the world in black and white, this is what you don't get.
Those 500 billion could have been well spent for exactly the goal stated. Ineptitude did away with that.
20 minutes into the future
They don't literally steal, they just help you "conquer" your country back and then "request" "payment".
But we don't. If only we did, to some extent -- the treasury could use the funds. I might go so far as to grant that we've helped some nasty people stay in power for various reasons over the years, but we still, always, pay MARKET PRICE for oil. About the only thing we insist on is that people sell it to SOMEONE (which admittedly, does help keep market prices down SOMEWHAT, but its still ridiculously high compared to the cost in most of the countries in the middle east)
You just never know how these things will unfold. Lots of posturing and a bit of "chicken." Iran, I believe, has more of a Navy than the article is letting on. But as a former US sailor myself, I can say it would not take much doing to coordinate some drones and install some extra CIWZ mounted around their ships and you will have a pretty fair defense against suicide speed boats. They wouldn't be able to get within 1000 yards... (2000 yard range)
I worked in OPS in a carrier group. We had the radar and sonar systems linked as a net to create a very large picture of everything in the area above, below and at sea level with every form of projectile defense capable of using that data to hit any target at any speed with pants-pissing accuracy.
"What about the Cole?" you ask? Well, at the time, people were worried about whether or not it was another green peace boat trying to spray paint on the hull again and they likely had a fire hose ready to spray them off at the time not expecting what really happened. You can bet that mistake will not happen again. The world has been warned that the US will not allow unknown, unannounced small craft anywhere near a US navy military vessel.
What's more, with today's level of target tracking, incidents like the Stark are unimaginable. That's not to say that some US targets won't take damage... they might... mines are still a threat... a minor threat really. The US ships don't have to be close to be deadly and putting mines into international waters? I don't think so. And we don't need to send landing craft in to invade.
Iran would be foolish to play too much chicken with the trigger-happy US military... a fight with the US would just "create more jobs" in the US bringing support for a war pretty quickly.
"Stolen" is a confrontational term, but put it this way: if China backed an armed revolution inside the US which successfully overthrew the government and installed a military dictatorship, and then contracts were signed that gave Chinese corporations access and control over the natural resources of the US, would you consider this to be okay? Or would you consider that, somehow, the natural resources were being "stolen"?
There are many references claiming that this has happened, see war is a racket, the war on democracy etc. There was even an honest politician from one country who was vilified because he stated straight up that they were part of the Iraq coalition in exchange for corporate access to oil.
OR... The US could just stay the hell out of it and cut taxes by $500billion. Why does everyone always forget that option?
Perhaps they're remembering the near three decades of the Shah's rule in Iran, marked by murders, torture, SAVAK secret police -- all supported by the United States and Britain? That ended in 1979. Or maybe they're remembering the war we helped create that killed a million Iraqis and Iranians in the 1980s once the Shah fell from power, and we decided to crown Saddam Hussein as our new friend on the block. That ended around 1988.
But answer this question for me: how many decades would pass before you would forget having your government overthrown, controlled by an outside party, and then being subjected to three decades of a police state followed by an eight year war that wrecked your whole nation? I guess real men can watch their families and society get destroyed and just "get over it."
It's the cheapest route, but it really isn't as necessary as Iran would have you believe. There's enough surplus pipeline capacity through Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, even Israel to offset about half of the closure [although admittedly not all of that capacity is ready to go immediately, as some of it has been mothballed]. That means world oil supply is reduced by 10% in the near term. A supply shock? Sure. However, the combination of fuel switching for electricity generation and oil already being stored elsewhere, plus the potential increase in production elsewhere (OPEC and otherwise) to grab extra profits suggests this isn't going to be terribly disruptive, and certainly not something worth going to war over.
In the mean time, it's worth noting that a sudden increase in petrol-energy-efficiency could shave off that last 10% in just a few years. Help avoid war: ride a bicycle | ride a bus | ride a subway | walk | telecommute | carpool.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
First: This wouldn't be a war like Afghanistan or Iraq, because the US would most likely only be concerned with destroying the Iranian military and forcing them out of the strait of Hormuz. This would be largely an air war, and the US would likely suffer very few casualties as a result. We could destroy their navy, inflict massive military casualties, and cripple their ability to project force into the strait without more than a few boots on the ground, and most likely this is how it would go.
Second: None of that matters, because Iran does not gain from a war with the US. It would be an absolute disaster for their people and it would likely force their government out of power. The reason that they're doing this is because Ahmadinejad needs a scapegoat in order to keep his popularity up, and calling out the US and Israel at every opportunity is a lot easier than dealing with real issues. Hes been doing it for years, the only reason hes making more noise now is because his popularity is dwindling.
never put his failed excuse of a war onto the budget, so taxes were not raised for it. I personally think we should add an amendment to the constitution that every military excursion outside of the USA must be paid for with an immediate tax surcharge of all people and businesses, based on gross income. That would definitely clip the wings of most of the chickenhawks out there.
On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They are in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast "trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania."
A Discreet Deal in the Pipeline
In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. "We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Sanctions don't kill people, people kill people. Really though, sanctions end up starving people who would have otherwise provided for themselves. Additionally, I don't like the government telling me who I can do business with, especially now that the economy is increasingly dependent on global trade.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It is Iran's responsibility to care for its "poorest people". The rest of the world is under no legal or moral obligation to trade with Iran, in particular since Iran unquestionably is working on atomic bombs and has started several wars.
The welfare of their people is primarily the responsibility of their leaders. The leaders of Iraq and Iran could/can restore free trade by changing their behavior. The cause of the sanctions, and hence the cause of the suffering of their people, is their leaders, not the sanctions.
So, you construct a specious argument that "sanctions are war" and then claim that there is "no direct evidence of a reason for war". Well, you are wrong on both counts. Sanctions are not "war"; a war is when there are clashing troops and weapons fire. Furthermore, we have reasons and justification for going to war with Iran.
The reason we shouldn't go to war with Iran isn't your pseudo-humanitarian handwaving, but simply that it isn't in our financial and political interest; it doesn't survive a cost-benefit analysis: Iran isn't enough of a threat to the US, a lot of innocent Iranians would get killed, the US wouldn't recover its costs, and that the chances that it would improve the situation are small.
Actually, this has the American military very worried. In the Millenium Challenge 2002, Red used exactly this tactic and wiped the floor with us in a wargame - 20,000 (virtual) service personnel dead. The military basically said "NUH UH! DO OVER DO OVER!" and restarted the exercise with new rules that would have made such tactics impossible. The leader of OPFOR (retired Marine Corps. Lt. General Paul K. Von Riper) resigned his position as commander of OPFOR in protest.
Then, of course, there was the Trillion Credit Challenge (start at the bolded "I"):
In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California. It was a war game. The contestants had been given several volumes of rules, well beforehand, and had been asked to design their own fleet of warships with a mythical budget of a trillion dollars. The fleets then squared off against one another in the course of a weekend. “Imagine this enormous auditorium area with tables, and at each table people are paired off,” Lenat said. “The winners go on and advance. The losers get eliminated, and the field gets smaller and smaller, and the audience gets larger and larger.”
Lenat had developed an artificial-intelligence program that he called Eurisko, and he decided to feed his program the rules of the tournament. Lenat did not give Eurisko any advice or steer the program in any particular strategic direction. He was not a war-gamer. He simply let Eurisko figure things out for itself. For about a month, for ten hours every night on a hundred computers at Xerox PARC, in Palo Alto, Eurisko ground away at the problem, until it came out with an answer. Most teams fielded some version of a traditional naval fleet—an array of ships of various sizes, each well defended against enemy attack. Eurisko thought differently. “The program came up with a strategy of spending the trillion on an astronomical number of small ships like P.T. boats, with powerful weapons but absolutely no defense and no mobility,” Lenat said. “They just sat there. Basically, if they were hit once they would sink. And what happened is that the enemy would take its shots, and every one of those shots would sink our ships. But it didn’t matter, because we had so many.” Lenat won the tournament in a runaway.
The next year, Lenat entered once more, only this time the rules had changed. Fleets could no longer just sit there. Now one of the criteria of success in battle was fleet “agility.” Eurisko went back to work. “What Eurisko did was say that if any of our ships got damaged it would sink itself—and that would raise fleet agility back up again,” Lenat said. Eurisko won again.
Eurisko was an underdog. The other gamers were people steeped in military strategy and history. They were the sort who could tell you how Wellington had outfoxed Napoleon at Waterloo, or what exactly happened at Antietam. They had been raised on Dungeons and Dragons. They were insiders. Eurisko, on the other hand, knew nothing but the rule book. It had no common sense. As Lenat points out, a human being understands the meaning of the sentences “Johnny robbed a bank. He is now serving twenty years in prison,” but Eurisko could not, because as a computer it was perfectly literal; it could not fill in the missing step—“Johnny was caught, tried, and convicted.” Eurisko was an outsider. But it was precisely that outsiderness that led to Eurisko’s victory: not knowing the conventions of the game turned out to be an advantage.
“Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation o
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Indeed. And where did those profits go? Great Britain. The CIA acted on behalf of Great Britain, because Great Britain asserted that this was necessary to keep communism out of Europe. Great Britain at the time was, of course, busy oppressing other nations and colonies.
That's almost right: we support an oppressive monarchy in Saudi Arabia because we like their oil to be available to the world economy; 80% of Saudi Arabia's oil exports go to Europe and Asia, after all.
Now, what do you suggest we do instead? Embargo Saudi Arabia? Invade Saudi Arabia? Subvert the Saudi government? It's not like the US has a choice between a democracy and a monarchy in Saudi Arabia, it has a choice between a monarchy and something even worse.
I understand what you're saying, very well. And, decades ago, I would have had to plead "guilty".
I haven't been guilty since I walked out in the streets of an African town, and looked real poverty in the face. Real poverty, that few Americans understand. I outgrew a lot of ignorance on Africa's east coast.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's almost here. 2012 and I feel this year, sans any end of the world scenario playing out, it's going to be one of the most exciting years in recent history. Strap in folks, it's going to be a wild ride.
Isn't one aircraft carrier group the equivalent to any 3rd world country in military power?
Oh well, it's not Iran that concerns me, it's China. Iran and China are classic bed buddies. Didn't China load up Iran on Silkworm missiles that can smoke our jets out of the air? Interesting enough though, China has switched into a Capitalistic mode and both us and them are locked in some grim fandango of economics. Will they back our play or Iran's is the question of the day.
China should, if they were smart, disarm all of their little buddies around them, leaving the US with no excuse to continue it's military spending. Then it all goes to Wal-Mart and then into their pockets, thus defeating the US at Capitalism. Oh the irony!
If we follow this hypothesis, we will not hear China say a peep when we decide to obliterate the Iranian military. Yes, we can do it. People forget how quickly we rolled in on Iraq. We were completely awesome about it. We are like that, we win wars, but lose the peace. The 10 years that followed overshadowed that stunning victory.
What we are looking at here from Iran I think is just more of their ballsy sabre rattling. Their people have discovered they can posture, bluster and sabre rattle thus putting up quite a show for the "rube Westerners." When this happens, we tend to just throw money at them and tell them to shut up. It's the classic "the mouse that roared" situation.
Iran is proving to be a bit retarded though it seems. The American war machine is facing being geared down. The war machine hates this and wants to keep munching on someone's ass. It gets fed well, gets to sleep in a warm bed at night and on the weekends it goes out partying. It really wants Iran to give it an excuse to chew them up into little bitty bits. If Iran doesn't think it's capable, then Iran is smoking some really good weed, and should share it with the rest of the world instead of just its oil.
Can't you imagine them dancing around with each other in glee, like the merry wee people in some film, down at the Pentagon? "Wooohoo!" They all cried in chorus. "The Iranians are going to give us a war!" There is a band with lutes and flutes in the corner, a bag pipe as well. From somewhere a big wooden keg of ale appears, and serving wenches carrying frothing mugs, bustle about. They end it all with a crescendo, singing like a choir "Oh Happy Day."
Then they all run off to their offices to pour over their list of war toys they want to play with. They have had a decade of a big trough of money to buy oodles of war toys, but nobody to play with. Fist fights break out at the water coolers as arguments over who gets to blow up the Iranians with what toy happen.
Hey Iran, posturing around the US during one of their crazy election years is seriously jumping the shark. Hilary will be on the phone soon to tell you what a collective bunch of retards you are, and you are going to have to take it. She's a woman. How do you like dealing with our female Secretary of State? Don't you love having a WOMAN come spell it out for you what you are going to do or else get crushed? Yeah, we did that on purpose. Think about it.
But then again, they might be a bit turned on by it.
Take the Red Pill.
Wow. Talk about uneducated.
First off if you're going to spout off about over population, realize that WE (us citizens) use FAR MORE resources per capita than any 2nd ofr 3rd worlder could dream of. So if you're going to spout off about lack of resources for the people of the world, understand that reducing our population in half would conserve more resources than reducing developing populations by a billion or more. Not that I advocate for that, I'm just sick of seeing how wasteful we are (including me) but seeing the finger pointed at all the people in the world who have only a sliver of what we have.
If you're saying that Iran is overpopulated because their land can't support the number of people there, I'd agree with that. I'd also suggest that the same is true for us. But the answer is already there: trade. We have arable land. But we couldn't cultivate it to feed all of us if not for fertilizers, which oil is a key ingredient. We couldn't get it from the "breadbasket" region to the population centers on the coasts, which means oil. And once it's on the coasts, supermarket or fridge, it needs to be kept from spoiling. Via electricity, so much of which is supplied by oil.
So we have one thing. Land to grow on. Absent oil it would be useless to us. Iran and so much else of the middle east lacks that. But they have the oil that WE need in order to not suffer mass starvation. And trade is the solution. It could be direct (food for oil) or it could be indirect (food for dollars, dollars to euros, euros for food). But the point is that we're mutually dependent.
So when we talk about sanctions, realize that depriving the population of resources directly. Less dollars so less to be ent on imports. So us doing that to them is essentially the same as them blocking all the highways leading away from our agricultural areas
World resources aren't spread evenly. But trade fixes that problem.
So before you spout off about over population point your finger at yourself ,me, and The rest of us, as we are the resource hogs of the world. And realize that all of our own stuff would be useless if not for what we can import from overseas.
Actually there is a pipeline being built through the United Arab Emirates which is on the south side of the straight, with something like 2 million barrells/day capacity, which would lessen dependence on the straight.
Though I think Iran is threatening to attack the pipeline too if their oil is embargoed and they decide to close the straight.
Most people don't remember but the U.S., Britain and the Dutch embargoing oil going to Japan was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it was neither a a surprise nor a sneak attack. FDR wanted Japan to attack the U.S. so he could overcome resistence from isolationists and enter World War II against Germany.
@de_machina
Justification for obliterating a country on the opposite side of the planet? The Constitution doesn't say anything authorizing that. Part of the reason the United States exists is because our leaders at the time were fed up with the British government for several reasons. This includes imperialism and the fact that the British empire had its nose in too many places, including the colonies.
I think unless we have a country invading or attacking U.S. soil, we need to avoid war at all costs. Japan bombing Pearl Harbor? By all means, fight back, and take the fight to their allies (Germany, Italy) once we wrap up the Pacific theater. Specious arguments about a madman in Iraq allegedly having WMDs? Who cares? Not our problem. In that case, we didn't even declare war, but we should have. Congress alone has that authority, but ever since WW2, has been too eager to pass resolutions saying "the President can attack this other country, but we don't want to declare war and look like douchebags."
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Bullshit. Europe, Japan and USA are some of the most heavily populated areas on the planet, and yet they manage to feed their populations. As far as I remember, both the EU and the US export foodstuffs. The reason is a highly industrialized agricultural sector. The same countries have some of the longest life expectancies. This is due to access to clean water, ample food, warm homes and medicine. Exactly the things that the sanctions on Iraq removed from the Iraqi population. Saddam Hussein was rich, so he could pay to get whatever he needed smuggled into the country. The Iraqi masses could not, so they were dependent on the Iraqi state for whatever little they could get.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
Name a war that Iran started. Yeah. Didn't think so. Why don't you read something rather than watching fox news?
Why can't Jews forget the holocaust? Why will we never forget 9/11? Each impacted someone and vastly changed the tract of their history. Just like over throwing iran's democracy and replacing it with decades of dictatorship did to them. And then when they finally overthrew their tyrant , we unleashed our lapdog on them who showered them with chemical weapons, no less. With our lapdog being none other than saddam.
Do you really not read history? It's all right there in black and white.
And the Japanese were being perfectly polite gentlemen in China and Mongolia at the time.
Take your revisionist BS elsewhere. War being inevitable and everybody knowing it is very different then war being a conspiracy.
Nobody has pointed out the for Iran to close the straits of Hormuz they would by definition _have_ to attack the UAE. Our Allie.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wow. your ignorance is just astounding. Majorit of the Americans know where the middle east is. And the fact that we have large populations of muslims here belies your statement. And yes, we DID lock up ppl in WW2, and apologized. We did not do it again. And as far as using a nuke, the only way that will happen is if Iran attacks with a nuke. IFF they do that, then you can expect that we WILL in fact send in a number of nukes into Iran.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ahm... actually part of the strategic reasoning behind sanctions is that they hurt the population. The idea is that if you make the lower population suffer enough that they will pressure their government to change behavior OR overthrow it. So when people rant about sanctions killing people, they are not just bleeding hearts.. the result is by design.
So? Because little Johnny has nuclear weapons, little Jack has a right to have them too? This isn't about rights, it's about threats.
The fact that Israel has nuclear weapons isn't a threat to the US or US allies. Hence, it doesn't concern us much. Given Iran's stated policies, Iranian nuclear weapons are a threat to the US and US allies.
Yes, we're overpopulated, and the fact that you and at least 6 billion other people on the planet would deny it has no bearing on the fact.
When you say "we" you should specify, because the world is not overpopulated, only portions of it. Out of 7 billion people on earth, 2 billion are in China, yet China is smaller than the US and our 300 million people. So china has 7 times more people and less land than the US. The US isn't growing very fast either, with 100,000 in 1915 and 200,000 in 1968. "We" have a long way to go before we are overpopulated.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The U.S. equipped Afghanistan's mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for most of the 80's. It was called Operation Cyclone
Al Qaeda was formed by Bin Laden and others in a mujahideen camp in 1988 shortly before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were and probably still are extensively supported by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which was America's primary partner in Operation Cyclone.
The U.S. didn't exactly "train" Osama, but is pretty much a fact the U.S. did help equip, develop and nurture the mujahideen movement, a splinter of which would morph in to Al Qaeda. The ISI almost certainly aided Bin Laden throughout his career, which is probably why he was found in the middle of a Pakistani garrison city when he was killed, a few miles from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.
Al Qaeda turned on the U.S. during the first Persian Gulf War against Iraq, when the U.S. established bases in Saudi Arabia, and started two decades of extensive military intervention in the Middle East. Al Qaeda was especially incensed at an infidel army camping in the middle of the Muslim holy land, Saudia Arabia.
@de_machina
Poverty is not due to lack of food or resources in the world.
is that america has been toeing the line with war against iran for decades, just itching for a reason to inexplicably bombard a nation of 75 million peaceful civillians and arguably the largest jewish minority in the middle east.
that america, despite the fact that iran has captured our most sophisticated reconnosance robotics, still considers iran a soft and easy target is to awaken the memory of the cold war when we assumed the tupolev was nothing more than a biplane. . Iran has enjoyed american diplomacy first hand at the overthrow of their democratically elected government through sponsored terrorism; it understands america to be a fairweather friend at best. despite numerous invasive and exhaustive probes by the IAEA there is no evidence of a thermonuclear weapons program and given the size of the state, a nuclear energy program seems completely reasonable, justified and expected. Iran has roughly 1/4th the population of the united states.
but thanks to the carter doctrine of international diplomacy in the middle east, despite the fact that a minority of american oil is actually produced in the region we must still charge dick-first into the any arabian country in the region to appear even remotely modern, self sufficient, and untameable by antiquated american colonialist policy.
lets all agree the easiest thing to do to keep the straight clear is to admit the fact that we screwed up the spy game just as we had numerous times during the cold war, apologise and consider formal talks or a prisoner exchange if we want the drone, and move on to bigger problems like the utter financial collapse that keeps plaguing the country, or alternative energy sources to keep us from having to engage in this trite pedantic pissing contest we call a foreign policy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Iraq was heavily supported by the US in its war against Iran, including arming Iraq with chemical weapons and turning a blind eye to atrocities against Iran and its own people. When Iraq consulted the US about invading Kuwait they were told that "[The US] took no position on these Arab affairs", basically telling them it was ok to go ahead and invade.
Your conservative revision of history is appalling. You are the type of person who believes that the USA has never supported tyrants and has never taken part in unjustified aggression.
It's easy, quit threatening people and play nice with the world, quit having a childlike temper tantrum and pretending that you have only ever been a force for good in the world.
There is no justification for "obliterating countries", but there can be for military action on the opposite side of the planet. Among other things, the US has allies and international commitments.
US military action isn't driven by "imperialism"; imperialism doesn't work, as Britain and France showed. The US is trying to convert other nations into trading partners with compatible economies and governments. That may or may not be a reasonable thing to do, but it is not "imperialism".
Unfortunately, you're still seeing the aftermath of WWII, with Europe politely refraining from military action and the US taking over Europe's protection and security needs. That should end.
And I tend to agree. But while you seem to think that we should refrain for moral and legal reasons, I just view it as a matter of utility: the low probability of democratizing and liberalizing Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and the limited economic benefit to us doesn't justify the high human and financial cost. Furthermore, the Middle East should be Europe's financial and military responsibilitiy, not ours.
There is no disputing that the oil embargo was imposed in an attempt to slow the Japanese occupation and war in China, which was certainly brutal.
But, it would have been incredibly naive for the U.S. to think that Japan wouldn't retaliate for the oil embargo. Without the oil supply from the U.S., Dutch and British East Indies(no Indonesia) Japan's economy and military was crippled. It was inevitable Japan would seize the Dutch and British East Indies to restore their oil supply. That would inevitably lead to war with the British and U.S. So to protect their oil supply they had to completely remove the British and U.S. from a large buffer around their oil fields and shipping lanes which is exactly what they did in the opening weaks of the war. The U.S. Pacific fleet was the one obstacle to Japan's seizing and holding the East Indies oil fields and shipping the oil to Japan. Everyone knew it so its no surprise the U.S. attacked it first thing. It was also no accident the U.S. carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor because they were priceless, while the battleships were expendable since they were nearly useless with the advent of aircraft carriers.
So FDR and the U.S. military knew war was inevitable with Japan the day the embargo was imposed. Claiming the attack on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise" was pure propaganda for the consumption of the American people. It was designed to whip American's in to frenzy of support for war against both Germany and Japan. It worked really well.
I'm not even really being critical of it, Pearl Harbor was a propaganda masterpiece by the Roosevelt administration, in fact I am almost admiring its genius.
@de_machina
All the warnings you need about attacking Iran can be had from geopolitical analyst Dr. Gwynne Dyer, who has to tiredly write another article warning about it being a Bad Idea every couple of years. From the most recent one:
"The Noor anti-ship missile is a locally built version of the Chinese YJ-82. It has a 200-km. (140-mile) range, enough to cover all the major choke points in the Gulf. It flies at twice the speed of sound just meters above the sea’s surface, and it has a tiny radar profile. Its single-shot kill probability has been put as high as 98 percent.
Iran’s mountainous coastline extends along the whole northern side of the Gulf, and these missiles have easily concealed mobile launchers. They would sink tankers with ease, and in a few days insurance rates for tankers planning to enter the Gulf would become prohibitive, effectively shutting down the region’s oil exports completely."
Do they sound a little less "asymmetric" now? Yes, you could bombard the coastline heavily, but some caves can go pretty deep, particularly if the cavers bring mining equipment - 25 years ago. And do you really want to get into a shootin' match with 98% kill probability when they lose a 5-man missile crew and you lose a carrier?
I also like the point about the "insurance costs". You don't think of wars being one by accountants, but that's the way it goes. The Iranians have absolutely zero need to engage with the mighty US Navy at all; they just have to sink a couple of very fat, very slow oil tankers, just a few, then wait for Lloyd's to react, while the probably-unharmed crew are being fished from the lifeboats. And Lloyd's says to itself, "Can even the US Navy check out every goddamn cave the size of a 2-car garage in 200km of coastline? When the 90% that do not contain actual missiles do contain dummies? No, they cannot. Not this week, month, or, probably, year." And so the price of oil sits there at $250/bbl until everybody calms down.
Closing an international waterway is an official act of war. The UN, Russians and Chinese couldn't say a thing if Iran closes the straight because Iran will have committed an official act of war against any nation that uses that straight. Not to mention Oman, Saudi and a dozen all the other nations that have territorial waters or rights that overlap the straight would have a legitimate claim to retaliation.
Closing the straight would be akin to using a nuclear weapon as it something that's going to be dealt with very harshly. It would give the US and the US Navy a free hand to take Iran down. The US navy already has a operation manual for reopening the straight including an attack strategy that should keep them out of harms way for the majority of the fighting (keep the big ships in the Arabian sea and clear the Iranian coast along the straight of all military emplacements using subs, missiles and attack aircraft, then work up the coast systematically destroying every hostile force, this happens at the same time the US bases in the gulf begin offensive action against the nuclear sites and major military bases). I'm sure at this point the US has mapped the location of every sea worthy vessel in Iran. I wonder if Iran even knows how many attack vessels the US has in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. I'd bet there could be as many as a dozen Los Angeles class attack subs sitting on the bottom of the gulf (they can stay submerged for a year) waiting for Iran to do something stupid.
And it goes to show that the enemy of your enemy is NOT automatically your friend.
Furthermore, we have reasons and justification for going to war with Iran.
Name them. And when you do, be sure to exclude any reasons that would appear hypocritical - those which could as easily apply to the US or its allies.
Israel. You know, that puppet Zionist state ostensibly made up of refugees from the Holocaust? The (believed) long overdue answer to all the centuries of pogroms visited on Jews by Xtians?
If the US fixed its campaign finance laws, its politicos would no longer be able to pander to the Jewish lobby and its money. Consequently, if Israel was no longer able to get away with bitch-slapping the Palestinians, maybe the Middle East would finally be able to get along with each other again. They did in the distant past, you know?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Here's something you forget: What the American public will tolerate is based on how angry/scared they are. If Iran starts sinking American ships, and gas jumps up to $10, the American public won't care what it takes to fix that. Massive destruction will be just fine.
Also you confuse what was trying to be done in Iraq with what would need to be done in Iran. In Iraq the misguided goal was nation building. Go in, kill dictator, drive out terrorists, help people establish wonderful democratic society. That is a tall order (an impossible order I'd say) and requires long time occupation. The US military is bad at that. It has never been well designed as an army of conquest. For that you need lots of infantry troops and a willingness to spend them.
The goal with Iran would be to make them fuck off and leave the strait alone. Much easier. Just blow up enough shit until they pack it in. The US military is the best history has ever seen at that. The amount of destruction they can unleash is amazing, and it is precise too, they can hit the targets they need to take out.
The lesson to take away from Iraq with regards to this potential conflict is how fast and completely their military was crushed.
I can't wait to see WHAT will happen!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
People spout this bullshit all the time. But they never go on to say that the U.S. and Europe produce most of the world's "resources" also.
America is a net food exporter and has been for a long time. Those ships filled with grain in all the third world ports? They came from the West. Those starving children you see on T.V.? They are the result of tin pot dictators, communist leftovers and various socialist utopian visionaries.
Just look at Zimbabwe. once, an exporter of food to the rest of the region, known as the breadbasket of Africa. Then Robert Mugabe came to power, lauded by all the leftists in the West as a man of the people. Now look at it. Inflation in the 1000%+, they can't feed themselves, oppression, and those children you see on late night TV.
Did America cause that? Did my having a second Big Mac cause that? My big screen TV? Nope.
Look at Venezuela. Same story, they just haven't reached the end game yet. Chavez is still the darling of the Hollywood left even as he slowly and relentlessly takes away their freedoms one bit at a time and destroys their economy. If an American President shut down CBS because of their editorial policies, people like you would be shitting bricks 24/7. Chavez does it and the response is, "well, they were fomenting rebellion."
Is the West "stealing" from Iran? not at $105 a barrel we're not.
We don't have a problem of not enough resources. We have a problem of uneven distribution. And that's not caused by Americans raising our own food and feeding ourselves, it's caused by authoritarian governments oppressing their citizens.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Some of what you say is true however we also have a trade strategy that punishes the developing world.
At world trade meetings the US and Europe constantly harp on about the importance of free trade. BUT then they claim that food is a strategic resource as a justification of their $40b subsidy of farms in the EU and $20b in the US.
So you see free trade means that I can buy your banks and phone companies but it does not mean that you can sell us your food.
What are small developing nations supposed to export? Fire engines and ice breakers? Let the poor bastards sell us food on a level playing field then talk to me about how it is their lack of character that is holding them back.
The West, like the rest, are hypocrites.
Sure, and many of the authoritarian governments which protect the rich and keep people in poverty have been backed by the U.S. See Pakistan or Mubarak in Egypt before he was overthrown, or the capitalist governments installed by the U.S. in Central America. You were modded a five? Slashdot really has a lot of ignorant right-wingers. Read up on the history of Columbia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, or El Salvador. The U.S.enforces an economic system where the farm workers earn slave wages growing coffee and bananas, while the bulk of the profits going to multinational corporations and rich landlords. According to Wikipedia
Colombia has the fourth largest economy in Latin America, but income and wealth are unevenly distributed.[37][38] In 1990, the income ratio between the richest and poorest 10% was 40-to-one, climbing to 80-to-one in 2000.[39] In 2009, Colombia had a Gini coefficient of 0.587, one of the highest in Latin America,[40] with 46% of Colombians living below the poverty line and 17% in "extreme poverty".[41][42][43]
That's the economic system the U.S. have given Columbia billions in military aid to protect. In short, your comment is bullshit. The U.S. is responsible as anyone for the poverty in the world.
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