http://dadmanly.blogspot.com/2007/02/all-roads-lead-to-iran.html [rquoter]Michael Ledeen laments the complete lack of leadership in Washington or elsewhere on our sworn and committed enemies in Iran, over at National Review Online. Close readers of Ledeen will note he no longer calls for acceleration (“Faster, please”), as by his account, we’ve reached a final point of decision. In contrast to the foolish Editors at the Times, and the spineless majorities in Congress, Ledeen holds this Administration and its heavy laden and latent Foreign Policymakers accountable: for too little action, too little show of strength, too little resolve, and no amount of clue at all, in dealing with Iran. Here’s how Ledeen opens his blast: Never has a country strained so hard to avoid a conflict as the United States concerning Iran. They have waged war against us for 28 years, and we are only now beginning to contemplate the possibility of a response. So perhaps it’s finally come to a reckoning, long overdue. I had a chat today with my former OIF Company Commander. We spoke of the bug-swarm of Presidential wannabes, and then turned to the subject of Iran. How desperately important is has long been, to send Iran a message that can’t possibly be misunderstood. The last straw, for him, was Iranian arms and expertise, used against us in war in Iraq. “You don’t hear a lot about all the helicopters being shot down, all of a sudden. [Military officials] aren’t saying anything about why.” “Shoulder fired missiles from Iran?” “Of course, where else would they be coming from?” The CO mentioned that his wife asked him about those downed helicopters, mentioned in recent news reports. He said he got to thinking, and we both did, how for the first 2 years of OIF, air travel just wasn’t any concern for us. He flew rotary and fixed wing, in and around Iraq, to Kuwait, and never had any serious concern about being shot down. We felt this complacency in-air, quite in contrast to driving in convoys on the ground, where alertness and adrenaline defined the experience. Has that changed? Probably not, I worried about it immediately post 9/11 for civilian air traffic. We should have always expected the possibility in the combat zone, but like anything, you lose the expectation when it never happens. There is nothing secret about Iranian offensive operations against us, directly or by proxy. I reveal nothing from classified Intel briefings in declaring that Iran and Syria have had a direct and heavy hand in everything the fledging Iraqi Government and the Coalition forces have faced in the nearly 4 years since we toppled Saddam Hussein. However much we have deceived ourselves, the attention of our enemies has never wavered, has never weakened. Ledeen notes a flurry of press reports about this or that evidence of Iranian perfidy, as if we needed any more “smoking guns,” and declares it self-deception: This is the pattern that led us straight to 9/11. For that matter, it got us to Pearl Harbor and to Khobar Towers, and to the Beirut bombings of our embassy and the Marine barracks. It is a pattern of denial and self-deception, driven by an absolute conviction that the truth must not be passed on to people whose view of the world differs from your own. And so our kids get blown up in Iraq, while the Bushes, Rices, Rumsfelds, Cambones, Tenets, Negropontes, and their cohorts deny that we know who’s doing it. Deputy Secretary of State Burns, the architect of our failed Middle East mission, goes to Israel to thump his chest and talk about getting tough with Iran, meaning tough talk and a few symbolic gestures, certainly not regime change. Such people talk about “insurgency” as if the shattered remnants of Saddam’s ruined state were capable of mounting the terror war we face, when common sense points in the direction of professional intelligence services in Tehran and Damascus. We are not alone in this suicidal self-deception. Our friends across the water, those tough-minded Englishmen who have recently decided to abolish the Royal Navy for all intents and purposes, have been frenetically seducing us into one diplomat failure after another with regard to Iran for many years now. It is no surprise, then, that the London Times yesterday quoted British officials are denying there is a “smoking gun” to show Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq. I think the unnamed officials who are saying that are either out of the intelligence loop or lying. American intelligence has known for at least a year and a half that the frightful shaped charges that have killed and maimed so many American soldiers were manufactured in Iran — they traced the serial numbers back to the Iranian manufacturer — and it is inconceivable that we would have failed to share that fact with our British allies. I can well imagine the debates now raging inside the Bush administration over what is apparently a substantial trove of devastating information about Iranian activities in Iraq, and perhaps also Afghanistan. American officials long opposed to any serious challenge to Iran pronounced the information “a bombshell,” and some of them now say they have changed their minds about going after the mullahs. So those who still want to take the diplomatic route, and continue to appease Tehran, must set up a series of obstacles: first try to keep the intelligence bottled up; if that fails, discredit it; and if all else fails join the “war is not the answer” crowd, whose credibility rests on the hope that nobody in America has read any history. We come to the end of a very long road indeed, and the meter has greatly accumulated since we started our meandering journey. No matter what means or manner of payment, none of us will be happy about the fare. That won’t save us from paying every penny due. This was never about happiness, or ideal solutions, or the smug complacency of all those strutting about today with eagle-eye hindsight and Chicken Little courage. Yesterday, I heard some clueless commentator lament that, although we’re all sure Iran is behind a lot of the sectarian violence and terrorism in Iraq, “it’s extremely difficult to prove it.” The affairs of state, of National Security, aren’t the purview of some twisted OJ Simpson celebrity trial, where “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!” That kind of misguided devotion to certainty surely led Neville Chamberlain to believe Hitler would stop with Czechoslovakia, or convinced a spiteful and callous Congress that the citizens of South East Asia would be better off working out their own problems, under Communism if need be, but without further US support. This kind of logic will destroy us, come the day of the first terrorist nuclear detonation, if we allow it to survive, whereby the handwringers and the morally crippled will say, “We don’t know Iran [or North Korea or Venezuela, or any of a dozen other nation states who plot and plan our destruction] had anything to do with it!” Ledeen has gotten far more right than wrong, these years since 9/11, and more right than proponents and surely critics of the Bush Administration’s policies. He’s right now, though I doubt it causes him much comfort. Vindication will come, but much will be lost and the cost will be severe, the longer it takes us to wake from present slumber. [/rquoter]
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12521/irans_involvement_in_iraq.html?breadcrumb=/ Council of Foreign Relations says Iran's role in Insurgency is exaggerated. Shouldn't I trust this reputed source over this blog?
Yep. There's really no point replying to him, let alone arguing or refuting his wingnut blog crap with facts. As soon as you do, he'll pretend it didn't happen. Then he'll run away for a couple days and come back to start all over again. This is the only reply he's getting from me from now on: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=124067
basso, what have you done to support the troops today? Oh that's right....start threads on this BBS bashing the media.
The question is not what basso has done to support the troops -- it's what they have done to prove they don't oppose themselves. Check this: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=124067 According to basso, the troops are working for the terrorists. I'm not totally sold myself, but I'm just saying...
Um, your link mentions several times that Iran is supplying weapons, training, and money to Shiite militias in Iraq. I don't know about you, but to me, any support of terrorists attacking Americans is too much support. Would you be okay with only a few Iranian bombers dropping ordinance on the US? Could just a couple Iranian subs start sinking our ships without raising your ire? That there is disagreement about the AMOUNT of involvement in Iraq by Iran is irrelevent because there is not ZERO involvement.
So I take it you were all for nuking the Soviet Union and China when they were 'providing material support' to the Vietnamese? And you would have been cool with the Soviets nuking the US when we were supplying SAM’s to Afghanistan? How about the Chinese blowing the crap out of the USA for supporting the Taiwanese? The problem with your logic taken to its conclusion and the escalation that results, is that the world would have been destroyed 50x over in the last 50 years. It is simply a standard for conduct completely lacking in practical usefulness.
You were busy traveling the world and missed it. (great photos, btw!) D&D. The World is a Round Ball.
Of course its no surprise that Iran is working against our interests after all we've been threatening them for years. The last thing we need is to rush headlong into another costly war when we're already stretched thin. IMO we should take the Baker's commission recommendation and talk to Iran about what's going on in Iraq. Its not in their interest either to continually have a destabilized Iraq.
Nope, I am not in favor of "nuking" Iran either (though I think Israel should use their nuclear bunker busters if necessary to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons). I do think that we should recognize that our soldiers and our allies have been and are being attacked by agents of Iran, should recognize that it is an act of war, and should respond accordingly. We should have responded to the Chinese fighting us in Korea, and the Chinese and Soviets fighting us in Vietnam, though we should have avoided taking the conflict nuclear. The Soviets should have done what they could to stop us from arming the Afghans during their conflict as well (we also should not have done it, as that was the genesis of al Queda). As far as I am aware, our efforts in Taiwan have not been in support of terrorists, we are more there to protect Taiwan from Chinese agression. I see no reason to ignore it when a country attacks us and our allies, especially a piece of crap country with no nukes like Iran.
Too bad the decider has decided that that is beneath him. Sometimes I wonder if Jr can seperate what is best for the country and what is best for his legacy. Unfortunately it seems he's has made his decision. And it ain't what's best for America.
Your view of escalating wars would lead and would have lead to never ending bloodshed, violence, death, misery and an absence of peace for the forseeable future. Your cavalier attitude towards escalating wars seems immoral to me.
I'm sure you mean well, and I'm not looking to start a fight, so please try to take this as constructive. My first response is to see a parallel between the 'we feel morally superior so obviously everybody else will fell the same way and we will triumph' sort of philosophy that lead us to such a disconnect between the incredible flag-waving wave of success and democracy projected by the Executive branch in Iraq, and what really happened. I would urge you to think about how you would respond if you were each of the 'bad guys' in your scenarios and whether what results would have been better or worse than how they really played out. I think in most cases the result would have been disastrous, if you really try hard and try to project how the other side would respond. I also find your delineation of terrorist vs. non-terrorist to be somewhat arbitrary. I think your decision to not worry about what happens in Iran because they don't have nuclear weapons, would be disastrous for the NPT. States would understand with much more clarity that the only way to keep from being destroyed on an arbitrary whim of the US would be to develop weapons. I think the number of states with nukes would increase tenfold.
Your view of appeasing/ignoring terrorists and their sponsors seems immoral to me. I would rather do the right thing with disasterous result than just allow the evil in the world to operate unchecked. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." It's tough to say how anything would work out in an alternate reality. The outcome is not the point, in my philosophy. There were 62 and a half million people killed in WWII. I think there could certainly be some way that the major allied powers could have appeased the Axis powers and severely reduced that amount. If WWII could hav been avoided by sacrificing 20 million people instead, and just let the Nazis have most of Europe and the Japanese have most of eastern Asia, would that have been the right thing to do, since the reslut is saving 40 million odd lives? I think I need you to elaborate before I respond. Are you saying that the Taiwanese are terrorists? You are kidding yourself if you don't think countries realize that now. It is no coincidence that we invaded Iraq and are making noises about Iran but North Korea is up there giving us the bird. The NPT is nothing to me, because there is no real enforcement and being involved in it is completely voluntary. The NPT did not stop India and Pakistan from getting nukes. Nor did it stop Iraq, but some Israeli bombers did.
