posted
Does anyone else get the uncomfortable feeling that the Bush administration might be setting the rhetorical stage for the invasion of another ME country, or maybe North Korea?
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:LONDON, Feb. 4 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that an attack on Iran by the United States "is simply not on the agenda," despite Iran's "abysmal human rights record" and suspicion that it harbors ambitions to produce nuclear weapons.
At a news conference here, the first stop in a weeklong tour of European capitals, Ms. Rice said there was broad international agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to use a civilian nuclear power project to conceal a weapons program.
Three European Union countries are to trying to negotiate with Iran to stop it from developing nuclear weapons, and President Bush said in his State of the Union address that he is working with those allies.
But on Thursday Ms. Rice said Washington would continue to rebuff European requests to take part in directly offering incentives for Iran to drop its nuclear program.
Today, asked after a meeting with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain if the United States might go further, and actually attack Iran, Ms. Rice declared: "The question is simply not on the agenda at this point - we have diplomatic means to do this."
So officially, no, we're not going into Iran. And honestly, I don't think we will for three reasons:
(1) Our military is already overextended, and we're having trouble meeting recruiting goals for the infantry services (the Marines failed to meet their recruiting goals for the first time since 1989, but the Navy is practically turning people away).
(2) The public support just isn't there. In this day and age, you can't wage war successfully without public support. That's why Bush's PR campaign before Iraq was so important. Like it or not, Bush did pick up that lesson from Vietnam.
(3) Iraq isn't stable yet, but more importantly, it looks like the Shiites have come out on top in the elections. Ali Sistani, probably the most influential man in Iraq right now, has pretty much swept; since Iran is a fellow Shiite country, invading them would seriously antagonize whatever support the U.S. has managed to secure from this man. Regardless of whether or not Rumsfeld is willing to admit it, having Sistani committed to, at the very least, a moderate Constitution (and preferably a secular one) is almost essential to us getting out of Iraq.
As for North Korea, we can't invade there without pissing China off, and that's extremely dangerous. This North-Korea-selling-uranium-to-Libya is dangerous: it gives us diplomatic leverage in that we can claim they are directly supporting terrorists. But we did recently take Libya off the state sponsors of terrorism list, so that makes the claim more dubious, and helps ensure our policy will remain diplomatic (most wars, after all, are an extension of previous policy).
We live in a dangerous world, to be sure, and there's no promising we won't go after one of these "rogue nations" militarily. But I don't think there's reason to panic just yet.
[ February 04, 2005, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
So if North Korea or Iran keep developing nuclear weapons who it be so bad to drop a MOAB on their facility? Over and done with in one shot. No need for ground forces. Takes care of the problem and the objections. Sure their would be objections afterwards, but hey, their nuclear weapon facility would be gone!
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Maybe we're simply holding our cards closer to the vest this time. Last time we went into a middle east country we told them we were going to do it for a year and a half and they hid all their WMDs.
posted
I kind of wish they would have dropped one on the North Korea plant when they turned off the UN monitoring cameras
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
That's smart. Drop a MOAB on a place with radioactive material. Who cares about a few thousand Koreans that have to deal with substantiallu higher cancer rates, birth defects, etc., the next 20-50 years?
Aside from the morality of it, it wouldn't play too well on the world stage.
posted
Well, the hard-liners are out in force again, aren't they?
Drop a MOAB on a nuclear power plant/weapons facility? I'm sure that would be completely okay with the rest of the world. Especially Japan. I hear they like radiation, and would love a second dose...
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Sometimes you don't have the luxury of caring how things play on the world stage. Ask Israel if that was a major concern to them before they bombed the nuclear facility they felt was a threat.
Posts: 127 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Caring about how the rest of the world feels is not always a luxury. Often it's a necessity, especially when it comes to something as sensitive as this sort of thing.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Can we please leave Israel out of this topic? It is neither relevant nor terribly important. Not to mention the devisiveness that occurs every time Israel comes up...
But back to the discussion... As the only remaining super-power in the world, we must be aware of other nations perceptions of us. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't bomb the hell out of any imimnent threat to our national security, but defining the word "iminent" becomes the difficult part, especially after the fiasco over Iraq's "iminent" threat.
The complexity surrounding N. Korea makes it a very unappealing target for a war. China, Japan, and S. Korea would take the brunt of any damage done by a nuclear explosion.
And lets not forget the strategic alliance that Russia just signed with China. I have a lot of faith in our armed forces, but the possibility of facing three of the worlds largest armies (China #1, N. Korea #4, and Russia #6) is a terrifying thought.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Karled, I don't think so, considering that you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. We're already pretty well stretched all over the world. I don't think we could feasibly invade another country without abandoning some of the areas we're already in, which we're not ready to do yet.
Plus, I don't think, even with a Republican majority in the House and Senate, the administration would get the backing they'd need.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
We can't drop a moab on a nuclear power plant because it would cause a radioactive cloud that would kill thousands of people. Plus Kim Jong Il is not the most stable dictator in the world. Whats to stop him from using a nuke on Tokyo or South Korea? Even if he doesn't use a nuke he has an extremely large cache of other WMD's. It's not really a pretty picture. Not to mention the thousands of American troops station in the region that would suddenly be put in harms way.
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
THT, an example of a previous pre-emptive strike on a nuclear facility isn't relavent or important? Or are you just saying that because Israel was successful and World War III didn't start?
Urban, I don't know the physics of why Iraq didn't disappear in a cloud of radioactive dust when Israel destroyed its nuclear facilities, but I'm pretty sure dropping a conventional bomb or several bombs doesn't in and of itself create a radioactive mushroom cloud.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I was responding to the MOAB people, whcih is the largest convention bomb created. It does make quite a mushroom cloud. Now if they had said something about a laser or GPS guided bomb that would have been different. here's a link about the MOAB http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htmPosts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Nobody in the DubyaAdministration cares about people. And 99%% of the folks who voted for Dubya don't even care about Americans being killed, as long as it's "safely" "over there".
The problem being that the reactor meltdown would spread a radioactive cloud making Seoul uninhabitable, and kill hundreds of thousands of SouthKorean over the long term. Other collateral damage would include tens of thousands of deaths in China, Russia, and Japan, and thousands in the US, Canada, and NorthernEurope.
Gotta remember that the Israelis bombed an uncompleted containment&control facility in which the reactor core had yet to be fueled. And Chernobyl was contained only through the incredible bravery of Ukranian&Russian&Soviet firefighters, heavy equipment operators, and pilots. Even then it stretched the resources of the US's former sole military rival to mobilize a response in a timely fashion.
NorthKorea doesn't have those resources. And nothing in the NorthKorean leadership's past behaviour indicates that they care the slightest whit about NorthKorean's dying. They might well go into Götterdämmerung for their cult"God" BelovedLeader, choose to fight any attempt by outsiders to cap the meltdown in "the ultimate battle".
Which is likely to highly irritate the Russians. "The Russian's might become riled." is sufficient to cause to send the overall financial market tumbling: Russia overtook SaudiArabia as the world's leading oil exporter in (I think) 2002. It doesn't need to import anything, so it doesn't need to export anything. Russia exports because it's easier to exchange oil for many products made elsewhere than to make them within its borders or to do without. And the pleasure of revenge can overide any economic consideration, or even rational thought.
As OPEC's 1973 OilEmbargo proved, demand for oil is relatively inelastic compared to the supply. ie In the short term, any small decrease in supply causes a LARGE increase in the price that consumers are "willing" pay. With oil being pumped out now at near-maximum production capacity -- and Iraq's civil war making it unlikely that their production will increase any time soon to even the minimal level pumped during the US-led IraqEmbargo -- there is nowhere to get more oil in the short term. A Russian pullout from the oil export market will cause a HUGE jump in oil prices.
Because FirstWorld production depends so heavily upon machinery instead of muscle in both manufacturing and transportation, the jump in oil prices will be highly reflected in the cost of goods. Squeezing business profits. And falling profits means a falling overall financial market. Even if Russia plays nice, the effects of nuclear fallout will loose havoc upon the economies of FirstWorld nations.
Which I'll return to, along with the Impeachment&Conviction of GeorgeW.Bush
posted
Unfortunately, Iran learned the lesson stemming from Israel's bombing of Iraq's reactor (was it in 1981? around there).
Iran has spread it's nuclear program over multiple sites, some of them very well bunkered, to avoid the vulnerability of a single reactor being attacked. Intelligence is spotty, we probably don't even know where all the facilities are. So a quick air raid would be ineffective and just piss off the Iranians and other Muslims.
Because we are over-extended in Iraq, an invasion is impossible for the near future.
This leaves diplomacy. Hah! Not much to place our hopes on, but it's all we've got for the time being.
posted
The simplest reason we don't blow up a NK reactor is because NK has access to large quantities of weapons grade material that, until we insulted them and stonewalled, resulting in their breaking the treaty, were being monitored.
If we bombed their reactor(s) they would be reasonably likely to choose to use a nuclear weapon in retaliation.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I'd like to point out that neither NK or Iran has succeeded in taking over a neighbor, as Iraq did with Kuwait. I guess you could scroll back a ways in history to find requisite cases, but doing so presupposes that we were right to invade Iraq.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I believe that the best course of action would be the same one we took with China in 1971... normalize relations. When Nixon (and nope, I don't like the guy) softened our relations with China (which had become a pariah on the world and communist stages) it began a shift. They opened their markets, we opened our wallets.
China now, while no paradise, has been more changed by our open trade than even they would like to admit. They have softened immensely, even when you figure in the tragedy of Tianamin Square, from the days of Mao's Five Year Plans and Great Leaps Forward that left tens of millions to starve to death.
So what does this have to do with Iran? While Iran isn't a communist state, it is a very closed state, long held in the grip of one man's hand. Today, Iran is much like China in 1971... chafing at that hand's grip and looking for better days. One just has to look at what the Iranian people said with their ballots in Iran's greatly disputed parlaimentary elections late last year.
So, we open relations with Iran, take the first step and say "Here's an olive branch, do you want fries with that?"
It's amazing what a few Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises, Pepsi Colas and foreign investment did to China. Imagine what it will do for a country like Iran.
But the change won't come quick, at least not as quick as if it were implemented through a MOAB or two. But the change would be much better for us.
Sure, our relations with China have had their tense moments, but nowhere near as tense as they were pre-1971.
Not to mention that when we opened our doors to China, the rest of the world followed. The Global Village Free Market is a very, very powerful thing.
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote: I'd like to point out that neither NK or Iran has succeeded in taking over a neighbor, as Iraq did with Kuwait. I guess you could scroll back a ways in history to find requisite cases, but doing so presupposes that we were right to invade Iraq.
I'm sure that the residents of Seoul in 1951 might have tried to argue this one...
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Its worth pointing out that we still put extensive trade barriers in China's way, and that Europe is the group lowering trade barriers with China right now (and we're yelling at them to stop).
However, I agree that opening trade barriers is definitely the way to go.
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