Contra Iran
[W]henever I start talking about how I think a war with Iran is a very real possibility in the near future. [People reply to the effect that] “Bush isn’t that crazy,” etc., etc. An apparently “exasperated” Robert Gates made his own denials this weekend: “I don’t know how many times the president, Secretary Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran.”
Of course he’s that crazy; he’s on a mission from God, after all. Also, there are the political ramifications, or, rather, the lack thereof: freedom’s just another word for nothing political left to lose. It’s easy to imagine that when one’s approval rating gets so low, and one is a lame duck, one ceases to care about how the latest Crusade-To-Certainly-End-In-Disaster will play in Peoria. Or as (hold your nose) Niall Ferguson puts it:
It will clearly take more time for the Army and Marine Corps to master this new kind of [anti-insurgent] warfare, though they’re certainly trying. There is, however, an alternative option to this hard slog — and it is evidently an option that Bush finds tempting. Why not revert to fighting the easier kind of asymmetrical war the U.S. is equipped to fight by launching airstrikes against Iran?
You can see why the president might be contemplating such a course of action. Strategically, Iran is a threat: pressing on regardless of sanctions against its nuclear weapons program and lending support to Shiite militias in Iraq. Politically, Bush has nothing to lose. And, militarily, he can be sure that the Air Force will take out at least some Iranian nuclear installations.
But Ferguson cautions:
the risks of such an attack are sobering indeed. The backlash on the ground in Iraq — and elsewhere — would be ferocious. There is no guarantee that the Iranian nuclear program would suffer more than temporary disruption. And the political effects in Iran (to say nothing of the rest of the Middle East) would be to strengthen the radicals around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the very moment when they seem to be losing popular support. There is, in short, a real danger that a preemptive strike against Iran could turn Goliath into Samson, bringing the temple of Dagon crashing down on everyone in the Middle East, including Samson himself.
Like Dear Leader cares, Niall. C’mon, he’s Bush: der zorn Gottes. He doesn’t need anyone’s approval but Jesus’, on whose blank check he’s played ever since Laura threw out his last empty bottle of bourbon.
***
Bonus laffs: Has Christopher Hitchens one-uped his mentor, Paul Wolfowitz’s, fabrications about Iraq with an even more outrageous casus belli? Iran apparently has, umm, faultlines of mass destruction:
CH: Well, one thing to think about that is something that hardly ever gets mentioned, which is the following. Ask any seismologist you like. Iran has a huge earthquake coming sometime in the next few years. We don’t know exactly when, of course, but we know, we can study these faults and these fault lines quite well, and Iran is very, very high on the list for a very, very major earthquake. It will be a gigantic tragedy when it hits, by the way, because as someone who’s been in Tehran, I can tell you there isn’t a single building there that’s up to code in any way. It’s a mess of traffic jams and corruption. It’s built on a spider web of faults. I mention this because when it hits, the fact that there’ll be underground nuclear facilities will be not the least of the problem, and no one’s doing enough thinking about this, and I think it should be up to the United States government to say something in public, to the world, and to the Iranian people, saying that’s not an internal affair for you. This is going to concern us all, and we know about seismology, and indeed how to protect against earthquakes.
[Quick Jonah-Cheeto-Fatso-Lazy bleg: Didn’t Max Boot say something hysterical a while back about the grave geopolitical dangers of Chinese earthquake rays, or did I dream it?]
China’s Earthquake Weapon.
We’re in your earth, quakin’ your d00dz!11!
ALL YOUR FAULTLINES ARE BELONG TO US
Prepare to meet your shaker!!
Someone set us up the quake!
OK, instead of snark I have to ask the obvious question: how, exactly, do we know how to “protect against” earthquakes? What, we’re going to send in a massive pre-emptive aid package for building stabilization, emergency relief, etc.? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Back your regularly scheduled snark…
Oh, and BTW, since the complete viability and end result of using bunker buster bombs is unknown, who is to say that they woudn’t trigger said earthquake? That CH, always thinking.
Lex Luthor had a similar idea.
Bartender–one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer!
Nuclear bombs may dislodge those stubborn tectonic plates.
We’re unleashing seismic energy over there so we don’t have to invent new justifications for genocide over here.
At least the Republicans even have a plan for seismic disruptions. Let’s hear Pelosi’s plan.
You can see why the president might be contemplating such a course of action.[ . . . ] Politically, Bush has nothing to lose.
Yeah, nothing except the Consitutional crisis that yet ANOTHER illegal undeclared war would prompt, as well as backlash from every foreign leader who’s still willing to hiold their nose & be seen in public with the Chimp.
But I suppose Bush couild lose a whole carrier group to the Iranians right now and the wingnuts would STILL be chirping about how Churchillian he is. (*gag*)
Oh sure, ignore me and give me the cold shoulder like there’s no tomorrow, but you just love earthquakes. Hey Trent Lott! I’m gunning for your front porch.
There’s only one “r” in Katrina. Kartrina is my evil sister.
But I suppose Bush couild lose a whole carrier group to the Iranians right now and the wingnuts would STILL be chirping about how Churchillian he is. (*gag*)
A repeat of the Gallipoli campaign would be pretty Churchillian.
david: but Lex Luthor was an evil genius, these guys are just evil…
But..but…I thought enternal war was good for the country?!
yeah – we are GREAT at stopping earthquakes and/or recovering from them, I mean, look how well CA handled that giant temblor in the 90’s. No one died, not one building fell, and that double-decker bridge didn’t collapse either.
um, how is it that someone can remain so stupid for so long? I’m surprised their brains have enough power to maintain autonomous functionality for breathing and heart beats, let alone blinking.
Wonder what Hitch’s posish is on saying this–
“that’s not an internal affair for you. This is going to concern us all…”
to the Chinese re pollution. Ask any seismologist you like. Or even several you don’t like. The stats re Chinese pollution–current, let alone future–are hilarious. “Shenzen, a city of some twelve kabillion people, consumes more coal in a single week than everybody everywhere else has ever consumed anything ever.” (In the summer!)
Face it, people: We ARE going to war with Iran.
No period, no end of discussion–because there is no need for discussion. Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the administration cabal have made it absolutely clear that Bush does not need authority from Congress or anyone else to wage whatever wars he wants. He doesn’t have to ask because he’s the commander in chief. And he wants this war BAD!
So, my guess is that Bush will order the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites early this summer. This result in the Iranian military spilling over the border into Iraq like the country has sprung a leak. Viola! We’re at war with Iran!
This will ensure Bush’s legacy: With gas prices soaring above $10/gallon, the U.S. economy sliding into depression, the entire Middle East in flames, and the U.S. military being driven to the breaking point and forced to withdraw in defeat, Bush will attain a place in history no other president has ever even aspired to–the only president to start three wars and lose them all while wrecking the domectic economy.
Yay! Thanks for the link, Thunder!
Or heck, Mr. Wonderful, what would he think of other countries saying it to the US, as we still top the energy consumption and carbon emission lists.
The cool thing about intervening to protect Tehran from earthquake damage is that it allows us to give obscenely huge no-bid rebuilding contracts to Halliburton without needing to go to the bother of destroying something first. It’s a win-win thing.
If we kill all the Iranians now, there won’t be any left over to tragically die in an earthquake! Woot!
Meghan, even better:
KBR gets the contract to tear down all those buildings first. Then Halliburton gets the contract to rebuild, while Blackwater gets to provide security.
(Going to buy me some STOCK!)
And Katrina, you’re so naive: swirly water disasters are so “girly”. This administration is MANLY!
(Sure, we understand how to protect against earthquake damage. And even though we never fund it or write it into building code here in the US, we’ll certainly be willing to spend taxpayer dollars to enforce it overseas–in one of those “evil enemy states”.)
So, to protect ourselves from the unpredictable risk that an earthquake may damage nuclear facilities and spread harmful radiation, we are therefore obligated to attack these hardened nuclear facilities with ground penetrating bombs which will blow these facilities up and spread harmful radiation.
Or, to protect ourselves from nuclear terrorism caused by the chaos created by an earthquake which would damage facilities but not destroy them, thus allowing entry and trade in nuclear materials, we must attack Iran and thus provoke chaos throughout Iran, Iraq, and every other weak government throughout the Middle East which have strong pro-Iranian movements.
Yeah, I guess according to Hitchens types, the logic is pretty much back to, f*** it, let’s blow ’em up and see if it turns out alright somehow, and if it don’t, well, it ain’t my damn fault ’cause I wuz hopin’ it wuz gonna turn out real good.
Ha! The earthquake ray was, up until that point in time ( I think it was summer 2005), the funniest fucking thing I had ever read (One of the joys of the current administration is that any time you read the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever read nowadays, all you have to do is wait another week or two, and you’ll get to read some new thing that is the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever read). It’s a shame the actual article has vanished from the web, because it was a true masterpiece of jaw-dropping stupidity. Max Boot showed such a blatant ignorance of basic physics that if he’s ever gotten a passing grade in a physics course ever in his life, it should be retroactively revoked on the basis of that article alone.
I spent part of my childhood in Las Vegas, and I lived there back in the day when they were still doing underground testing of nuclear weapons. Now, Vegas is smack dab in the middle of a number of good fault lines, and the tests they used to do in the 80s were on big ol’ full size nukes. And yeah, the megaergs of energy those things would put off, coupled with the numerous geologic fault lines in the area, would often trigger earthquakes.
One of the really bad earthquakes a test caused one time made the whole front door jiggle like someone had gotten their key jammed in the lock. OOOOOOOHHH – scary.
You can’t manufacture an “earthquake” using human technology. It just isn’t possible. Sure, if the circumstances are just right, and you pour inhuman amounts of energy into an area, you might – just might – trigger a tremblor. But the idea that any human invention could create enough energy to set off an earthquake in a targeted enough fashion that you could use it as a weapon is the most woefully stupid thing I’ve ever heard someone say. How in the FUCK are you going to set off an earthquake that affects Washington, D.C. – some of the most geologically stable land on the damn planet? And why in the fuck would China want to set off an earthquake in, say, San Francisco – are they planning on wiping out Japan in a tsunami? Or maybe Manchuria instead?
Jesus Christ, even common sense should’ve told him what a fucking stupid idea this is. I don’t know if Max Boot has ever noticed this before, but the planet Earth is really, really, really big. It’s bigger than your Hummer. It’s bigger than your McMansion. It’s bigger than your corner office. It’s pretty big. Think about the amount of energy it takes to move even a teensy bit of the Earth – when we blow away the side of a mountain to put in a highway or something. The Earth is so big that, even with all that energy we use, we still only manage to move the equivalent of a couple of skin cells’ worth of the planet. You lose a greater percentage of your mass when you shave.
Now think about the sort of earth moving that Boot is proposing. He’s talking about shifting a tectonic plate significantly enough to trigger a massive earthquake. Do you know how much the North American Tectonic Plate weighs? Because I couldn’t even begin to guess. But I’m just wondering where Max Boot thinks the energy necessary to create the sort of force he’s contemplating would come from.
Sorry for the rant…….I just cannot wrap my brain around what a stupid, stupid, clueless fucking prat that man is.
D’oh!
That was me.
It’s even better than you suspect, Dot. First, we hire KBR (et all) to make Tehran be up-to-spec, earthquake-wise. Blackwater (et all) will be there to provide “security.”
Second, we bomb the place back to teh stone-age (a.k.a. 6000 years ago).
Third, we hire KBR (et all) to rebuild Tehran by painting several schools. Blackwater (et all) will be there to provide “security.”
Repeat steps two and three untill tax revenues run dry. Victory!
Jesus Murphy, if a peaceful settlement can be negotiated with crazy North Korea, surely it’s possible to negotiate something with Iran. I still can’t see the rest of the world tolerating a new war by Bush…I mean, how’s he going to achieve this with so little approval.
What does it take to impeach this son of a bitch?