Unsmartable Force Meets Stupidest Object
I have no idea who’s at fault in the latest mess. Either or both sides could be stating their claims in good faith — the boundaries in the Gulf and the Shat al-Arab are disputed — and either or both could be offering tissues of lies. I’m happy to assume the Iranians are lying. I’m also conditioned by history to assume the ‘Coalition’ is lying. Doesn’t matter — both sides’ governments are composed of and supported by troglodyte, reactionary trash just begging for a fight they personally will not have to physically wage. Fuck em all. Anyway, the following quotes are offered without further comment:
Hmm:
[F]oreign policy experts of an anti-Bush hue compete to offer elaborate scenarios of how the U.S. could spark a conflagration. American policymakers “intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [the U.S.] would be forced to retaliate for,” former National Security Council official Hillary Mann told Newsweek. Another former NSC aide, Flynt Leverett, told the New Yorker, “The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond, and then the administration will have an open door to strike them.” In Senate testimony, former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski conjured up a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran,” which would be provoked by a “terrorist act” that would be “blamed on Iran,” “culminating in a ‘defensive’ U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire.”
Huhh:
in a NR feature article, Mario Loyola suggests that Iran may very well be telling the truth about what happened here, and that this incident was the by-product of efforts by the U.S. and Britian to provoke Iran into war — justifiably, in Loyola’s view (needless to say):
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Iranians were actually responding, in this case, to a carefully planned provocation of our own. As Churchill said, sometimes the truth is so precious that she must be attended by a bodyguard of lies. . . .
The gloves are coming off. And the risk-calculation here is: If someone gets nervous and starts shooting, the timing would be more auspicious now for us than for the Iranians. Therefore, it only makes sense that American and British naval units operating in the Gulf would be in a more forward-leaning and aggressive posture than the Iranians.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the British sailors were detained because the British did something to make the Iranians really angry. Khamanei dramatically upped the ante this week. We probably raised. And they probably raised back. The stakes in this nuclear-poker game just got a little higher.
So the U.S. and Britain are deliberately provoking Iran in a “nuclear-poker game” and then lying about what they are up to, and Loyola thinks that’s all great. A whole new war — it’s all so exciting and pulsating.
Ahh:
That [a likely Gulf of Tonkin-style ‘incident’] involves the British, not the Americans, is a double victory for the on-to-Tehran crowd: the war-weary Brits, who recently announced the withdrawal of their troops from southern Iraq, will presumably be dragged along in the wake of the coming U.S. military assault as their sailors are paraded before the cameras in Tehran. Once again, “coalition” forces are about to take down a Middle Eastern government, and they are already on the move.
Ugh:
Yes, this is an act of terrorism, no matter how you slice it. Start launching bombers and cruise missiles at these idiots now and see how quick they are to take hostages next time they have a chance. Guess what? They wouldn’t.
It’s The Democrats Fault
Thanks to European Liberals and our own Democrat Party[…]
Why shouldn’t the Iranians play games like this? Thanks to the Democrats, we’ve been sending them all kinds of messages that America isn’t anything to be concerned with as far as confrontation? The Brits have been sending the same signals for two years.
Iran openly declared war on England when they kidnapped 15 of their soldiers (more on that here.) England should never have allowed itself to get into such a situation. They must march with force NOW, nothing they do afterward will do any good and it will take years for them to live it down.
[…]
UPDATE: Do you think the Mahdi’s springtime arrival has any role in this?
When I first heard of this I immediately wondered if it wasn’t an SAS unit that got caught searching for Iranian defensive mines.
The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the American sailors would have opened fire in the same situation. I reckon we can be thankful that the Iranians took on the Brits instead.
Often, these murky situations can be delved, a bit, by looking at who stands to gain.
Does Iran stand to gain by being aggressive and cofrontational? What do they stand to gain? They are defending their territorial waters, by one account. Maybe they are preventing further, deeper incursions. Maybe they are looking for increased worldwide observation.
What doe sthe Coalition have to gain? Maybe reversing the British decision to withdraw troops. Maybe drawing Iran deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq. Maybe, and this is the one that makes Cheney wet, just initiating outright hostilities.
It seems to me, though, that this is just the behavior of the playground bully, who just wants to fight with someone weaker than he is. To taunt and aggravate a situation until there is no choice but to take on the bully. Then he gets to paly all wide eyed and tearful, the aggrieved party.
Alright, I’m cynical. But point to one thing this administration has done that deserves a grain of belief or a modicum of trust. Who was that wise old sage that said “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Is there some way that the American people (or British) can petition the UN to step in and mediate this situation? If the UN can place snctions on Iran why not place sanctions on the US or Britain for provoking confrontation? Call me naive but this situation is scaring the shit out of me. Our military is at the breakig point, or past it. These war hungry maniacs have got to be stopped soon. I believe ipeachment proceedings should start immediately against the Bush criminal enterprise post haste. I have no sympathy for Iran but this constant beating of war drums has got to stop. Help! Anyone?
that would be impeachment folks, sorry meds haven’t kicked in yet.
If you were guilty of some serious crimes like, say, ignoring the impending attacks planned on 9/11, starting a war with no casus belli, or failing the people of New Orleans….what would you do to avoid accountability? Might you be motivated to continue to start unprovoked wars, hoping to use this as a domestic club to demand “patriotism” (read unquestioning loyalty to Decider/Dictator) via martial law?
Given what this administration and their loyal bootlickers in the Republic Congress accomplished over the past 6 years, I can see why they are motivated to do whatever it takes to avoid accountability for their crimes. Including destroying our system of government in the process.
Hope I’m wrong, but I think everyone needs to consider absolute worst case motivations for this Party of Organized Crime.
I’m not sure. The iranians had to make a decision, at least on the local commander level, to take the british rhibs. Now I am as suspiscious as anyone about the motives of the american administration, and frankly I expected after the SOTU speech the americans would attempt to engineer a “gulf of tonkin” type incident, but the larger question here is why would the iranians be complicit in that?
Also, you can’t view this event in a vaccuum. There’s the new UN sanctions, the 5 iranian diplomats the US took in Irbil in January, the high ranking iranian military officer credited with the creation of Hezzbollah who was either kidnapped by mossad, defected or was killed. There is a lot of madness swirling around the gulf, and the iranians can likely be considered to have at least as much of a plan as the US.
At this point, Amedinijad may well decide it’s in his political interest to ratchet up the tension, but it could also be that this is being orchestrated by Khameini, in which case (hey, he and sistani are very clever, machiavellian, smart mofos) there’s another shoe going to drop.
I can’t help but be pleased that the US has not, to this point, used it as an excuse to attack. But that could be nothing more than the attack is already planned and scheduled, and nothing was going to derail that process…
mikey
Fuck
fuck
fuckity
fuck
fuck.
Yeah.
Impeach now.
Fuck.
Oh, it gets better.
You know all that “special intel” that we have regarding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program and those super-duper IEDs that we claim have to be from Iran? Turns out, all that info comes from a single source: the MEK.
The MEK are listed on the State Dept.’s list global terrorist organizations. At their inception, they were an anti-Western, anti-Shah faction who didn’t like the way the revolution turned out in the 70s, and who then turned on the clerical regime.
In the 80s they took up refuge in Saddam’s Iraq, and with Hussein’s funding and support, ran terror ops against Iran during the Iran/Iraq war.
Following the first Gulf War, Hussein used the MEK (and others) to suppress uprisings among the Kurds and southern Shi’ites. (remember the whole “he killed his own people!!!!” thing?)
The MEK’s stated goal is the overthrow of the current clerical leadership in Iran, and their replacement with the MEK’s own leadership.
Oh, I forgot to mention… the MEK are currently living safe and sound on a base in Iraq, under the protection of US forces.
I tried to unwind the whole puzzle here, but in a nutshell we have a self-interested terror group (who had previously killed US troops and civilians) living under US protection on the American taxpayer’s dime, feeding just-too-convenient sole-source intel about Iran’s “immanent threat” to neocons who have been spoiling for a fight. Sound familiar?
This decade’s been a bit of a bummer so far, hasn’t it?
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It’s a minor point, but it really pisses me off when US based commentators can’t (or won’t) figure out there is a difference between the UK and England. And it always seems to come from the right; old Atlas is at it above, as were the LGF knuckle draggers last time I looked. And Fox News even had it in their captions last night. Do none of these idiots know the difference?
When us Celts unshakle our bonds from the English oppressor, then you can say England!
Parochial, me?
“It’s The Democrats Fault
Thanks to European Liberals and our own Democrat Party[…]
Why shouldn’t the Iranians play games like this? Thanks to the Democrats, we’ve been sending them all kinds of messages that America isn’t anything to be concerned with as far as confrontation? The Brits have been sending the same signals for two years.”
They’ve been watching the French Farce of a Military Operation on two boarders for five years now.
Yet it’s the DEMOCRATS’s fault they think America as week and inept.
Riiiight.
And where was all this outrage and demands for war against China when they detained the P-3 crew a few years back? Did I miss them all? That’s very possible, so I’m just wondering.
Or right, China isn’t Muslim nor brown.
Some Guy,
The inscrutable Chinese scare the warcons. You see, they actually have nuclear ICBMs. Warcons are first and foremost cowardly bullys, who only agitate for immediate war against clearly weaker opponents who have no way of actually visiting destruction anywhere near the warcon’s middle- and upper-middle class suburban homes.
Oh, no doubt the yellow menace will get their attention at some point, but right now they have smaller fish to fry.
As Sy Hersh and others have been reporting, the US, the British and the Israelis have been inserting teams into Iran for quite some time now to conduct recon and to contact ethnic opposition groups. Imagine a government putting a stop to that — they must be mad! Bomb the deranged beasts.
This decade’s been a bit of a bummer so far, hasn’t it?
So far the 00s have been sheer unadulterated bullshit, yes.