13:41 - On attacking Iran
Among the left side of the blogs, I've read many articles saying that the United States is just about to attack Iran. (Technorati gives links here, here, here, and dozens of other places.)
I say it's baloney. Although President Bush and President Ahmadinejad oppose each other, simple answers explain why President Bush would not attack Iran:
Oil
For the sake of argument, I'll assume that the real, honest, and true reason that Bush were to attack Iran were to free its people from its elected (though from a restricted set of people) leader.
But pragmatism steps in. Attacking Iran will vastly lower the world's oil production. (Even four years after "Mission Accomplished", Iraq's oil production remains below pre-war levels.) Even if everything happens perfectly, and no other retribution happens, the mere change of government will affect oil prices badly for many years. Hitting Americans at the gas pump just before the 2008 election guarantees a Democratic Party victory.
What next?
George Bush does learn from his mistakes. Even if we had the firepower ready to attack Iraq -- so effective that we took out Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khatami, and the government of Iran perfectly, we have seen what happens when we take over a country without sufficient force to keep the country from anarchy.
Whether we have sufficient force for Iraq can be reasonably debated. (I don't believe that we do.) Iran has four times more population.
What could go wrong?
Finally, even the most pro-war person must admit: no plan happens perfectly. Repercussions will happen. Are the gains of attaqcking Iran so great that they would be worth more attacks on the United States?
Ending comments
I loudly oppose the war in Iraq. However, I believe that the promised war with Iran is either left-wing paranoia or neoconservative wishfulness.
What do you think? Take care, all.
diversion bombings, drop our supply of cruise missiles down a little to a healthier level. (fucking things breed like rabbits!)
Hitting Americans at the gas pump just before the 2008 election guarantees a Democratic Party victory.
What does he care what happens to the Republican party? Its not like he's a classic conservative and it would rub up against some sort of sense of loyalty to the party or its ideals.
I've come around to the way of thinking that it was never about securing the supply of oil, and more about a foolproof way of jacking the price of it up. It's win-win if you're an oilman. If you secure the supply, you've got more oil to sell/more of a market share. If it gets harder to produce or just looks like that, you can increase the price.
I agree about it being totally neocon wishful thinking. It's just more dangerous than my kind of wishful thinking ("Alakazam! Zaftig fairies begin raining job offers and KB on my mark...engage!") because as they showed with Iraq, they're totally willing to start shit with no exit strategy, no real plan for reconstruction.
An equally plausible scenario is to urge a third party to do the bombing for us. Israel has been making noises about striking at Iran directly for their support of Hamas. Cynically, that would deflect from the bombing for oil charges. And, gee, the US just signed a huge weapons deal with Israel!
My thoughts.
Economically, you simply acquire the next portion of the business upstream. In this case, it eventually ends with acquiring the oil fields where the product comes from.
If Iran, Iraq and several other countries in that region were Commonwealths of the US, then that would give the US a HUGE bargining chip at the OPEC table.
It's less about politics and freedom and indpendence, and more about greed and money.
I think you could look at other business models for a similar example of how things flow. The diamond industry might be a good example to review.
There is a very real chance that invasion of Iran would militarily fail.
Iran's geography negates any advantage of tanks, and they have the depth to operate a defensive battle. Pretty much the only advantage the US has is air superiority, but that's the same advantage they had in Vietnam and Korea.
That said, I don't think we're invading Iran. Remember the Iraq-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration? You shouldn't, because it was Iran-Contra. Other than a blip during the Carter years, and the current business with Ahmadinejad, Iran has been at least comparatively tilted towards the US pretty much continuously since WWII. The Iranian government has been quite willing to play games with us. They aided us in Afghanistan quite recently. Despite the fact that they're supplying our enemies in Iraq, we're not doing anything to Iran but flapping some lips at them. I think this is just a Machiavellian game that benefits the political leadership of both countries at the present time.
There's no way that the US could bomb out *every* weapons cache and regional command in the country. Think of it as attacking a hornets nest with a bb-gun.
'He who can destroy a thing, controls that thing' [to paraphrase 'Dune']
Also Iran will not be fighting us alone.
I mean, let's face it, the rest of the middle east would love for a chance to liberate Iraq from the Americans and take it for themselves. It's the first real chance at conquest that has made itself available since 1942. Heaven knows that the Islamic World would love to treat it as another crusade and Iran moved it's armies to their boarder pretty quickly. Their intent was pretty obvious, and they are sitting back, knowing that eventually, come a new election, our forces will pull out, and they'll be able to move in.
We don't need to invade Iran. They'll invade Iraq, along with a handful of other nations. All the build up is pretty much a deterent, and it's a lousy one at that, as nobody cares if you set a nuke off in the middle of the desert.
Anyway, the Islamic world already has what it wants in Iraq - the opportunity to conduct guerrilla war against US interests. Why bother invading Iraq when you can just sneak more explosives and suicide bombers across the border?
The thing also, I am sure the radicals realize, is that attacking US forces in Iraq, or attacking other religious groups in Iraq, as they are more intent on doing, doesn't actually accomplish any goals, outside of saying "hey, yeah, we're still here", and making American's and Iraqi's upset. They make bigger statements by attacking anyplace else.
Erm... um... They aren't Arabs, but they are Muslims.
Anyway, this is basically what would happen.
Meanwhile, America continues to bleed out its treasure and its military strength in the unwinnable occupation of Iraq. Already we have reduced our strength to a state where a serious occupation of even a minor country would be impossible, without a draft at home -- which seems to be off the table. All anyone hostile to our interests has to do is sit on their hands. We've long since "lost" Iraq, and we're probably a fair ways to losing our superpower status. We just don't realize it yet.
But the Commander in Chief could order air strikes at any time, with no discussion. I wouldn't put it past the Bushies to engineer an Incident to provide a plausible excuse.
There's going to be a war, though. That's inevitable. We can fight Iran now, on our terms, or we can wait until later, when they've built an atom bomb and can use to to blackmail or sneak-attack us. I look for a huge bombing campaign after Christmas. I also think that if it's done quickly, in a matter of days, and results in the extermination of the Iranian government and military at little cost in American lives, it will help, rather than hurt, Republican chances in the fall.
Really? So, what the US couldn't do with Iraq, a small economically crippled country with almost non existent military power and political isolation, it can do with Iran, an economically strong country that's a military major-power with allied nations.
But the last decade and a half don't grant much promise to that end.
Personally, I wish we'd get our own democracy squared away before ANYONE talked about fixing someone else's.
Also, Iran kicked Saddam's ass in the Iran-Iraq war with an army composed mostly of lightly armed children. Plus their conventional forces are intact, unlike Sadam's, which never recovered fromt he first Gulf War. I doubt that whatever large conventional forces Iran fielded against us would last long, but it probably wouldn't be the rollover Iraq was. And if the Iranians are smart, they'd just let us win the conventional war, and save their army's nice anti-tank weapons to ambush supply columns in narrow valleys with.
Indeed, conventional war wouldn't be the main concern. If we invaded Iran, we'd win, and then we'd have to try and secure yet another massive hostile country with an army equipped and trained to fight conventional wars in Europe. Why we're still basing our army on that model, given that such a war is probably never going to happen again, I don't know. Seriously, Iran would be, like, the fourth land war in Asia we've fought in the past 60 years. You'd think we'd have learned something by now.
I think the only thing holding the Bush crowd back is the remnant of the military brass and the intelligence apparatus that hasn't been suborned. Even guys who were willing to swallow their good sense and sign on for the Iraq disaster have to be digging in their heels at this point. I'd say there's even the possibility of a military coup. That's not a likely thing, maybe one in a thousand, but I'm sure it's more likely now than it was even five years ago.
Shrug
But without some disaster to blame on Iran, I don't see how they'll convince anyone else that it's even remotely reasonable.
So, it's pretty clear and invasion of Iran is completely unworkable in the short term, and highly improbably in the medium term.