zombieslayer
14 years ago
I imagined a nuclear exchange years ago and knew that it wouldn't be between us and Russia. It would be some piss ant nation.

I don't know how close Iran is to having it. If they use it, they will be obliterated from the face of this earth, as they should be.

For the record, I'd take Israel over Iran. Not a fan of either nation but if one got crushed, I'd rather it would be the latter.

I don't get what you're saying about Russia. If they fired first, it would have been MAD (mutually assured destruction). People like to call the Russians crazy back then, but if you asked the Russians who were alive back then, they only thought about survival. Russian history is pretty much "which country is attacking us now?"

They didn't hate us either. Behind closed doors, they wanted to be us. The Russian people were fascinated by our material possessions. They wanted cars, rock music, and Levis jeans.

When they opened their doors, you could have gotten rich bringing American crap to Russia and unloading it on their streets. They hated their locally grown goods as they were garbage. They also loved talking to Americans.

Are you really taking credit for keeping us safe from Russia? Wow, I thought I had the big ego. No, credit goes to the Engineers/Scientists who designed our nukes (and the means to deliver them via turning keys). The bomb made the military obsolete so we had skirmishes in 3rd world countries instead to give them something to do.

I don't believe in any 'ism, for the record. It's just like football. What worked X years ago may be obsolete today. But I do believe in age old wisdom and the stuff the Founding Fathers said back then still has some wisdom to it today. Don't be quick to discount it.

Here's what ol' George had to say:

Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.



This is spot on to what we're talking about today.
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dfosterf
14 years ago
Regarding the Soviets.


Uhh, yes I am taking credit for that. Regarding my ego, uhh, yes I do have a huge one.

I faced those fucks in many places on this earth.

I would have personally started WWIII, as would have everyone around me, but the wiser-heads prevailed.

That was my gig.

That is the truth.
Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
14 years ago
1. If the Middle East begins to glow, that makes Central Asia and its oil/gas even more important, does it not?

And if Central Asia becomes "strategic", then it isn't just Israel vs. Iran anymore.

Non-cooperative games (i.e. "military conflict") with two sides are hard enough. Non-cooperative games with multiple sides...argh.

I think that's what worries me most about both political leadership in this country and the electorate that chooses it. IMO the last national leader who may have understood part of it was the elder Bush. And before that, maybe Ike. But that's going back to a world very different. A world dominated by two superpowers and without nuclear proliferation.

2. I'm not sure the possibility/probability of nuclear exchange today makes the founders wrong. It may make them more right than ever. In Nuclear World I (MADD), maybe. But we live now in Nuclear World II. Nuclear World II can't be neatly divided into two camps. Though many would like to break it down into Islamic World/non-Islamic World, I'm not sure that holds.

I realize you're an expert on this, Foster, and I'm not, but let me pose two hypotheticals to you.

Hypothetical A: Israel goes nuke first. (against Iran).
Hypothetical B: Iran goes nuke first. (against Israel).

IMO, in both cases, the result for Israel and Iran is the same: If you nuke first, you glow, too. Both countries go flourescent.

But that, ISTM, where the parallel to Nuclear World II could fall apart quickly. This is not a world of two giant powers and a bunch of satellites who more or less cooperate. The "Islamic World" isn't unified, and neither is the "non-Islamic" world.

Now if Iran's leadership was Alexander or Genghis Khan or even Zheng He, it might be another matter.

Don't get me wrong. You're right. It'll be a mess. And there'll be uninhabitable bits of the planet that there didn't use to be.

And it doesn't help that current political leadership in this country is about as useless as Louis XVI and George III combined.

But I'm not sure that in post-Israel/Iran Nuclear World II, the best approach wouldn't still be the Founders'.

Or perhaps that of the Swiss.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
dfosterf
14 years ago
Ha. I gotta laugh.

I.

am telling.

everyone.

Israel is going to bomb Iran.

The question ought to be what happens next.

The ONLY reason we should have done it is because we (the US military) has a FAR BETTER chance of getting it right.

I do not think that Israel has the attack (that is truly a technical term-aircraft-wise) capability to carry out the (generalized-term) attack.

This is going to be SO friggin' ugly. I'm just tellin' everyone, Israel is going to do it anyway. They have NO confidence in the US (Obama) to scare Iran from this path. Remember, this is an EXISTENTIAL threat to them...it is beyond debate... It will be the US or them that do it---to them...

It is not philosophy...they are GOING TO BOMB IRAN IF WE DO NOT--and we are not...
dfosterf
14 years ago

1. If the Middle East begins to glow, that makes Central Asia and its oil/gas even more important, does it not?

And if Central Asia becomes "strategic", then it isn't just Israel vs. Iran anymore.

Non-cooperative games (i.e. "military conflict") with two sides are hard enough. Non-cooperative games with multiple sides...argh.

I think that's what worries me most about both political leadership in this country and the electorate that chooses it. IMO the last national leader who may have understood part of it was the elder Bush. And before that, maybe Ike. But that's going back to a world very different. A world dominated by two superpowers and without nuclear proliferation.

2. I'm not sure the possibility/probability of nuclear exchange today makes the founders wrong. It may make them more right than ever. In Nuclear World I (MADD), maybe. But we live now in Nuclear World II. Nuclear World II can't be neatly divided into two camps. Though many would like to break it down into Islamic World/non-Islamic World, I'm not sure that holds.

I realize you're an expert on this, Foster, and I'm not, but let me pose two hypotheticals to you.

Hypothetical A: Israel goes nuke first. (against Iran).
Hypothetical B: Iran goes nuke first. (against Israel).

IMO, in both cases, the result for Israel and Iran is the same: If you nuke first, you glow, too. Both countries go flourescent.

But that, ISTM, where the parallel to Nuclear World II could fall apart quickly. This is not a world of two giant powers and a bunch of satellites who more or less cooperate. The "Islamic World" isn't unified, and neither is the "non-Islamic" world.

Now if Iran's leadership was Alexander or Genghis Khan or even Zheng He, it might be another matter.

Don't get me wrong. You're right. It'll be a mess. And there'll be uninhabitable bits of the planet that there didn't use to be.

And it doesn't help that current political leadership in this country is about as useless as Louis XVI and George III combined.

But I'm not sure that in post-Israel/Iran Nuclear World II, the best approach wouldn't still be the Founders'.

Or perhaps that of the Swiss.

"Wade" wrote:



For starters, all of the so-called "friendly" states are going to switch sides. This is going to happen regardless of an exchange. The house of Saud, the Kuwait leadership, the UAE--- All are going to go with Iran. Simple. Self-preservation. Iran is going to control the countries that control the oil.
They will be the "big boys" on the block.

Many of these countries WANT the Israelis to bomb Iran, btw. For example, it is widely known that the Saudis are going to give the Israelis the opportunity to overfly their airspace, as are the Kuwati, gov't, as are the Americans in Iraq... Once.
Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
14 years ago
I just re-read my post and want to clarify one thing.

My response was designed as an exploration of the "what if?" that follows upon what Foster says will happen this spring.

I don't view the stances of Israel and Iran as equivalent. Israel is willing to engage in a pre-emptive strike, but Iran is on record as calling for the destruction of another country for no reason other than that they are Israel. One may or may not be geopolitically destabilizing, but the other is advocacy of genocide.

Given that difference, our moral obligations as between the sides of this potential conflict are different.

Frankly, I'd rather Israel wasn't so territorial and nationalist -- to my mind, those are relics of 18th and 19th century political theory that ought to be -- and can be -- abandoned in the 21st. But as between a hawkish conservative state and one that advocates genocide, I'd stand with the hawk.

And to my mind, the arguments about the amount of "foreign aid", like most arguments that whine about foreign aid, are miscast. "Billions of dollars a year" are chicken feed next to trillion dollar "stimulus" packages. And they are less than chicken feed in a country that is capable of generating tens of trillions of dollars of new wealth each year.

Don't believe me? I just did a couple quick Googles:
Americans eat on the order of 8 billion chickens a year, and somewhere between 5 billion and 25 billion eggs.

How much does the "chicken feed" to get those chickens and eggs cost us?

Contrary to popular belief, a billion dollars of foreign aid from the US is all of $3.50 per person.

I just paid some local school kid canvassing the neighborhood in a fundraiser $20 for a piece of salami and a can of barbeque seasoning that probably are worth together at most 5 bucks. In other words, in five minutes I was managed to be as spendthrift with my own money as the US government spent on foreign aid.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
14 years ago

1. If the Middle East begins to glow, that makes Central Asia and its oil/gas even more important, does it not?

And if Central Asia becomes "strategic", then it isn't just Israel vs. Iran anymore.

Non-cooperative games (i.e. "military conflict") with two sides are hard enough. Non-cooperative games with multiple sides...argh.

I think that's what worries me most about both political leadership in this country and the electorate that chooses it. IMO the last national leader who may have understood part of it was the elder Bush. And before that, maybe Ike. But that's going back to a world very different. A world dominated by two superpowers and without nuclear proliferation.

2. I'm not sure the possibility/probability of nuclear exchange today makes the founders wrong. It may make them more right than ever. In Nuclear World I (MADD), maybe. But we live now in Nuclear World II. Nuclear World II can't be neatly divided into two camps. Though many would like to break it down into Islamic World/non-Islamic World, I'm not sure that holds.

I realize you're an expert on this, Foster, and I'm not, but let me pose two hypotheticals to you.

Hypothetical A: Israel goes nuke first. (against Iran).
Hypothetical B: Iran goes nuke first. (against Israel).

IMO, in both cases, the result for Israel and Iran is the same: If you nuke first, you glow, too. Both countries go flourescent.

But that, ISTM, where the parallel to Nuclear World II could fall apart quickly. This is not a world of two giant powers and a bunch of satellites who more or less cooperate. The "Islamic World" isn't unified, and neither is the "non-Islamic" world.

Now if Iran's leadership was Alexander or Genghis Khan or even Zheng He, it might be another matter.

Don't get me wrong. You're right. It'll be a mess. And there'll be uninhabitable bits of the planet that there didn't use to be.

And it doesn't help that current political leadership in this country is about as useless as Louis XVI and George III combined.

But I'm not sure that in post-Israel/Iran Nuclear World II, the best approach wouldn't still be the Founders'.

Or perhaps that of the Swiss.

"dfosterf" wrote:



For starters, all of the so-called "friendly" states are going to switch sides. This is going to happen regardless of an exchange. The house of Saud, the Kuwait leadership, the UAE--- All are going to go with Iran. Simple. Self-preservation. Iran is going to control the countries that control the oil.
They will be the "big boys" on the block.

Many of these countries WANT the Israelis to bomb Iran, btw. For example, it is widely known that the Saudis are going to give the Israelis the opportunity to overfly their airspace, as are the Kuwati, gov't, as are the Americans in Iraq... Once.

"Wade" wrote:



No, I think you misunderstood what I was asking. Yes, Israel is going to come away glowing (or bombed conventionally into oblivion, or just completely surrounded and starved into submission or something really really bad). That part I don't dispute. Israel really faces a no win scenario -- unless they can somehow take Iranian leadership and nuclear potential completely out of the equation, they're going to lose big. And even if they somehow manage to do both of those with their attack (which you're saying is rather unlikely tp succeed), they're going to be in a world of hurt. Especially since their biggest ally has political leadership that is, at best, ludicrously naive.

But, okay, all the friendlies in the Mid East switch sides. What happens next? That's my real question.

1. Europe is fucked. But then again, Europe is pretty much fucked anyway, save as a tourist destination and selected productive zones like the Low Countries and such.

2. The USA sees higher energy costs that stay high for a change. But frankly, we're still pretty well equipped for that: there's a lot of oil/gas around that is just waiting for the price to go up to become economical to drill/mine. And I don't just mean high risk wells in the Gulf either. Plus we've still got all that Yankee ingenuity to put to work -- want to see alternate energy? Just let the oil price truly soar for about 5 years.

3. And I come back to Central Asia. Those people sitting on all that oil and natural gas in the Stans. Which way do *they* roll?

Or to put it another way. How essential, really, *is* the middle east and its oil?

I'm not convinced the USA can go it alone. I think when (to me, it's more a question of when, not if) the Middle East implodes, we will feel part of the hurt. Especially the first five years or so as we weed out the more uneconomic of our loony domestic policy ideas.

But at the same time I'm not convinced that we are as dependent on *that* region for oil as people seem to think.

It's the Middle Eastern countries who are dependent. What, other than oil, do they have to trade? They're the ones with the truly one-dimensional economies. Not us.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
dfosterf
14 years ago
I don't want to argue that aspect, but I will just say that we are not only dependent upon foreign oil, we are hugely dependent upon cheap foreign oil to make this economy run, to the point that the folks controlling it provide it cheaply enough to us in order to prevent the whole world economy from collapsing. In my opinion, if this exchange occurs in the time frame I am envisioning, the entire world economy is going to collapse to an unprecedented degree...
So, I guess I think that it IS important for us, lol
dfosterf
14 years ago
...I have to laugh at this one....

I'm sitting here typing these exchanges- my wife hands me my mail.


One of the items---

Atlantic Magazine (One of the pinko commie rags my old man gift subscribes to me)

No shit, on the cover, direct quote in bold:

"Israel is getting ready to BOMB IRAN

How, why-
And what it means"

When those commies are on it, I'm amazed it hasn't already happened.


:violent3:
Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
14 years ago
All I can say is, amazing innovation happens when prices of previous "essentials" go up. Subsitutes that didn't exist before start to exist.

Unless, of course, the pinko idiots prohibit innovation. Or spend all our wealth bailing out oil companies the way they bailed out banks and GM.

You know what one of the biggest differences between a "conservative" and "libertarian"? The conservative's faith in market forces often proves more like tin foil. The libertarian's faith is well-tempered steel.

Or is that another one of those philosophical axioms that gets us in trouble. 🙂
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
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