Zandar Versus The Stupid: Last Call For Endless War
Last Call For Endless War
You'll always be able to find people paid ridiculous amounts of money to advocate the invasion and regime change of some Middle Eastern country, but this time around it's Iran.
This gives force to the Obama administration’s taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahu’s alternative? War? But the administration’s position also contains a glaring contradiction. National security adviser Susan Rice declared at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference before Netanyahu’s speech that “a bad deal is worse than no deal.” So if Iran will accept only a “bad deal,” what is President Obama’s alternative? War?
Obama’s stance implies that we have no choice but to accept Iran’s best offer — whatever is, to use Rice’s term, “achievable” — because the alternative is unthinkable.
But should it be? What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.
After Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, we're still talking about a dangerous, stupid, and bloody war that will cost us trillions and another lost economic decade. And they learn nothing from the absolute, total, and complete failures of the past.
Nonetheless, we might absorb some strikes. Wrenchingly, that might be the price of averting the heavier losses that we and others would suffer in the larger Middle Eastern conflagration that is the likely outcome of Iran’s drive to the bomb. Were Iran, which is already embroiled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, further emboldened by becoming a “nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars — with Israel, Arab states or both. The United States would probably be drawn in, just as we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof.
"War's going to happen anyway, thousands will die anyway, might as well be on our terms".
StupidiTags(tm): Iran, Military Stupidity, Village Stupidity
The really sick thing is that the warmongers run shrieking from the concept if anyone whispers the words "war tax required." It's Paul Krugman's "weaponized Keynesianism" yet again: the idea that only government spending on weapons creates jobs - while all other government spending, especially on social safety net programs, destroy jobs. (I.e.: if bombing bridges creates jobs, why doesn't building bridges also create jobs?)
The total illogic of this position is lost on Republicans, perhaps because bombing people (especially with drones) makes their inner Vladimir Putins happy.
America's Default Mode Is Broken
Zandar Versus The Stupid: Last Call For Endless War
Last Call For Endless War
You'll always be able to find people paid ridiculous amounts of money to advocate the invasion and regime change of some Middle Eastern country, but this time around it's Iran.
This gives force to the Obama administration’s taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahu’s alternative? War? But the administration’s position also contains a glaring contradiction. National security adviser Susan Rice declared at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference before Netanyahu’s speech that “a bad deal is worse than no deal.” So if Iran will accept only a “bad deal,” what is President Obama’s alternative? War?
Obama’s stance implies that we have no choice but to accept Iran’s best offer — whatever is, to use Rice’s term, “achievable” — because the alternative is unthinkable.
But should it be? What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.
After Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, we're still talking about a dangerous, stupid, and bloody war that wi
ll cost us trillions and another lost economic decade. And they learn nothing from the absolute, total, and complete failures of the past.
Nonetheless, we might absorb some strikes. Wrenchingly, that might be the price of averting the heavier losses that we and others would suffer in the larger Middle Eastern conflagration that is the likely outcome of Iran’s drive to the bomb. Were Iran, which is already embroiled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, further emboldened by becoming a “nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars — with Israel, Arab states or both. The United States would probably be drawn in, just as we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof.
"War's going to happen anyway, thousands will die anyway, might as well be on our terms".
StupidiTags(tm): Iran, Military Stupidity, Village Stupidity
The really sick thing is that the warmongers run shrieking from the concept if anyone whispers the words "war tax required." It's Paul Krugman's "weaponized Keynesianism" yet again: the idea that only government spending on weapons creates jobs - while all other government spending, especially on social safety net programs, destroy jobs. (I.e.: if bombing bridges creates jobs, why doesn't building bridges also create jobs?)
The total illogic of this position is lost on Republicans, perhaps because bombing people (especially with drones) makes their inner Vladimir Putins happy.
America's Default Mode Is Broken