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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Afghans, US sign deal on night raids

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan government and the U.S. signed a deal Sunday governing night raids by American troops, resolving an issue that had threatened to derail a larger pact governing a U.S. presence in the country for decades to come.

Night raids involve U.S. and Afghan troops descending without warning on homes or residential compounds searching for insurgents. They are widely resented in this deeply conservative country.

So in the decade long unwinnable clusterfuck of the US in Afghanistan, we have one military tactic that works, that strikes some fear into the people we are fighting, that doesn't involve marching a squad out to get ambushed so they can shoot back, and we have made a "deal" to stop doing it.

Bring them home now. Bring them home yesterday. And every time the Dems want to crow that President Obama got bin Laden, remind them that then he licked Karzai and the Taliban's balls, and took the tool that put a bullet between Osama bin Laden's eyes right out of our arsenal.

If this is how we get to the peace table, what's our formal surrender ceremony going to look like?

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Quite the lengths of misrepresentation and bold faces lies ya'll are prepared to go, to steer clear of the President telling the troops they can't do what works anymore, because the people they are fighting don't like it.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Quite the lengths of misrepresentation and bold faces lies ya'll are prepared to go, to steer clear of the President telling the troops they can't do what works anymore, because the people they are fighting don't like it.

Back at ya. Your "right" brain has been spinning so long you don't even recognize when it's happening.

See, Rich....we can actually go BACK to night raids if we don't get what we want.

We can even do it without announcing it. Imagine that.

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Quite the lengths of misrepresentation and bold faces lies ya'll are prepared to go, to steer clear of the President telling the troops they can't do what works anymore, because the people they are fighting don't like it.

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ORIGINAL: tj444

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds
For anyone who wants to sabre-rattle at Iran, just realize one thing, if we send our army into Iran, we will break it. I have no doubt that in less than 2 weeks no element of the Iranian military would exist if our army went in, but I also have no doubt that in 2 years our army would make the post-Vietnam army look rested and optimistic. Iran is 3 times the size of Iraq, it has the same sort of mountains as Afganistan, it has 3 times the population of Iraq, in short, it would take a million man occupation force. We don't have that. If we got every unit up to full strength, got out of every other nation, and rebuilt every unit's readiness, we still would not have that.
A draft? You are kidding, right? We don't have the stomach for that any more. As soon as someone mentioned the word, half the folks who were pushing for a war would be pushing for a settlement.
We can break Iran's toys, we could even probably kill their leaders, but we would just create a nation hostile to us in a way we can't even understand.
Maybe the solution is to go the same route with them we used on China??? Of course, if Obama, or even Romney did that, the NeoCons would shit a brick sideways...
I don't know. Hope is hard for me to muster these days... Maybe Fargle is right...

Having Iran (& the mid-east) hostile to the US happened long ago.. it has helped to create the OBLs, 9/11 bombers and followers against the US.. where exactly did you think all that hate came from???

"The coup is widely believed to have significantly contributed to anti-American sentiment in Iran and the Middle East."
"The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants that the world's most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship."[106] The United States initially considered the coup to be a triumph of Cold War covert action, but given its blowback, Kinzer wrote that it is difficult to imagine an outcome "that would have produced as much pain and horror over the next half century as that produced by Operation Ajax" had "American and British intelligence officers not meddled so shamelessly in (Iran"s) domestic affairs."[107]
Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president, of The Future of Freedom Foundation, said, "U.S. officials, not surprisingly, considered the operation one of their greatest foreign policy successes—until, that is, the enormous convulsion that rocked Iranian society with the violent ouster of the Shah and the installation of a virulently anti-American Islamic regime in 1979".[120] According to him, "the coup, in essence, paved the way for the rise to power of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and all the rest that's happened right up to 9/11 and beyond".[120]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds

A completely agree with everything you have said, but I also have one hope.
The Iranian people have largely forgotten the Shah. The average age in Iran is 26, they were born after the Shah was deposed.
The Iranian people are more "western," than most middle eastern nations, with satellite TV and American movies. Wonderfully, this means the average Iranian is actually friendly to Americans, despite everything Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah can do. The only thing that could turn the average Iranian against the US would be an invasion or something...

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ORIGINAL: tj444

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds

A completely agree with everything you have said, but I also have one hope.
The Iranian people have largely forgotten the Shah. The average age in Iran is 26, they were born after the Shah was deposed.
The Iranian people are more "western," than most middle eastern nations, with satellite TV and American movies. Wonderfully, this means the average Iranian is actually friendly to Americans, despite everything Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah can do. The only thing that could turn the average Iranian against the US would be an invasion or something...

That may be but they arent the ones in control.. and it might be a dam long time before there are that type of change in who does.. that could be another 30 years from now.. a lot of brainwashing can happen in the mean time.. just look at the US.. how many boomers have turned into their parents and become the people they swore they never would, with the same attitudes they swore they never would have? too many, I'd say.. I think the same thing happens in other countries as well.. jmo

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds
For anyone who wants to sabre-rattle at Iran, just realize one thing, if we send our army into Iran, we will break it. I have no doubt that in less than 2 weeks no element of the Iranian military would exist if our army went in, but I also have no doubt that in 2 years our army would make the post-Vietnam army look rested and optimistic. Iran is 3 times the size of Iraq, it has the same sort of mountains as Afganistan, it has 3 times the population of Iraq, in short, it would take a million man occupation force. We don't have that. If we got every unit up to full strength, got out of every other nation, and rebuilt every unit's readiness, we still would not have that.
A draft? You are kidding, right? We don't have the stomach for that any more. As soon as someone mentioned the word, half the folks who were pushing for a war would be pushing for a settlement.
We can break Iran's toys, we could even probably kill their leaders, but we would just create a nation hostile to us in a way we can't even understand.
Maybe the solution is to go the same route with them we used on China??? Of course, if Obama, or even Romney did that, the NeoCons would shit a brick sideways...
I don't know. Hope is hard for me to muster these days... Maybe Fargle is right...

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Quite the lengths of misrepresentation and bold faces lies ya'll are prepared to go, to steer clear of the President telling the troops they can't do what works anymore, because the people they are fighting don't like it.

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds
For anyone who wants to sabre-rattle at Iran, just realize one thing, if we send our army into Iran, we will break it. I have no doubt that in less than 2 weeks no element of the Iranian military would exist if our army went in, but I also have no doubt that in 2 years our army would make the post-Vietnam army look rested and optimistic. Iran is 3 times the size of Iraq, it has the same sort of mountains as Afganistan, it has 3 times the population of Iraq, in short, it would take a million man occupation force. We don't have that. If we got every unit up to full strength, got out of every other nation, and rebuilt every unit's readiness, we still would not have that.
A draft? You are kidding, right? We don't have the stomach for that any more. As soon as someone mentioned the word, half the folks who were pushing for a war would be pushing for a settlement.
We can break Iran's toys, we could even probably kill their leaders, but we would just create a nation hostile to us in a way we can't even understand.
Maybe the solution is to go the same route with them we used on China??? Of course, if Obama, or even Romney did that, the NeoCons would shit a brick sideways...
I don't know. Hope is hard for me to muster these days... Maybe Fargle is right...

I don't know why so many, such as yourself, act as if taking a tougher line with Iran will equal Iraq Redux. There is no political will or money to actually go in there. There may be some tough talk on the conservative side but I doubt they would do the same in the aftermath of Iraq, which AFAIK has had a massive impact on the American political landscape.

Also yourself and TJ444 brought up the coup in 1953. It wasn't as simple as the US simply siding with the Shah over oil interests. The US was initially reluctant under Truman to intervene. It was thought (albeit this view is debated) that the USSR was agitating to overthrow the regime. They had a presence in Iran through 1940's, and there was a fear that the growing power of the Communist Party would lead to a Soviet puppet government. Some contend that was a smokescreen for the CIA to intervene - I don't know how true that might be but the USSR had already exhibited an aggressive expansionism in the region, e.g. Azerbaijan so I think US intervention ought to be seen in the context of the Cold War.

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
I don't know why so many, such as yourself, act as if taking a tougher line with Iran will equal Iraq Redux. There is no political will or money to actually go in there. There may be some tough talk on the conservative side but I doubt they would do the same in the aftermath of Iraq, which AFAIK has had a massive impact on the American political landscape.

Also yourself and TJ444 brought up the coup in 1953. It wasn't as simple as the US simply siding with the Shah over oil interests. The US was initially reluctant under Truman to intervene. It was thought (albeit this view is debated) that the USSR was agitating to overthrow the regime. They had a presence in Iran through 1940's, and there was a fear that the growing power of the Communist Party would lead to a Soviet puppet government. Some contend that was a smokescreen for the CIA to intervene - I don't know how true that might be but the USSR had already exhibited an aggressive expansionism in the region, e.g. Azerbaijan so I think US intervention ought to be seen in the context of the Cold War.

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ORIGINAL: SoftBonds
Why do I worry that a hard line stance on Iran will lead to Iraq redux?
1. Neocons still talking about it.
2. How do you take a "hard line," stance without something to do if they cross your "hard line?"
3. More nebulous, but... My perception is that there are folks in the US who get political points by being anti-Iran, and making tough statements. These statements are grabbed by the Iranian Conservatives and used as proof that the US is a danger to Iran, which leads them to make tough anti-US statements. These are grabbed by the US Conservatives and used as proof that Iran is a threat, and so they make tougher anti-Iran statements. It kinda leads in a circle in my opinion. If both sides walk a tightrope, it just makes folks scared, which helps conservatives in both nations, but it is pretty easy to fall off the tightrope and go to military conflict. I'm not saying the US would be the instigator either. If Iran were to launch missiles at one of our ships I think we would smash them for it, and rightfully so. I'm just afraid of the aftermath...

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ORIGINAL: tj444

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
I don't know why so many, such as yourself, act as if taking a tougher line with Iran will equal Iraq Redux. There is no political will or money to actually go in there. There may be some tough talk on the conservative side but I doubt they would do the same in the aftermath of Iraq, which AFAIK has had a massive impact on the American political landscape.

Also yourself and TJ444 brought up the coup in 1953. It wasn't as simple as the US simply siding with the Shah over oil interests. The US was initially reluctant under Truman to intervene. It was thought (albeit this view is debated) that the USSR was agitating to overthrow the regime. They had a presence in Iran through 1940's, and there was a fear that the growing power of the Communist Party would lead to a Soviet puppet government. Some contend that was a smokescreen for the CIA to intervene - I don't know how true that might be but the USSR had already exhibited an aggressive expansionism in the region, e.g. Azerbaijan so I think US intervention ought to be seen in the context of the Cold War.

Well,.. I dont buy it... back then, the "cold war" was the excuse used to bring Americans to agree to the tactics used, today its "9/11/terrorists" to muzzle Americans.. fear mongering and smoke and mirrors.. was Iraq about terrorism or oil? who had the most to gain (& still does) from that debacle? Its amazing how Presidents/politicians will sell out their country for campaign contributions from Big Oil & Big Business.. back then and still today.. nothing has changed except the numbers have more zeros behind them & more soldiers have died..

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
I accept there was manipulation in the past, and I share some of your concerns about big oil's influence but in all fairness comparing Iran in 1953 with Iraq circa 2003 is a bit out of context. Oil was definitely a motivating factor (albeit more for the Limey's) but it should also be remembered that the USSR was a very aggressive state that had absolutely no compunction about going into a country and mangling it.