US and Iran Relations (News and Discussion)

[NoCalMike]

This situation is exactly why this is serious grown folks business and not for someone like Trump who probably thinks in this of terms of "winning points" by randomly bombing people who are bad.

 

No one is sad over the deaths of these monsters, but if the Iraq War had taught us anything, at all, it is that there absolutely must be a plan for after those monsters are dead, because it is very likely an equal or worse monster is waiting in the ranks to take control, aided by a whipped frenzy of people willing to help put in that worse person due to what has just happened. 

[visionary]

 

Good thread on possible Iranian responses.

 

 

Another good thread about why this hasn’t been done before.

[RichmondRedskin88]

17 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

You're taking the very worst of Islam and conflating that with the entire region.  Many would say the same of some aspect or practitioners of Christianity (and I say that as a Christian).

 

But first, I don't buy that violence in the middle east is solely or even predominantly due to religious reasons.  Religion is used to rile the masses, but it's nothing but a tool for those in power.  Religon, nationalism, these are just an easy tools to use for those seeking more power.

 

Second, even if religion was the cause of the problem in ME and greed/power was the cause of the problem in the rest of the world, greed/power has done far more damage in the last 100 years.  How many people would have thought Europe hopeless after two world wars?

 

I don’t know why we’re still hooked up on Europe here.  We’re talking now.  Real threats now.  We address aggression from other countries like Russia and NK.  Why would we sit here and accept a region being actively aggressive to the world?  Yeah we can’t simply say everyone there is bad but look at our history there.  Hell we train troops there that no sooner after trained gun down the very people that trained them.  Quite simply there is no one we can trust in that region.  We’ve approach that region in every way.   Tried to rebuild them-  Get attacked.  Try to supply them- They take it then attack us.  Attack them- Most likely retaliation.  We are not dealing with rational people.  As far as this whole if we leave them alone stuff yeah that’s really worked.  Not like they’ve attacked any country unprovoked.

[nonniey]

3 hours ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

Man I wish we could just wipe the ME out.  Like obviously that’s not diplomatic and or realistic as you have lots of totally innocent people there but the world would be 50% safer. 

That is one thing I fear - We wipe out the Middle East. We'd lose our soul if we did - We have our sins and stains but that would surpass even the Nazi's.  Problem is we are capable of doing just that with sufficient provocation. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

 

 

[StillUnknown]

1 minute ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

I don’t know why we’re still hooked up on Europe here.  We’re talking now.  Real threats now.  We address aggression from other countries like Russia and NK.  Why would we sit here and accept a region being actively aggressive to the world?  Yeah we can’t simply say everyone there is bad but look at our history there.  Hell we train troops there that no sooner after trained gun down the very people that trained them.  Quite simply there is no one we can trust in that region.  We’ve approach that region in every way.   Tried to rebuild them-  Get attacked.  Try to supply them- They take it then attack us.  Attack them- Most likely retaliation.  We are not dealing with rational people.  As far as this whole if we leave them alone stuff yeah that’s really worked.  Not like they’ve attacked any country unprovoked.

 

because wiping out the ME is the rational position?

[RichmondRedskin88]

6 minutes ago, bearrock said:

 

 

Are we really going to argue about which group of nutjobs have the worse group of nutjobs? (Yes, I know McVeigh was anti-government, not some religious whackjob).  Crazy is crazy.  Terrorism is terrorism.  Your particular chosen justification has nothing to do with anything.

And again you are pointing out a rare event.  Bombings are routine there.  When we start have bombings in this country like in the Middle East every day we can compare the nutjobs here with the ones there. 

[Hersh]

2 minutes ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

I don’t know why we’re still hooked up on Europe here.  We’re talking now.  Real threats now.  We address aggression from other countries like Russia and NK.  Why would we sit here and accept a region being actively aggressive to the world?  Yeah we can’t simply say everyone there is bad but look at our history there.  Hell we train troops there that no sooner after trained gun down the very people that trained them.  Quite simply there is no one we can trust in that region.  We’ve approach that region in every way.   Tried to rebuild them-  Get attacked.  Try to supply them- They take it then attack us.  Attack them- Most likely retaliation.  We are not dealing with rational people.  As far as this whole if we leave them alone stuff yeah that’s really worked.  Not like they’ve attacked any country unprovoked.

Your ignorance is staggering. Just come out and say you hate Muslims and want them all to die. 

[Llevron]

2 minutes ago, nonniey said:

we are capable of doing just that with sufficient provocation. 

 

Dont even need that if we keep going in the direction we are headed. 

[RichmondRedskin88]

1 minute ago, StillUnknown said:

 

because wiping out the ME is the rational position?

No it’s not but unfortunately there might be a day we are forced into the decision.   As I said we are dealing with extremists with no limits.   

[StillUnknown]

Just now, RichmondRedskin88 said:

No it’s not but unfortunately there might be a day we are forced into the decision.   As I said we are dealing with extremists with no limits.   

 

so we become bigger extremists with no limits?

 

seems like a sound strategy........

[bearrock]

5 minutes ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

I don’t know why we’re still hooked up on Europe here.  We’re talking now.  Real threats now.  

 

My point was that state of seeming hopelessness today is not predictive of the future.

 

 

[tshile]

there's only two possible end states for the middle east (as far as our involvement goes). everything else is just delaying the inevitable

 

it's interesting to think how many lives and how much money could be saved by not delaying the inevitable. it's funny watching people use morality as a justification for delaying the inevitable, as i don't think it's that cut and dry (and honestly I don't think those people even realize they're just delaying the inevitable)

 

i also laugh at the notion of comparing other culture's egregious acts from decades/centuries ago to the ones committed by modern day Muslim extremists. That's sort of the point - the rest of us grew up and became more civil, they're still stuck in the 7th century. 

[RichmondRedskin88]

2 minutes ago, Hersh said:

Your ignorance is staggering. Just come out and say you hate Muslims and want them all to die. 

I have close Middle East friends jack ***.  Even they speak of the extremes people will go there to send a message.   And that’s not the extremists groups.  I guess you’d rather bribe them?  I’d love to know how you’d deal with the Middle East.  No we can’t simply clean house.   But we can’t simply sit there and allow them to think they can just attack whatever they want and that’s accepted. 

[NoCalMike]

7 minutes ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

No it’s not but unfortunately there might be a day we are forced into the decision.   As I said we are dealing with extremists with no limits.   

 

If you asked civilians over there, burying innocent loved ones, including women, children, & babies? They would probably say the same thing about us. 

 

It's amazing to see how the same Trump supporters who praised him for claiming to be non-interventionist and against getting us involved in another major war, magically turned right back into neo-cons the minute the bombs started dropping. 

Edited January 3, 2020 by NoCalMike

[Hersh]

2 minutes ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

I have close Middle East friends jack ***.  Even they speak of the extremes people will go there to send a message.   And that’s not the extremists groups.  I guess you’d rather bribe them?  I’d love to know how you’d deal with the Middle East.  No we can’t simply clean house.   But we can’t simply sit there and allow them to think they can just attack whatever they want and that’s accepted. 

Is that like Trump saying he has a black friend? You should tell your close friends that we should totally wipe out the Middle East. Let us know how that goes.

[Cooked Crack]

People really out here posting about genocide.

 

4 minutes ago, RichmondRedskin88 said:

I have close Middle East friends jack ***.  Even they speak of the extremes people will go there to send a message.   And that’s not the extremists groups.  I guess you’d rather bribe them?  I’d love to know how you’d deal with the Middle East.  No we can’t simply clean house.   But we can’t simply sit there and allow them to think they can just attack whatever they want and that’s accepted. 

I bet you got black friends too .

[RichmondRedskin88]

Just now, NoCalMike said:

 

If you asked civilians over there, burying innocent loved ones, including women, children, & babies? They would probably say the same thing about us. 

That’s what happens when you go there with a rough plan of dealing with a unstable region and then start winging it for decades.  9/11 forced us to deal with a situation we had no plan for nor was it on our immediate radar.  But someone had to pay for the event and that couldn’t wait in the eyes of the public.

[visionary]

8 minutes ago, tshile said:

there's only two possible end states for the middle east (as far as our involvement goes). everything else is just delaying the inevitable

 

it's interesting to think how many lives and how much money could be saved by not delaying the inevitable. it's funny watching people use morality as a justification for delaying the inevitable, as i don't think it's that cut and dry (and honestly I don't think those people even realize they're just delaying the inevitable)

 

i also laugh at the notion of comparing other culture's egregious acts from decades/centuries ago to the ones committed by modern day Muslim extremists. That's sort of the point - the rest of us grew up and became more civil, they're still stuck in the 7th century. 

Betting a lot of people in Europe feel that way about us.

 

 

Anyway this conversation is way off topic now.  Can we focus on the current situation, folks?

Edited January 3, 2020 by visionary

[tshile]

1 minute ago, visionary said:

Betting a lot of people in Europe feel that way about us.

Cool. Good for them.

 

Let's see them do something about it. Oh, they wont. That's right.

 

And neither will we, because we'd rather lose thousands of lives a year endlessly and kick the can than take a risk and actually do anything.

 

Doesn't change the state of things. Hard problems usually get worse when people decide they don't have what it takes to address them.

[Riggo-toni]

31 minutes ago, bearrock said:

I don't buy that violence in the middle east is solely or even predominantly due to religious reasons.  Religion is used to rile the masses, but it's nothing but a tool for those in power.  Religon, nationalism, these are just an easy tools to use for those seeking more power.

Arguably the move towards religious intolerance began in the early sixties when Saudi King Faisal gave the clerics authority over the educational system, but much of the reason behind the later waves of fanaticism probably lie in the miserable failures of Arab nationalism. Based on the successes of Ataturk and his pan-Turkic movement establishing a modern secular Turkish state, Nasser and others overthrew monarchies and established secular republics with state-controlled economies and burdensome military budgets. Despite a temporary morale boost in the Suez conflict, the Arab armies were humiliated in 67 and beaten again in 73. The economies did even worse outside of the oil business. With Egyptian radical Salafists now on the newly wealthy Saudi payrolls flooding madrasas with hateful doctrine, it was an easy sell to convince the next generation that secularism was the source of their suffering and could only be remedied by an Islamic government.

 

It should be pointed out that many sectarian conflicts are actually rooted more in ethnicity than theology. In Syria and Lebanon, for example, Druze and Alawites are forbidden to marry outside of their people - as with Jews, the line between race and religion is blurred.  The Christian Maronites who massacred Shiite civilian at Shabra and Shatila were motivated more by anger over loss of power than religious zeal. Iran supported Armenian Christians in Nagorno-Karabakh who were slaughtering Azeri Shiites because the Persian leaders wanted to deter any Azeri nationalist movements in northern Iran.

[RichmondRedskin88]

Just now, Hersh said:

Is that like Trump saying he has a black friend? You should tell your close friends that we should totally wipe out the Middle East. Let us know how that goes.

They realize there is a legit possibility.    
 

Again I’d love to know what your long term plan is?  Bribery?  We’ve already tried helping them restructure and establishing real govts.  Right now Middle East mass destruction is looking more likely other by the wars there or forcing our hand.  Am I suggesting that’s the appropriate action? No, not yet.  But eventually this had to come to a head/resolution. 
 

I guess if Iran nukes Miami tomorrow you’ll be like no worries we needed more room in south beach? 

[Hersh]

Yes, you’ve figured us out. We don’t care if Iran nukes Miami. 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Hersh

[RichmondRedskin88]

7 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

People really out here posting about genocide.

 

I bet you got black friends too .

I got a real simple response to your second part but I’d rather not get banned today so you can just imagine the words pal.

[bearrock]

4 minutes ago, tshile said:

there's only two possible end states for the middle east (as far as our involvement goes). everything else is just delaying the inevitable

 

it's interesting to think how many lives and how much money could be saved by not delaying the inevitable. it's funny watching people use morality as a justification for delaying the inevitable, as i don't think it's that cut and dry (and honestly I don't think those people even realize they're just delaying the inevitable)

 

 

 

So what are the two choices?

 

Quote

i also laugh at the notion of comparing other culture's egregious acts from decades/centuries ago to the ones committed by modern day Muslim extremists. That's sort of the point - the rest of us grew up and became more civil, they're still stuck in the 7th century.

 

Considering how fast Europe changed from the locus of perpetual bloodbath (spanning more than a millennia) to long period of peace, are you ready to pull the plug on ME ever progressing?  (And while some are stuck in the dark ages, that's obviously not true for everyone.)