[Vision2020] Candidate issues - Foreign Policy

[No Weatherman]

ACS:

First things first.

Let's go easy on the "lying" accusations. You're real good at creating
doubt with specious arguments to offer a plausible defense for a
position so I'm a bit surprised you would not give me a little more
credit.

I wrote that I would have voted for Hillary and to this extent I
absolutely hold the PUMA's agenda point for point.

Visit any PUMA site and you've never seen so many Democrats acting
like Republicans in your life. It's been Halloween for them since
June. The universe is in upheaval. Worlds are colliding. Nine million
PUMA's plan to vote for McCain and every one of them is hoping that
Rezko gives up his peep while they simultaneously pray for RICO
charges against Obama and success for Philip Berg.

However, I am not a true PUMA because I am like the former Democratic
Party's candidate for Vice President, Joe Lieberman — I am an
Independent. Unlike Lieberman, though, I don't endorse McCain.

If it helps, I voted for John Anderson and I voted for Ross Perot,
giant sucking sound et al. And as an Independent I hold the PUMA
agenda.

To the bombing.

Your synopsis of the two articles doesn't look much like the articles
and this is not the first time you've done this. I know you're a
bright person so I think this is deliberate.

For example, the WaPo article opens, "A military strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities would PROBABLY only delay the country's progress
toward nuclear-weapons capability, according to a study that concludes
that such an attack could backfire by strengthening Tehran's resolve
to acquire the bomb." (Emphasis added)

The article continues from there to summarize the study.

I know this sounds simplistic, but I have seen the Israelis devise
exceptional outside-the-lines brass-balls military strikes to take out
their targets. I will not list the hits that we know of but anyone
familiar with Israel's resolve to survive (which does not include
deliberately ignorant liberals; btw, these types of comments are
really not necessary) knows that Israel knows how to finish the job.

The comparisons to Libya and N Korea are false analogies. Both states
were reduced to nothing through diplomatic isolation. North Korea was
forced to starve its citizens and the Libyans, as noted by the
article, "had grown tired of being excluded from the world community."

IOW, isolation works.

It works, that is, when the quarantined party does not posses nuclear
weapons. Nukes change everything.

It's one thing to have a rabid, vicious, underfed, and UNCHAINED dog
in the neighbor's yard. It's another thing when that dog can jump the
fence.

I am surprised to see you write, "Iran's only purpose in obtaining a
nuclear weapon is to deter us."

I do not know HOW you can possibly know this and, more importantly, I
do not know HOW you can possibly believe it unless you watch Larry
King. But this gives me a little more insight into why you believe
terrorists are vandals.

When world leaders threaten their neighbor with extermination as they
build nukes, it's a bit naïve to argue they want the nukes to deter
the US. It's even more naïve to predicate your foreign policy on this
supposition.

Yesterday Dr. Gier posted an essay that opened with a quote from Sir
Winston Churchill, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

Ironically, in the early to mid-1930s, as Hitler built his arsenal
that he planned to deploy against Europe, Churchill argued, contra
Chamberlain, that England could not negotiate with Hitler and that
they had to prepare for war. Churchill was alone in his position and
he was alone in Parliament — a virtual pariah.

This changed, however, after the Wehrmacht invaded Poland

Jaw jawing is always better than war warring unless the jaw on the
other side has a nuke in his back pocket.

Then you better prepare for the unthinkable because it is inevitable.



On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:28 AM, No Weatherman <no.weatherman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> ACS:
>>
>> I have no interest in justifying the Bush administration's approach to
>> Iran unless he is secretly preparing to take out their nuclear program
>> though I would rather see Israel launch that strike.
>>
>> I'm curious to know, however, if you believe it would be profitable to
>> sit down with Ahmadinejad and what exactly you believe it could
>> accomplish.
>
> First of all, we can't destroy Iran's nuclear program without carpet-bombing
> Tehran, where the bunkers that contain the enrichment centrifuges actually
> are; at that point, Iran is perfectly capable of directly disrupting our
> actual military goals in Afghanistan and Iraq, its two neighbors. Is doing
> incremental damage to the Iranian enrichment program worth creating two
> failed states on either side of Iran*? No one who knows anything about
> foreign policy (other than the deliberately ignorant neoconservative camp)
> believes that it's actually possible to cause irreversible damage to the
> Iranian nuclear program using anything short of a preemptive nuclear strike
> on multiple Iranian sites.
>
> Iran's only purpose in obtaining a nuclear weapon is to deter us. Despite
> our saber-rattling rhetoric about Iran being the a nation-as-suicide-bomber,
> it -- like Libya -- has certain rational foreign policy goals; further,
> unlike Libya and despite the disproportionate influence of the Guardian
> Council, Iran's democratic institutions actually have some leverage against
> the rulers. This means two things:
>
> (1) Reducing Iran's perceived need for a nuclear deterrent through security
> guarantees might be an effective strategy in mitigating its pursuit of a
> nuclear deterrent.
>
> (2) Reducing military pressure from Iran removes a major issue from the
> Iranian theoconservatives' quiver. This gives competent (but still hostile)
> moderates like Khatami the electoral room to take power in upcoming
> elections.
>
> (3) Direct diplomacy has worked. Contra Roger, it worked in Libya. Read the
> Ron Suskind article linked below. It worked in North Korea under Clinton,
> and under Bush's second term.
>
> (4) Direct diplomacy doesn't hurt. The best argument conservatives have is
> that it raises the other nation's perceived power and prestige. But what
> does that actually *mean*? Are you saying that the legions of intelligence
> analysts in every foreign nation are unable to accurately divine the fact
> that we cannot actually achieve our goals through military force because we
> are committed in two adjacent countries which Iran has the military
> capability to seriously muck up?
>
> Incidentally, you're lying when you're saying you you're a PUMA. You support
> not one of Hillary Clinton's stated policy positions.
>
> -- ACS
>
> (1) http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.suskind.html
> (2)
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080703026.html
>