ObamaYoMoma
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2010
- Messages
- 81
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- Conservative
Concrete steps, not rhetoric, will determine whether or not President Obama did all he could. If, for example, Iran attains such weapons and the U.S. had not even made an effort to seek truly crippling sanctions, then I won't be able to conclude that he did everything he could to prevent the outcome. Of course, there are other measures, too, but that's just one example.
I condemn Obama just like I condemn Bush for not acting, as both should have already acted, since Iran has been building up its defenses and hardening its bunkers for years. They are both incredibly incompetent as for as I’m concerned.
IMO, the U.S. will need to play a leading role in any verification regime. Leaving the effort to the UN will not be effective. Lebanon's evolution following UNSC Res. 1701 offers one example. The stakes are too high to leave verification to the UN.
The US needs to get the hell out of the UN altogether.
My guess is that Israel's risk assessment is not materially different from my own thinking: a near-term decision (probably within a year or less) will likely be needed, but an imminent one (matter of days) is not. After the passage of this weekend, I believe it will be clear that Israel did not share Mr. Bolton's dire assessment.
I don’t know, Netanyahu has been far more dovish than most people assumed. Israel may fear BHO’s wrath.
Moreover, if Israel needs to, it can and will strike the Bushehr plant in the future if the plant is viewed as contributing to an existential threat. It won't let artificial timelines and theoretical pontificating about the plant's being immune from attack get in the way of trying to assure its own survival.
If Israel attacks Bushehr after it starts up, there will be massive fallout not only in Iran, but also in the Persian Gulf and likely in some of the Gulf states as well. Not to mention that in the interim Iran is likely to get a stockpile of plutonium.
I'm not aware of anyone in the Defense Department who testified before the Congress that the U.S. should respond in Afghanistan with air or missile strikes, albeit on a much larger scale than President Clinton's retaliation.
That’s because no one ever proposed such nonsense.
I am well aware from testimony before the Congress and Senate that the Defense Department all but dismissed risks of insurgency in Iraq (had they reviewed that country's history--Sunni-Shia rivalry/tensions/animosities--and experience when power collapses in authoritarian states, the only conclusion was that the country faced an extremely high risk of insurgency).
Actually, the Defense Department was planning to be out of Iraq before any insurgency could develop and emerge. Hence, at the time of that testimony, it was the correct assessment. However, all of that changed as soon as Bush decided to side with the State Department over the Defense Department instead.
With respect to Afghanistan, the idea was that once the Taliban was swept from power the country could rapidly be transformed into a democracy (had they bothered to study the experiences of Imperial Russia, Britain, and the Soviet Union and also recognized that Afghanistan's history, culture, and structure made the rapid evolution of a liberal democracy remote at best and stable central government very unlikely in the near-term, the overly idealistic course that was adopted could have been avoided). In the end, democracy is not achieved and sustained via regime change. It depends on institutions, traditions, societal structure, etc.
Again, that was not the Defense Department’s fault, but the State Department’s fault. If it had been left up to the Defense Department only, OBL and AQ would have been targeted and eradicated and we would have left the country as soon as that was achieved, instead of being still stuck in that quagmire today propping up a Sharia state that will inevitably rejoin the global jihad against the West as soon as we leave.
And when it came to ground invasions, General Tommy Franks advanced a "go light strategy" under the radical--and ultimately, disproved hypothesis--that modern technology made large manpower commitments unnecessary. In doing so, he disregarded General Anthony Zinni's "Desert Crossing" simulation on Iraq which demonstrated the need for substantial manpower in Iraq and considered an insurgency one of the most likely scenarios. General Eric Shinseki's warning about the need for substantial manpower was swiftly dismissed and all but ridiculed.
Again, the Defense Department wasn’t planning on occupying the country to attempt to make Iraq a beacon in the Islamic world. That strategy was thrust upon them after the initial invasion thanks again to the State Department and a very incompetent and indecisive president.