Is Obama Bluffing?

Jredbaron96 said:

They earned it? You mean we handed it to them on a ****ing silver platter.

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Who fought the 6-day war for them?

lizzie said:

Hell man- when they have earned it, the rest of the region cries like babies and craps on themselves.

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Si long as they earn it on their own, not go crying to the U.S. for foreign aid, etc., fine. I don't want to listen to anyone on any side whine.

SypherAL said:

What kind of evidence would you need to support the claim that Obama would strike Iran if necessary? A crystal ball? A psychic?

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:shrug: it's a subjective call. Everything in his rhetoric and past actions leads me to conclude that he will not. Syria 2007 was under a different President. With regards to Iran, the president's natural sympathies will be with those who think a nuclear Iran can be "contained".

Obama is smart

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that is true.

He understands using military action is an expense, something our previous president (im not going to name names... but his middle initial was W.) failed to understand which lead to our current economic recession

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fascinating. so now you reject the notion of keynesian stimulus? I ask because, according to the same set of economic assumptions which argue that the "Stimulus" package would create jobs, war spending is a strong net-plus for an economy. You may recall the "WWII Got Us Out Of The Depression" crap they sell in schools these days?

There are plenty of ways to attack a country without using military action, such as sanctions.

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that is true. unfortunately, if they want to have a nuclear program more than (say) they want to sell oil to you rather than china, your sanctions will not actually achieve the effect you are having. Iran's leadership thinks that it has the right to nuclear weapons, that having nuclear weapons will allow it to achieve it's rightful dominant position in the Ummah, and they probably believe that using those nuclear weapons against Israel will jump-start Heaven on Earth.

Obama's foreign policy is his strong attribute

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no. it's not. Foreign policy is an annoying distraction, which is why he does not spend his time trying to support his own surge in Afghanistan, why he gives no major addresses on foreign policy, why he is not campaigning in 2012 on his foreign policy, etc so on and so forth. Under this administration we have insulted and pissed off every major ally I can think of with the exception of Australia. We gave up a missile defense shield that would have provided protection from missiles coming from (guess where?) Iran because the Russians wanted us to, and they promised us they would speak to the Iranians about giving up their nukes if we did (not for nothing did Putin laughingly call our President an idiot). When the Obama Administration called Saudi Arabia to tell them not to intervene in Bahrain, the Saudi's didn't even bother to call us back before they sent in the tanks. Even our client states think that this administration is weak and ineffectual. Hilariously, the only parts of "foreign policy" that Obama can claim as "strong parts" are the portions where he has largely held to Bush Administration policies.

and I really don't think war will emerge with this iran situation. Iran's leader is not crazy, he just wants his country to be recognized as an emerging power.

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not "an emerging power". The Regional Hegemon. Which means he needs nukes, and the demonstrated willingness to use them on Israel. Have ya'll really run the math on what regional incentive structure Iranian leadership faces if they develop nuclear weapons and then do not use them on Israel? Hint: it is very bad for them. Like, they face regional pariah status at best and overthrow and execution at worst. The only reason regimes in that area of the world are able to justify not being at war with Israel right now is their surety of failure at current. Once Iran has nukes, their ability to forestall disappears.

Obama is the President of the United States, he will strike if necessary. I have no idea how you could draw the conclusion otherwise unless you are using "feelings" about our president instead of facts to base your decisions.

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I can't see where you have objective evidence that he would. It's all predictive and intuitive at this point - and frankly I'd love to be wrong.

tessaesque said:

Even as somebody who prefers offensive military strategy I just can't get behind threats of military strikes on Iran. Eventually we've got to force diplomacy to work

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you can't force diplomacy to work. Diplomacy only works when your goals are not mutually exclusive. In Iran's case, the goals are mutually exclusive, and furthermore, it is part and parcel of the governing ideology to lie to infidels in order to attain militarily superior position.

Taqiyya offers two basic uses. The better known revolves around dissembling over one's religious identity when in fear of persecution. Such has been the historical usage of taqiyya among Shi'i communities whenever and wherever their Sunni rivals have outnumbered and thus threatened them. Conversely, Sunni Muslims, far from suffering persecution have, whenever capability allowed, waged jihad against the realm of unbelief; and it is here that they have deployed taqiyya—not as dissimulation but as active deceit. In fact, deceit, which is doctrinally grounded in Islam, is often depicted as being equal—sometimes superior—to other universal military virtues, such as courage, fortitude, or self-sacrifice.

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that's not exactly the best basis for building the foundation of trust necessary for diplomacy to have effect - any more than anyone outside the administration thinks for one second that they are going to get what they were promised by the North Koreans.

We can't afford to keep spending money on strikes which merely piss people off.

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which do you think will cause the deficit to increase more: the expenditure of a few dozen BLU-109's, or the collapse in revenues following the loss of use of the sea lanes and oil in the middle east due to open war and potentially nuclear exchanges between Iran and Israel?

hint: the second option makes what we went through in 2008 look like the damage done to your grocery bill if you accidentally leave your coupon book in the car.

It's like shooting a beehive with a bb gun.

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and, so long as you have the ability to shoot the queens from a decent enough standoff, it can work.

Jredbaron96 said:

They earned it? You mean we handed it to them on a ****ing silver platter.

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aw, look at that. someone who has no idea what they are talking about.

...Although the United States vigorously supported the partition resolution, the State Department did not want to provide the Jews with the means to defend themselves. "Otherwise," Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett argued, "the Arabs might use arms of U.S. origin against Jews, or Jews might use them against Arabs."14 Consequently, on December 5, 1947, the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on the region.

Many in the State Department saw the embargo as yet another means of obstructing partition. President Truman nevertheless went along with it hoping it would be a means of averting bloodshed. This was naive given Britain's rejection of Lovett's request to suspend weapons shipments to the Arabs and subsequent agreements to provide additional arms to Iraq and Transjordan.15

The Arabs had no difficulty obtaining all the arms they needed. In fact, Jordan's Arab Legion was armed and trained by the British, and led by a British officer. At the end of 1948 and beginning of 1949, British RAF planes flew with Egyptian squadrons over the Israel-Egypt border. On January 7, 1949, Israeli planes shot down four of the British aircraft.16

The Jews, on the other hand, were forced to smuggle weapons, principally from Czechoslovakia. When Israel declared its independence in May 1948, the army did not have a single cannon or tank. Its air force consisted of nine obsolete planes. Although the Haganah had 60,000 trained fighters, only 18,900 were fully mobilized, armed and prepared for war.17 On the eve of the war, chief of operations Yigael Yadin told David Ben-Gurion: "The best we can tell you is that we have a 50-*50 chance."...

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cpwill said:

aw, look at that. someone who has no idea what they are talking about.

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I was referring to the establishment of Israel. Not the following coflicts with the Arab states.

cpwill said:

the threat to Israel is literally cataclysmic. especially thanks to the Smartest President Ever's decision to get rid of missile shield development in vain hopes that it would convince the Russians to convince the Iranians to stop building up a nuclear program.

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The missile shield defense was not going to be online yet anyway. Not in any effective way at least. It was the last gasp of the GOPs continued Cold War thinking, and possibly the last gasp of the Cold War. Any defensive move that threatens the nuclear balance of power is universally seen as offensive, so scrapping it was a good idea.

BTW, where was the money going to come from? I thought the official party line was "we can't just spend, spend, spend."

Why is it our responsibility to fight Israel's battles for them? They're big boys, they can handle themselves. They've got nuclear weapons, or at least CW holds that they probably do even thought they haven't officially tested it yet. OK, it's a threat to Israel. Sounds like Israel's problem. That being said, any war fought by Israel against Iran is going to have negative repercussions for American forces. Especially given the right's insistence that we treat Israel like the unofficial 51st State, the idea that Israel and the US work from the same playbook is common over there.

Not really why you all think he would be bluffing, lets be honest he has been anything but passive since he has been president. Increase in drone strikes crippling the enemy, Got Bin laden as well as other key players, helped in Libya and provided more troops to the Afghan war. Agree with these action or not you can't exactly say he's been slow to react when needed to.

Kane said:

"Reality reversal is a principle being applied on a large scale. We may recall the United Nations reports on the humanitarian crisis in Libya alleging that tens of thousands of immigrant workers were fleeing the country to escape from violence. The conclusion drawn and spewed by the Western media was that the Gaddafi "regime" had to be toppled in favor of the Benghazi rebels. And yet, it was not the government of Tripoli who was responsible for this tragedy, but the so-called revolutionaries in Cyrenaica who were hunting down black Africans. Stirred by a racist ideology, they accused them of being at the service of Colonel Gaddafi and lynched whoever they could get their hands on."

"In Syria, the images of armed groups perched on the rooftops and firing at random into the crowd or on police forces were broadcast on national television networks. Yet, these same images were relayed and used by Western and Saudi television channels to attribute these crimes to the government of Damascus."

The Plan to Destabilize Syria

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sharon said:

Sorry.. Global Research is a crock.. No better than Debka and World Net Daily... and this is laughable:

The skirmishes were led by small commandos, mostly made up of some forty men, combining individuals recruited on the spot with foreign mercenary overseers belonging to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s network. Bandar travelled to Jordan where he supervised the kick off of operations, together with CIA and Mossad officials.

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Obama is a NeoCon and is trying to have it both ways, by accepting Nobel Peace Prize and starting as many or more wars as Bush.

The atrocities in both Syria and Libya are committed by American armed militias sent to topple oil rich countries the Pentagon/State Dept. wish to plunder.

Why else do you think Hillary is going around pushing for "regime change" in these places the same way Cheney/Rumsfeld did in Iraq?

Ockham said:

Obama doesn't have what it takes to start something with Iran. Not going to happen. And that's good as the last thing we need is another war in the ME.

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If true, God praise him. It would take real stupid. I do hope he doesn't have that.

All politicians are liars. Israel is contemplating a military strike before the elections. So Obama is in a desperate situation.

You gotta be kidding me! What right do we have to stop another nation from gaining nuclear power? If North Korea can get them without a fight, then so can Iran. There is more to nuclear weapons than just using them. It is a standing. India has them. If Iran wants to join the modern world as a power, then they need them. If Israel goes to war with them, then we ought to provide very very little assistance. We ought not bind ourselves to Israel any longer. They have cost us enough in recent history

RDS said:

All politicians are liars. Israel is contemplating a military strike before the elections. So Obama is in a desperate situation.

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Its clear Obomber is not in control, he is merely stalling the next war because the liberal base, those who haven't already, would abandon support of him if he started another war. I honestly think Obama is a puppet of the DoD/CIA and they pull his strings. Netan "the Yahoo" would attack Iran without notice,
I'm sure. He is that crazy. We have this illusion of Democracy in America, but its a lie. All these wars since 2000 were pre-planned with a CFR/State Dept/ National Security cabal of oil oligarchs functioning on behalf of the war machine functioning as servants all act in unison. So whether its Hillary, John Kerry, Kissinger, Nixon, Bush, or whoever they all serve Exxon and Haliburton.