Well, there’s only room for one jester in each court. 
Big Dunc:
Oh for Christ’s sake. Who the hell is going to throw stones at the US for pre-emptive strikes? Germany? Russia remember all those Eastern European and Afghan invasions? China with Tibet and Vietnam, France with all its many interventions in Africa? The US with its unapproved by the UN efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo (vetoed by Russia remember?) so everyone needs to get a fucking grip and a clue on this pre-emptive precedent. Where the hell is it? and why wasn’t it a problem before?
freddy
From today’s CNN. It looks like the Saudis are finally getting their shit together and cracking down in a serious way. Now, if only we could get to the 400 al Qaeda sitting in Iran and top-level cadres to boot. Does Iran need a little subtle pressure?
[quote=“CNN report”]RIYADH, Saudi Arabia
[quote]U.S. military force is a sufficient deterrent. Syria and Iran’s leaders are not suicidal. They understand that if either of their two populations begins massive attacks against American troops in Iraq, it will be the end of the their regimes.
[/quote]
I am no expert. I have only been through one war in the middle east, so I am by no means the resident expert on the matter.
However this is what I learned in the desert. No matter how big your guns, fast your tanks, accurate your airplanes or trained you troops. They have got Allah and that is all they need to fight and die for.
For so many in that part of the world suicide is a very honorable way to die so long as you do it for Allah.
No military force can be a sufficient deterent against that kind of enemy.
[quote=“EOD”]For so many in that part of the world suicide is a very honorable way to die so long as you do it for Allah.
No military force can be a sufficient deterent against that kind of enemy.[/quote]
That’s another reason that President Bush is attempting to reform Iraq into a sort of democracy… because change must come from within the middle east itself… even if the jump start for the same comes from regime change in Iraq… Yes, over the long run, military force will not be an effective deterrent… but a successful example of a functioning civil society might do the trick.
The Arab world has had a functioning civil society for over two millennium. This is not the first attempt to democratize the middle east. The Greeks and Romans tried and failed in time when might really meant right.
The current war in Iraq is not about democracy, it’s about money and oil.
[quote=“EOD”][quote]U.S. military force is a sufficient deterrent. Syria and Iran’s leaders are not suicidal. They understand that if either of their two populations begins massive attacks against American troops in Iraq, it will be the end of the their regimes.
[/quote]
I am no expert. I have only been through one war in the middle east, so I am by no means the resident expert on the matter.
However this is what I learned in the desert. No matter how big your guns, fast your tanks, accurate your airplanes or trained you troops. They have got Allah and that is all they need to fight and die for.
For so many in that part of the world suicide is a very honorable way to die so long as you do it for Allah.
No military force can be a sufficient deterent against that kind of enemy.[/quote]
You are elevating these attacks to a status they don’t deserve. The vast majority of them are not suicide attacks anyway, so they dont really fit with your point. Besides, suicide attacks in Israel were so ineffective against military targets that the Pal terrorist groups had to change tactics and attack Israeli civilian targets.
And how did you learn this first-hand in what I presume is the first Persian Gulf War? There were no suicide bombers in that war and the allied forces made short work in accomplishing their military mission.
[quote]? There were no suicide bombers in that war and the allied forces made short work in accomplishing their military mission.
[/quote]
That’s because we had a mission. There were numerous suicide attacks the people making them simply didn’t know it until they were dead.
If those attacks in Isreal are so ineffective why is there now a wall going up along the soon to be new border with the Palestinian state?
The Arab world has had a functioning civil society for over two millennium. This is not the first attempt to democratize the middle east. The Greeks and Romans tried and failed in time when might really meant right.[/quote]
The Greeks and Romans did not try to democratize the Middle East; that’s a silly notion. They were striving to create empires – and they were successful in their endeavors. When those empires finally did fall, it was only because a more dynamic empire (first the Arabs, then the Turks) took their place.
It’s not entirely about democracy (it’s also about security), but it’s more about democracy than it has to do with your standard leftist line about oil and money.
Nonsense. There may have been a couple of suicide attacks, but it was not a feature of the war.
I thought I explained it pretty clearly. The Palestinian terrorists were not able to inflict heavy casualties on Israeli military targets during the first Intifada. So they changed tactics for the second Intifada and began to attack Israeli civilian targets (buses, cafes, etc.), where they were more successful. That’s why the wall is going up.
In Iraq, the U.S. military will be able to adapt and successfully combat the attacks just as the Israelis did. The U.S. also doesn’t have to worry about civilian attacks since, unlike Israeli, Iraq is not a target-rich environment for civilians that aren’t Iraqis.
EOD has gotten away from his original point anyway, since he first said that it was only a matter of time before Syria and Iran went pre-emptive on the U.S.
He should flat out understand this: neither Syria nor Iran have the cojones to attack the U.S. directly in Iraq. It simply won’t happen because both the Syrian and the Iranian leaders like being in power in their respective countries – something they will quickly be out of if they try to orchestrate major attacks on the U.S.
What’s more likely is that both Iran and Syria will sponsor light attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq are a way of inducing them to leave. Both governments will be careful, however, to keep enough distance from the groups to plausibly deny any connection to the attacks.
Well the US presence in Iraq is having some benefit.
Syria voted FOR the UN resolution (as did France) and Iran may let nuclear inspectors in. Would this have happened had the US not invaded Iraq? I doubt it, but anyone else have a view?
The Saudis have spent US$17 million on public relations in the United States this year. That is not chump change. So remember if you read a lot of stories about how cooperative the Saudis are being, how democratic reforms are moving ahead, how offensive passages in school texts are being removed, well, we’d better wait patiently and see if the results are as good as the hype.