should the West invade and/or bomb the fuck out of Iran?

The problem being, the Iranian leadership's worldview is even MORE apocalyptic then Bush's. They're like, the Pat Robertsons of Islam.

Iran and the Us are much alike. big democracies, both with faults in their democratic process. Both with a history of state sponsorship of terror (Iran with hezbollah and in Iraq now, the US all over south america in the past, in afghanistan in the 80s the hot wars could be called terror as well). Both have a strong religious leaning, both are naturally conservative with a very dynamic youth culture.

Think about it. No matter how you can point to how the Iranians gerrymandered their last election, a hell of a lot of people voted for Amedinhejad. They made a choice.

*tho i don't think the latter is likely to happen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/iran/

-- Ed (dal...), September 21st, 2006.

Sure, and I guess the Constitution isn't that different from the Koran either.

We're stretching things a little though, aren't we?

If a certain elite holds the ultimate veto power on anything and everything, how could their system be described as democracy? it would be oligrachy.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff

1. America sending warships to the Middle East (shocking)
2. Partisan hacks denouncing Bush

I'm not convinced.

Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More Relief

By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — Strains on the Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide enough troops for overseas deployments.

is it too much to ask generals not to obey their orders? is that a remote possibility?

is it too much to ask generals not to obey their orders? is that a remote possibility?

i have long felt as though, through its actions, the bush administration have effectively been waging a kind of proxy war against americans, because they've made us all considerably *less* safe for generations. if they do anything to iran you can be sure this will get much worse.

wow.

SP is maybe learning a lesson from the Iraq was that is not fully transferrable. In Iraq, the invasion went well, but attempts to build a new friendly Iraq have been a disaster, but the Iraqi state was undoubtedly destroyed by the invasion. So, maybe when he talks of a "raid", SP means a big invasion, aimed at sending a panzer legion to Teheran, to decapitate the Iranian regime, and then to pull the fuck out, leaving the country to collapse into chaos.

I don't think the Iranian regime would be as easy to decapitate as that of Iran - it is more broadly based, the ideological underpinnings behind it touch more nerves, and by virtue of its being more politically open it is less likely to be the case that exterminating Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would see Iran tip into chaos. So I reckon that the kind of smash and grab raid that I suggest SP is advocating would just make the Iranians very pissed off and make them more inclined to develop nuclear weapons as a way of deterring any future US adventurism.

Today, the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group leaves port in Norfolk for the Persian Gulf. The group includes the USS Anzio, the guided-missile destroyers USS Ramage and USS Mason and the attack sub USS Newport News. Time and The Nation are among the mainstream mags saying this is the beginning of the war.