Really? I've read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, and I missed the parts that suggested you piss off your more powerful enemy with inflammatory rhetoric until they attack you when you don't really want a fight. Could you maybe narrow that down to a specific quote for me?
You're being foolish -- and moving the goal posts. People involved in government, even our own government, are capable of recognizing saber rattling. Isn't this the sort of thing you would read about in a Tom Clancy novel? Who has Iran been "pissing off"? Just as we know that what Bush says in public does not matter, our leaders are capable of recognizing demagoguery. If you want to use an extremely recent example, then look no further than Iraq. Hussein would say he had no WMD, but then make these subtle bluffs that they were actually armed. Why? Because he wants credibility within the region. And no, I do not have a citation from the Peloponnesian war off hand. This is basic realism -- the foreign policy outlook of C. Rice.
And your evidence of this understanding is what, exactly?
This is impossibly silly. The problem is not evidence, but your stilted view of the world. You think Muslims are just crazy and suicidal, and that those in charge of Iran are not also political actors who respond to exogenous incentives. Yeah, what's my evidence -- apart from the
crazy assumption that they don't want their country decimated.
A supporting example of what? Of topics that have nothing to do with your claim the US is perceived as a “paper tiger”.
An example of a country projecting it's military strength (even if it doesn't have it). It's interesting you would so self-consciously attempt to conflate two separate issues.
Prestige compared to whom? The UN? Europe? Saudi Arabia? Saddam Hussein?
*sigh* My goodness. Just stop. Please stop. "Prestige in the eyes of whom?" you mean to ask. But that's so basic that you might as well move on to the simple why question. Why is prestige important? It's cost-effective when a country can just order others what to do without having to send in military power. When it does send in military power, it should "shock and awe", as an instructive example to other potential enemies. However, when an occupation goes awry, when you show the world that you cannot stomp out a determined insurgency and win the hearts and minds of regular citizens, then you're in for trouble. This happened after Vietnam, and wounded policy makers. Ronald Reagan said we reclaimed some of our glory after invading the awesomely destructive country of Grenada. Bush Sr. said basically the same thing after bombing Iraq in 1991 (a demonstration to the world of our technology).
I didn’t claim Islamist rhetoric was receding. I claimed the Islamist rhetoric you reflexively spouted was out of date. “Paper tiger” went away with Afghanistan.
The juxtaposition here is wonderful: characterizing one of my claims as out of date and then citing Afghanistan as evidence of U.S. might.
Ziggurat:
I might care about this argument if Iran hadn't been pursuing nuclear weapons before Bush even ran for president. As it is, it's just buying into an excuse. Dictatorships with expansionist agendas don't need an excuse to want nuclear weapons, the incentive is their because of their OWN nature.
And you completely omitted the part that dealt with incentives, and the appropriate sticks and carrrots. Yes, of course, Iran is using an excuse. Unfortunately, it's a rather good excuse. As for expansionist policies -- well, that's laughable. Iran's most promising expansionism has been made possible by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Finally, as a general rule, states seek security first. They want nukes to repel possible invaders, not to ceaselessly expand. Finally, they don't need nukes to change the posture of the U.S., just the legitimate threat of obtaining nukes.
Yes. Because I don't think motives and actions are the same thing. Maybe that's a difference between you and me. Perhaps this wasn't clear, because my posting on the topic was more in defense of Mycroft than Bush, but my decision wouldn't change if Bush did it because of oil, because he had a grudge against Saddam, or because he thought Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. I think the action was right, for my own reasons, and I cannot know and don't ultimately care if Bush's reasons are the same as mine or even rational. I supported the invasion for my own reasons, and Bush's motives don't change mine.
So then why move on to this shamefully irrelevant tangent? When someone says the administration grafts its preconceived ideas onto changing circumstances, then you should not bother disputing the charge. Simply say, "right on, brother!" However, even a hard-core consequentialist such as myself recognizes that motives affect actions. If Bush went in purely to control Iraq's oil in the long-term, only bothers securing the oil ministries while looting occurs, is more interested in constructing permanent military bases rather than rebuilding infrastructure, then it's difficult to imagine how I could reconcile those actions with maximum utility.
In order for me to take this criticism seriously, you would need to argue why my reasons for supporting the invasion of Iraq, which I already gave, were somehow less valid before 9/11 than they were after (and hence, why it wasn't to their credit that they came to the conclusion I eventually reached before I did). That would be what's known as reasoning with me, and not just lecturing me. You obviously don't agree with my reasons for supporting the invasion, but you aren't me, so I don't know why you would expect me to conclude something that only follows if I believed what you believe.
Again, if you never found anything objectionable in what I said about the administration's policy-making apparatus, then you never should have objected. But you did, and then performed this elaborate song and dance, wasting my time in the process.
