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Would Attacking Iran Be Worth It?

Drysdale said:
I honestly dont know what he really said, so unless you speak Arabic or whatever Ahmadinejad speaks, chances are though you dont either. I've read where he did say Israel needs to be wiped off the map, and thats from the Al Jazeera website which should know what he said I'd think.

Cole is giving his own translation of what he said, I think I'll take Al Jazeera's interpretation over Coles.
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I don't really have any way of knowing for certain what he said either. I'm inclined to take political rhetoric with a grain of salt either way.
 
yinyinwang said:
O really, so the Iranian money and rockets in Lebanon are not facts, I invented it.
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What's with the double post?

If you do not accept this is a fact.
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I disputed the relevance of this claim, not its veracity. I repeat: how does this make Iran responsible for Israel's actions? If the neighbour to your left doesn't like you and tends to help the kids of the neighbour to your right to lob crabapples into your backyard, but you beat up the neighbour to your right with a club donated by your overseas friend, does that make the neighbour to your left responsible for your action? Should the beaten-up neighbour to your right blame you or the neighbour to your left who appears to have been correct all along about how crappy you are?

There is a factual basis for claiming Iranian material support of Hezbollah. As of now, all we have is Bush Administration rhetoric as the basis for the claim that Iran is behind the Iraqi insurgency. I assume the point you are trying to make is that Iran is responsible for Hezbollah's actions against Israel from within Lebanon and this justifies Israel going to war with Lebanon. Somehow, this is supposed to provide support for the claim that America should go to war with Iran because Iran is nonsensically aiding the Iraqi insurgency's actions against America within Iraq. But if you really want to make a coherent argument, you should say that Israel should have invaded Iran. After all, you are trying to claim that Iran is responsible both for Lebanese resistance to Israel and the Iraqi insurgency.

Providing facts for you is just wast of time.
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Dodge noted.
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
I don't understand what you are saying here or how it relates in any way to what I said. Al Qaeda has no military force to speak of, they attacked the US, and everyone thinks about it. In fact, some even think about it so much that they use it justify utterly unrelated military adventurism.


ETA: Are you somehow trying to equivocate Al Qaeda's attack on America with some imagined action of Iran against Israel? That's the best I can come up with given your post.
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How do you know it is just an imaginary stuff? With nuke materials and terrorism, thousands of rockets, Israel is really at risk.
 
yinyinwang said:
How do you know it is just an imaginary stuff? With nuke materials and terrorism, thousands of rockets, Israel is really at risk.
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So my guess about the meaning of your post was correct? An Iranian attack on Israel comparable to Al Qaeda's attack on America is pure fantasy.
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
I disputed the relevance of this claim, not its veracity. I repeat: how does this make Iran responsible for Israel's actions? If the neighbour to your left doesn't like you and tends to help the kids of the neighbour to your right to lob crabapples into your backyard, but you beat up the neighbour to your right with a club donated by your overseas friend, does that make the neighbour to your left responsible for your action? Should the beaten-up neighbour to your right blame you or the neighbour to your left who appears to have been correct all along about how crappy you are?

There is a factual basis for claiming Iranian material support of Hezbollah. As of now, all we have is Bush Administration rhetoric as the basis for the claim that Iran is behind the Iraqi insurgency. I assume the point you are trying to make is that Iran is responsible for Hezbollah's actions against Israel from within Lebanon and this justifies Israel going to war with Lebanon. Somehow, this is supposed to provide support for the claim that America should go to war with Iran because Iran is nonsensically aiding the Iraqi insurgency's actions against America within Iraq. But if you really want to make a coherent argument, you should say that Israel should have invaded Iran. After all, you are trying to claim that Iran is responsible both for Lebanese resistance to Israel and the Iraqi insurgency.

Dodge noted.
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If you treat the fact I double-posted like imaginary stuff and deny it, why would I bother to provide more when I am sure you will deny them anyway?
 
Because I want to know if you accept it as a fact. That is why I reposted with some comment. Is it clear and seem relevant to you? The problem with talking to you is that I have to speak like in a secondary school.
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The problem with your posts is that English does not seem to be your native language. If so, you are to be commended for diving in anyways - your secondary language skills are much better than my lousy French. If not, you have a serious problem with literacy.

If you treat the fact I double-posted like imaginary stuff and deny it, why would I bother to provide more when I am sure you will deny them anyway?
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I'll be charitable and assume this is a reflection of your incomplete understanding of the English language. You just posted this as a response to my acknowledgment that the claim of Iranian support of Hezbollah has a factual basis. You didn't back that claim up, but I didn't demand support because I have already seen evidence on my own. In other words, I agreed with you and did not deny this "fact". I did poke fun at your need to demonize Iran (Blame Canada video). And this still does not make it reasonable to blame Iran for Israel's actions.

I haven't seen any evidence for your other claims, and I am still waiting.

I don't know how you find this guess but you definitely work in a strange way to me.
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Well....the perception of strangeness is mutual, I assure you. Will you try to give me some evidence of an Iranian attack on Israel that is comparable to Al Qaeda's attack on America? And then will you try to work that into your overall argument that attacking Iran would be a good idea?

In fact, maybe it would help if you clarified your position. Please fill in the blank:

"I believe that attacking Iran is worthwhile because ______"
 
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D'rok the Lacone said:
The problem with your posts is that English does not seem to be your native language. If so, you are to be commended for diving in anyways - your secondary language skills are much better than my lousy French. If not, you have a serious problem with literacy.
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Language has nothing to do with facts, take it or not, it is just as simple as that.
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
I'll be charitable and assume this is a reflection of your incomplete understanding of the English language. You just posted this as a response to my acknowledgment that the claim of Iranian support of Hezbollah has a factual basis. You didn't back that claim up, but I didn't demand support because I have already seen evidence on my own. In other words, I agreed with you and did not deny this "fact". I did poke fun at your need to demonize Iran (Blame Canada video). And this still does not make it reasonable to blame Iran for Israel's actions.
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So you take it as a fact, right? And a simple yes will do.
 
yinyinwang said:
So you take it as a fact, right? And a simple yes will do.
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Do I accept the particular claim that Iran has supported Hezbollah? Yes. There even rational Realpolitik reasons for doing so. Do I accept the incoherent argument you are trying to build around this fact? No.

Now how about attempting to address the substance of my posts?
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
Well....the perception of strangeness is mutual, I assure you. Will you try to give me some evidence of an Iranian attack on Israel that is comparable to Al Qaeda's attack on America? And then will you try to work that into your overall argument that attacking Iran would be a good idea?

In fact, maybe it would help if you clarified your position. Please fill in the blank:

"I believe that attacking Iran is worthwhile because ______"
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If you show some process of how you find your guess, it will not be that strange to me, if you jump around with conclusions, how am I surposed to know how you work?
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
Do I accept the particular claim that Iran has supported Hezbollah? Yes. There even rational Realpolitik reasons for doing so. Do I accept the incoherent argument you are trying to build around this fact? No.

Now how about attempting to address the substance of my posts?
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Would you mind telling me what are those "rational Realpolitik reasons "?
 
yinyinwang said:
Would you mind telling me what are those "rational Realpolitik reasons "?
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Gladly. But I'm going to need some reciprocity first. I've gone to some effort to state my arguments as clearly as I can. You have a litany of assertions that you have not backed up. Please address those first.

BTW..."rational Realpolitik reasons" does not imply approval nor does it provide moral justification. It means cold dry-eyed political calculations based on balancing interests and threats.
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
I claimed that democracy had a chance to sustain itself. That chance was extinguished with American help. Perhaps it may have been extinguished without such help, but that does not justify the intervention or make it any less relevant to current relations.
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Let's see if you know how many parties were in the Cold War. How many of them promoted Democracy? What did that democracy look like? Let's also see if you recall what the DDR was. It was labeled a democratic republic. What does the Democratic Republic of North Korea look like?

Is that the sort of democracy you endorse for Iran?

You seem to forget, conveniently, that 1950's was a prime time in the Cold War. Your presumption that the sole outside player in Iran was America, and that only America's interests were in play, is the standard blinders-on-BS that I have come to expect from revisionists with an agenda.

We agree that we don't know what might have happened without substantial American backing for Palavi, but you are in error in presuming that only American interests were in play.

DR
 
Corsair 115 said:
The Commonwealth nations and Russia would, I suspect, strongly disagree with the assertion that the Nazi regime was defeated "singlehandedly" by the U.S. I also note that I don't recall anyone putting forth that claim.

Having won the war has no bearing, in my view, on the morality, or lack thereof, of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. A rational case can be made that such attacks were entirely justified and appropriate. I would also ask about what the substantive distinction is between atomic and non-atomic bombs being dropped, since sufficient numbers of the latter are quite capable of killing large numbers of people.
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You need to increase the sensetivity of your parody detector. It's returning false negatives.
 
Tricky said:
No. The US has a vast advantage over the USSR in resources. They barely have enough cropland to feed themselves. The collapse of Russian Communism may have actually been because the government was not adhering to socialist principals and distributing the limited wealth. Neither has the collapse of communism made Russia a particularly wonderful place. It is questionable indeed as to whether it was an overall net benefit for the world.


I'm sure you can concieve it, but I seriously doubt it would have made any difference. The USSR imploded, it wasn't crushed. I suspect globalism had more to do with it than anything else. McDonald's did more to change Russia than McDonnell Douglas.
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Not quite. Without the force to underwrite the economic warfare directed at the USSR, the containment policy doesn't work. Synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Cherry picking a single variable is OK for lesser wits than thee.

DR
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
BTW..."rational Realpolitik reasons" does not imply approval nor does it provide moral justification. It means cold dry-eyed political calculations based on balancing interests and threats.
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Note: in the real world, moral justification is most often a fig leaf, or a smoke screen, for cold dry-eyed political calculations based on balancing interests and threats. What is nice is those few times when the two motives are in accord.

DR
 
You seem to forget, conveniently, that 1950's was a prime time in the Cold War. Your presumption that the sole outside player in Iran was America, and that only America's interests were in play, is the standard blinders-on-BS that I have come to expect from revisionists with an agenda.

We agree that we don't know what might have happened without substantial American backing for Palavi, but you are in error in presuming that only American interests were in play.
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When did I make those assumptions? What is it that you think my agenda is? I quite agree that there is only so far that one can take the America/Palavi connection. I'm not deeply invested in that argument at all. In fact, I'm quite willing to drop that part of it and let the rest of my argument stand on its own. It's still a bad idea to attack Iran.
 
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