Artfldgr says:
Hi John,
interesting idea... get rid of the factories and such...
but there is a problem with your 'concept', the factores that build the things your talking about are not in Iran...
they are in russia, china, and satelite countries.
and as weak as many think russia is, i wouldnt recomend bombing them. they have tendrils in many areas, and weak only matters depending on what you restrict your thinking to. bacteria are very weak, but would you want to infect yourself?
diamonds are very strong, but they split with one tap in the right place...
now, what would you say if i told you that the US is doing exactly that in the way that they can.. they are making a one country buffer zone... turkey, iraq, kuwait, iran, afganistan... make a huge barrier to weapons shipments if they are not controlled or heavily in bed with the GRU.
they would not be able to fly over.. they would not be able to drive over...
take a look at all the other ways to move stuff to the middle east and africa. in fact the small arms factory in south america will be used to supply africa... shorter trip than from russia, or china... and would give an overland back to the middle east.
spain had to go socialist, for if iran fell, then they need sympathy in the straight of gibralter.
given all this, then its easy to tell what will come next. syria will make lots of noise so it scares americans to think that if they go iran, they will start having to go after others... and of course with dems we barely have the will to finish what we start (which is what they are banking on)
Iran is playing a very finesed game. by pushing and such, they actually send the message that it will be more expensive to go after them. its a way of saying, this is what they have, this is what we have, taste what we have. the other thing is by adding a few new weapons they give their leftis friends in the states a bit of something to make claims that things are not working (look whats they have now).
russia is upset and putin is saying america cheated and such... cause they didnt see that this development would seal the conduit from them to their marxist-islamic 'partners'.
so if you take this in.. and figure out that all this is coordinated around the world... whats next?
well they wont attack the US directly, the 9/11 thing scared them. we really didnt react the way they thought.
in fact, we took it and ran with it and before russia could work out the sitational change, we almost closed all the doors. i will be the first to say that if iraq fell fast and settled, we would have dont iran, and it would be different.
this is why iraq was a lot more difficult than we ever thought. we didnt realize how much clandestine help they would get from 'interested' parties. and they are getting a lot..
right now things are at cross purposes... and no one is sure how to play it on the other side, but they have to make some moves.
in iraq there are three options for them... pull back and get quiet... that would allow a pull out (job unfinished bad news), but would allow republicans to win instead of the totalitarian/authoritarian socialist democrats.
the situation will remain not too much different.. a bit up, a bit down, but will hold.. i think this is the most likely for iraq. unchanging means that other infulences can have more effect and not be split between focus.
the third is to escalate. while this is a new missle, its not really escalating. i think it was to give propaganda points for the socialist democrats to have speaking points. "how can it be working if they can strike you there", lots of these angles. if this is right, then you should see them start to appear tomorrow or the next few days, then propagate from the flocking leaders.
russias move may have also been a distraction play... in other words, up the complexity angle so that no one knows where to focus. this way they put one thing on the burner, or wait because of indecision.
if this is it then you should start seeing some other weird things that seem to split focus and raise the complexity so that the time to iran spreads out...
syria will probably make more noise, and maybe some others may rattle swords. syria is a safe bet, its not that strategic, especially if the doorway iran is closed.
i would guess that attacks to isreal may pick up. again that complexity thing.
i doubt all of this would happen, but a few will. there needs to be a distraction from the focus, though i cant say how that distraction will actually make itself known.
Iran will probably play more jerkin the chain, and keep ambiguity high, solid rhetoric low. before you were seeing the leader say things, now you wont and havent really seen him as much.
if it gets real close to the wire they may even claim that they have a weapon just to cause more time to stretch.
russia, i dont think will do much other than what it has been doing. its working on itself and such and too much in the front to help directly at all other than the usual stuff.
china remains as always quiet and invisable.
i dont know enough about pakistan to venture there, though i wouldnt be surprised if a distraction would be pakistand and india getting into someo stupid argument.
what should the US do? i think it should go for more of an attritive move to iran. not take the whole country, but take the points in which its connected to other things. and then be attritive, force a standing stalemate to change things internally without getting totally mired in it.
a full out invasion to me would be a no no. without the population believing and joining and risking, you need a lot of people to invade. bomb all you want, it means nothing till you walk in and go door to door and claim space.
as far as i know the iranian people have been in the dark even more than saddams people, and so i dont think they will rally to the cause. also a total invasion could potentially cause a more problematic islamic union and purpose. which is why i recomended controlling certain spots.
kind of like leaning on a guy... thats somethign that 3G can do. take an small area hold it and protect it, and then enter negotiations. no negotiating and you turn the land over to the neighbor, and take another piece. in this way, you carve up iran and feed it to its neighbors till its small enough that it complies. or it gets so afraid that it wants you to stay to protect it from its larger neighbors.
one thing that the west failed in is that it equated egalitarian values with inane idea of that being operationally accomplished by not having any judgments and acting on them. that there is no such thing as a harmful idea.
anyway... from your concept... to my musings on the tactics going on.
i dont agree with you much at all.. and throwing a few names around isnt the same as really thinking about the situation.
your derogatory coneptual of maomud and 17 brothers is the kind of foolhardy distraction that will not let you see things clearly.
Mamoud, or whatever name he has, is not stupid. he may not know greek mythology, or who won american idol, but he is a lot better on human nature than you are.
you would do better to think higher of your enemies than to diminish them so quickly. how many years has it been?
mamoud and his brothers who probably number less than 100k... have frozen a country and a huge military machine with the best training and best equipment ever made in the last 15 or so billion years.
not long ago i saw mamoud in a video, and he was able to single handed take out a M1 Abrams tank. not only did he do it, but he set up a video camera, and did it like he was a college student filming a practical joke he was about to do.
over the course of the next 45 minutes this one mamoud worked his way through the town area.. took a suitcase, and crawled up to the tank in its blind spot, then sludge through a puddle and put a load of something underneath... then he left... then he came back with a spare gas can full of gas... then he left.. then he came back with another gas can... then he left. it took seconds for him to get the next item, it took forever for him to get under the tank and get out. less than 2 minutes later, the M1 went up in flames.
how much does the M1 cost? How much to train the crew? how much to ship it, maintain it and have support staff?
and the mamoud you are belittling figured out how to remove it with two gas cans and a case full of plastic.. and filmed it too.
all humans are clever in the ways that count. the west lives more artificially and so it thinks a differnt sort of clever (smarts) is the best kind.. but the more human to human clever (guile), is a different beast.
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