Barack Obama is Either Stupid or Willfully Ignorant
By Erick Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hezbollah | Iran — Comments (101) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There is no other way to look at this statement:
"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us . . . . Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."
That picture is from the Beirut Airport. It's smoke rising from the Marine barracks. 241 American servicemen were killed. Sixty Americans were injured. 58 French paratroopers were killed with 15 injured.
The attack was carried out by Hezbollah, with Iranian backing.
And Iran survives.
Barack Obama is stupid or willfully ignorant. Iran will never attack us directly. They cannot. But they will attack us with a thousand cuts through many shadowy surrogates hoping we bleed to death.
And if Obama is our President, we probably will.
Be sure to read Jenn Rubin too.
UPDATE: You're going to want to read Jim Geraghty too.
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Barack Obama is Either Stupid or Willfully Ignorant 101 Comments (0 topical, 101 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
A Hell of a thing when I have to look at a post and go, Yeah. Somebody could have wandered in and made that comment for real. Better make things clear.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Obama makes it clear that he thinks we should muster the full might of our military to go after AQ in the mountains of Waziristan. If he was logically consistent, he'd say that AQ poses little threat to us as well -- because they don't spend nearly as much as we do.
Everybody needs to catch up to the new reality: you can't just look at somebody's military budget to assess the severity of the threat they pose.
I think that made some level of sense in the Cold War period. It was a different time, with different ground rules. Whatever faults the Khruschevs and Brezhnevs had, they were at least interested in the security of the Soviet state...and they were at least responsible enough to know that even a single use of nuclear weapons would result in untold damage to their nation.
I've been in conversations with intelligent people who thought I was crazy for saying that the jihadists are more dangerous than the Soviets were. Their basic reasoning was the potential destructive power of the Soviet arsenal so greatly outpaced the destructive power the jihadists could even dream of gaining.
That's true -- but it's not a very useful gauge of the severity of either threat. Rather, it's only useful in determining the potential severity. It's the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy. They both matter, of course. And there's no question that the threat posed by the Soviet Union was, potentially, far more grave than the threat posed by Iran or the paramilitary jihadist groups.
But, who's more dangerous: a guy with a .22 gauge hunting rifle and an intent to kill...or a guy with a closet full of semi-automatic weapons whose only interest is collecting, hunting, and defending his home?
The Iranians, with even a single nuclear weapon, are probably a bigger threat to global security than the Soviets were with their arsenal of thousands. That doesn't mean they have more destructive power -- but it's all a matter of intention.
You hit the nail on the head. The Soviets were a calculating rational enemy. When they invented the GR-1 orbital nuclear platform, they actually recognized it was destabilizing, and we ended up signing an agreement to ban such weapons. They didn't think to themselves "Let's blow up New York so we get our 50 virgins".
The problem is that the Iranian president keeps mouthing off and saying some fairly aggressive statements. This has led some to label Iran itself as irrational.
I would disagree, they have yet to prove themselves any more irrational than the USSR - any state willing to precipitate a nuclear war for political gain or simply to make a point (Cuban Missile Crisis) is pretty damned insane. At the point Iran starts threatening to supply nuclear materials to terrorists (or gets caught doing so) I'll believe they might be as crazy as if not crazier than the USSR, the comments of their figurehead president notwithstanding.
It's classic "Picture worth a thousand words" material!
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not counting what they paid for the limited flight training, it was a few thousand dollars! Assuming flight training for 8 along with expenses....maybe under $250,000! Whatever it was it was't much in terms of military budgets.
Advancing the status of unborn human beings one or more persons at a time.
Volunteer
Everybody needs to catch up to the new reality: you can't just look at somebody's military budget to assess the severity of the threat they pose.
ALL
That one blast probably cost less than the vehicle that ran the gate.
Mr. O. will have a set of advisors sitting on his Oval Office sofa, ready, willing and so they believe, able, to gut our DOD budget.
A simple withdrawal from most of the standing posts we have maintained for some 50 years will cause massive unemployments, and a surge of folks into the Unemployment lines at home. The host countries will suffer from a lack of US dollars, the bases will detriorate and the opposing countries will see the opportunities to re arm and have another go.
A concurrent withdrawal from the hard won posts in the Mid East have consequences that are far reaching. The effects have been documented and predicted constantly in DOD and like Defense Articles.
We can all see the end result of a Global withdrawal. What is not mentioned by the Left or Mr. O. are the effects, immediately, after the troops are brought home. A simplistic WPA or CCC new deal, offered as a way to employ the troops, negates the hard won educational skills these troops use on a daily basis. The Troops are not shovel and pick artists anymore. The days of the Springfield 303 are over. The Left that will advise Mr. O. firmly believes the military is the one we left in Schofield Barracks ala 1939, exactly where their theories of managment ended.
The DOD withdrawal story is multi faceted, but the simple truth is that the Left and Mr. O. simply want less military, less DOD dollars into the GNP of the USA and an end to the Foreign Policy that is implemented by the use of the DOD forces.
We have Spec Ops troops that have trained for years to do the work that is necessary that Mr. O. consistently harps on, GET THE TERRORISTS IN THE HILLS OF AFGHANISTAN, yet he and his ilk would gut the very funds necessary to arm and train these troops. The height of hypocrisy.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line....
If we elect Mr. O. then we deserve the outcomes.
end
We have unlearned the lessons of history so we are doomed to repeat them and fight the same wars over again for the same old reasons. I only hope that this time we survive to remember to say "never again".
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
We had no business invading Lebanon over a civil war, and our being there just created terrorists where none had existed before. So it's Reagan's fault that they hated us and we got what we deserved.
And after all, didn't everything there get fixed after we pulled out, just like will happen when he pulls us out of Iraq?
And after all, didn't everything there get fixed after we pulled out, just like will happen when he pulls us out of Iraq?
Well, it worked so well the last time we turned tail from Iraq...
...oh, wait, it didn't?
Oops. (cue whistling noise and a brisk walking away)
"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again,
We taught them a lesson in 1918,
And they've hardly bothered us since then...
you had a group of people whose objective was not only to remanin in power but to increase their sphere of power! To that end they had a disciplined military force. A force that obeyed orders.
The jihadis don't have that military discipline nor are they a concentrated force like a military. In WWII 5 people could mount small attacks and cause some damage and disruption. In today's world 5 people willing to die can cripple a nation!!
In a 'national' model the forces are subject to the state, in the terrorist model the terrorist use the leadership as a source of funding and don't necessarily answer to them.
Besides what's Al Quaeda going to do to them if they go off on their own suicide attack? Kill them??????
What did we lose in 9/11 - 4,000 lives and maybe $5 billion. Moreover, 9/11 was an extreme event that happened against all odds given our ability to intercept aerial vehicles anywhere over the continental US within a few minutes of being made aware of the problem.
Events since then have shown that Americans simply won't allow another such event - the moment someone acts out as if to hijack a plane they get mobbed and subdued.
If we were crippled, we were crippled by fear. Yes, it was a devastating blow that could have been avoided (this falls squarely on Clinton/Bush), but there is simply no reason that we need fear terrorists who are, by definition, only as strong as we enable them to be. Terrorists thrive on terror - if we stand up and are not afraid, they lose.
a 14 kiloton nuke detonated in lower Manhattan would kill a million people and wipe out 3 square miles of real estate worth trillions of dollars.
The effect on American society and on the American economy would be devastating. It might well result in the indefinite suspension of our civil liberties, as authorities would hasten to prevent such nukes exploding in other cities by the most drastic means.
The thing about nuclear weapons is they are extremely difficult to manufacture and fairly simple to trace - the residues from an explosion would allow forensic scientists to determine where the refined uranium came from. Currently it takes a massive national effort to come into possession of enough refined uranium to make a bomb - if any regime supplied material to a terrorist group the retribution would be fast and furious. I also don't think the Iranian leadership is as insane as we'd like to paint them - certainly no worse than North Korea, probably a good deal more rational.
I agree that in the future terrorists will be able to cause damage of the type we are currently afraid of, most likely through biowarfare, but we aren't there yet.
Unreasonable fear led us to choose the wrong path, and now Americans by a large majority think we're headed in the wrong direction. No one is advocating surrender - even Obama said he'd support unilateral action against AQ even without the support of Pakistan (an opinion that was roundly mocked in these parts).
We have this quaint belief that our Presidential candidates should look at a map before they start spouting off on foreign policy.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
I was under the impression that this was current US policy? I know I've read of several Predator strikes against suspected terrorists in Pakistan, and Pakistan currently does not allow US forces to operate in their territory.
Wikipedia has a list of Predator strikes in Pakistan, and here's an AP article saying that Pakistan does not grant us the authority to operate in their territory.
...that you had actually read the articles that you were criticizing us for.
My mistake.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
And it seemed at the time that you intentionally conflate Obama's statement "I will unilaterally act to take out terrorists" with "I will invade Pakistan".
Going back, you claimed that if America were to violate Pakistani sovereignty that we would lose logistical support and so an invasion would be required to acquire a base of operations for our ongoing mission in Afghanistan.
One problem with your analysis is that the Pakistani dictatorship is heavily dependent on American support, and it will take more than a few Hellfire missiles against suspected terrorists to make them withdraw from our agreements. We have already launched missiles at Pakistani territory, and they have not withdrawn support. I don't know how they would respond to special operations, but again I would be surprised if they would do more than bluster and at best win a few concessions in military aid.
It was not a bad conclusion, but it was proven false by recent events.
Then he claims that it was all due to other people, who then leave his campaign. And then people show up and try to explain that we got it wrong all along. Although he may have skipped the middle step, this time. Oh, well, the man isn't a machine.
Merely a man.
Moe
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
...was his threat to invade Pakistan without looking at a map first. Not whatever it is that you're clinging to.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
That barely makes sense. I point out flaws in your analysis and you retort that Obama isn't a machine?
I guess I'll recap for you: Obama said he would take out terrorists in Pakistan, violating Pakistani sovereignty. You claim this action will require an invasion of Pakistan, and base the rest of your article on this premise. The premise is false. I point out current events that prove the premise false. You then continue to reiterate that Obama was a fool for making his original statement based on your debunked premise.
I'm not even for Obama, but these sorts of attacks are only meat for the base, not for the independents we'll need to court to win in November. I think that Republicans have a glaring weakness in national security that people here tend to gloss over and ignore; mainstream America won't be so compliant. We won't really know until the first debates.
Asserting that Obama didn't mean that he was going to invade Pakistan when he said that he was going after Pakistan isn't actually the same as proving it. It merely indicates that someone recognizes that the man has a public perception problem that needs to be addressed.
I'm sorry. He's a chowderhead when it comes to natsec. This isn't my fault.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Obama said he would go after terrorists in Pakistan, you're the one asserting that he said he would invade Pakistan. You seem to have perception problems of your own.
Again; Obama: chowderhead on natsec. Fault: not mine.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
I commend you for this reasoned debate. In the future I hope you will come prepared to raise the level of debate beyond a high school level.
FYI: blatant ad hominem does not prove your point; your ability to persuade ends with those who do not take your premises as givens. You never addressed my original points, instead falling back on the tried and true "chowderhead" tactic when I didn't agree with your weak attempt to set up a straw man. Better luck next time.
...a chowderhead as a response to your assertions. Calling Obama a chowderhead is merely an impolite reaction to his policy proposals. Note that "impolite" is not the same as "incorrect," but that's a whole other issue.
Moe Lane
PS: You got a free bite because I wasn't entirely civil to you, and it's slightly unfair to put on the moderator hat for that sort of thing. But don't assume that you're free to pull that again in the future. Ever.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Reminds me of the scene in "Stripes" where Sgt. Hulka takes off his hat so Bill Murray can take a swing at him... :-)
(I'm into single-word subject lines tonight.)
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It's just that hiding what 5 to 10 people are doing is easier than finding out what they are doing!
More importantly...what makes you think the next 'event' will use hijacked passenger planes???
The terrorists are planning the next attack not trying to duplicate a past effort.
Thank you Erick and others who consistently bring up points that I miss throughout the week.
I just got in a heated debate with someone on that one liberal blog I visit because I clearly have a need for pain and aggravation. The discussion of Obama v. McCain on international relations of course turned to 9/11. I was amazed (though I don't know why) that in the world of a liberal, 9/11 was an isolated incident. One that was Bush's fault, who of course was only in office several months, but because he ignored several warnings, it was his fault. (Not Clinton, who for 8 years ignored attacks on Americans and furiously cut the budgets of intelligence and military.)
What scares me is that if a Conservative does something well, they explain it away by belittling events/issues.
BHO falls in to this category to a T. He is clueless when it comes to international issues and even more clueless as to what is important to America/Americans.
Thanks to RedState for being a constant in reason and common sense.
MelZ
How much did it cost Tim McViegh to make his bomb, or how much did Al Qaeda spend on the Sept 11th attacks? Terrorists go after softer targets and their methods do not require much money at all. If they only have one nuke, it probably will not cost much but will that matter? The big, HUGE difference between Cuba, USSR, etc. and Iran and other terrorists is the terrorists are dead enders who seek death. Our past enemies wanted to live. Can Obama get any more naive?
He might take it as a challenge.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk
We have our problems too. We have a president and a presidential candidate who, despite talking tough on the war on terror, for other political reasons leave our southern border wide open. If tons of drugs and millions of illegals can come over that border, a nuke or two could as well.
For both parties, it appears politics are dominate over security.
God help us.
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All you have to do is assemble your nuke, break it down into components that can be reassembled by a third party, charter a boat that can sail to the other side of the planet, put it on that boat, get it to Mexico, smuggle in the component parts, transfer them to a truck, drive all the way up to the usual coyote runs, transfer them out of the truck, walk the components in by foot, transfer the components back to another truck, drive that truck to your safe house, reassemble the bomb, and take it to your target. Oh, yes, all the while killing everybody who worked with you to get it this far - most especially including the people who walked it in*.
Or, you could not disassemble the nuke, leave it on the boat, and sail it into an American harbor.
Bob, I want control of our borders just as badly as you do - including an actual physical fence and a border patrol that can use it effectively - but a nuke via Mexico isn't the high-probability scenario. It's not even the low-probability scenario. It's the ad-hoc scenario you try when the desperation scenario fails.
Moe Lane
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
*Why?
:RING! RING!:
"Hola, Federal Bureau of Investigation? My name is Pedro Martinez. I am calling from a truck stop just outside of Tuscon, and I think that someone just tricked me to bring in nuclear material - si, si, please trace the call; and you should also trace these license plate numbers, which I have written down for you. They are still here, so if you hurry you may catch them quickly: I will wait here until you come to take me into custody, of course. It is the least I can do for a land that I would never want to hurt, and have always wanted to come to, ever since I was a small boy..."
"Oh, you can take green card applications over the telephone, now? What a country."
The old saying I've heard is that if you want to smuggle a nuke in from Mexico into the United States, all you need to do is hide it inside a bale of marijuana.
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Especially plutonium - and, to quell a question from the super-secret IM, I don't think that twenty years of poverty-stricken neglect have had a positive influence on the functionality of any theoretical Soviet suitcase nukes. If you have something that will go boom, and you can't just shoot it at somebody, you want to get it to the target in the least number of steps, with the least number of intermediaries. The less things there are, the less things there are that can go wrong.
And believe me: if I thought that this hadn't already been thought out I wouldn't be saying this much.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
would dissuade someone intent on an afterlife with 70 virgins. After all, isn't killing infidels for Allah while committing suicide the whole point of their effort??
Everyone's mental picture of nuclear weapons seem to be stuck on the 'Fat Man' and "Little Boy' bombs of WWII. Those bombs were that big because the enrichment processes weren't as good as they are now!! The percent of reactive material with modern processes is significantly higher!!
Yes, plutonium does weigh more per cubic inch but the amount required for a detonation isn't measured by volume, it's measured by mass. For arguments sake let's assume 100 lbs is the magic number! In a previous post I mentioned that you have to keep it apart to prevent detonation. Split four ways that's 25 lbs apiece! Just a walk in the park for a jihadist!!
Our nuclear weapons are highly engineered to get the biggest bang for the amount of material to give our missiles/aircraft a longer range. If all you're trying to do is have a very large explosion efficiency isn't of paramount importance. Once you've arrived at that critical mass, having more just means a bigger bang!
Neither am I.
As I understand it, it's not the proximity of the fissile material that makes it go boom. It's the shaped charges that cause a compression of the fissile material that starts the chain reaction. Not exactly something a few rubes in a truck can split into 4 lumps and reassemble.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
...with plutonium or uranium-238 (or, if we're really lucky, uranium hexafluoride) would make for an entertaining video.
For a given value of "entertaining." :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Involve them killing off significant numbers of their own to do it.
The Iranians unfortunately have shown little reluctance to expending expendables.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
They'd blame their own-goal on the Zionist Entity and use it as justification for immediate "retaliation" with whatever they had left.
and a 'good' design can be this:
'Little Boy' - wikipedia
All you really need to move is the fissile material, in separate pieces.! You can buy a tube machined to your specs. The outside bomb casing isn't necessary since you're not dropping it from a plane. The elaborate trigger mechanism isn't required since you have only one charge to propel one piece toward the other! Just the charge, a blasting cap, two wires a battery and one suicide bomber to touch the wires together! BOOM!!!
This pretty much reflects the info I got. It was always stressed that it really wasn't all that complicated. The hard part was always getting enough of the fissionable material. Making a bomb wasn't that difficult!
Again, our nukes are engineered for the biggest bang w/minimum weight. It doesn't take a lot of enginering to design a bang. The shaped charges are required for the spherical design, to get the sphere to collapse uniformly! A sphere isn't the only shape that will work! You're not trying to compress the material, you're trying to get it all together, all at once! A sphere just let's you use the absolute minimum required! (i.e. most volume with minimum size)
I'm talking about surviving the construction, deconstruction, transport, and reconstruction.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
a suicide jihadist! You only have to survive long enough to make it go boom!
You're also assuming that all aspects of the operation are done by the same people. The machinists making the parts don't need to know what they are working with. A simple design can be made in a short period of time using multiple sources. the bomb needs to be assembled only once (at 'ground zero'), transport can be handled by a third group. All you need is a good organization(read sleeper cells). If you tell people only what they need to know.....!!
When they succeed (note I did not say if!) they believe they are assured a special place in the after life. Death by radiation sickness (unless you're near a detonation) isn't instantaneous. Depending on the level of exposure it can take weeks. A couple of day's exposure before blasting a few hundred thousand infidels is a small price to pay for an eternity of virgins!
Moe, I don't see any problems unless our friends in the CIA and NSA have some very effective covert operations going on! But as someone else pointed out on another post (different subject) it may take multiple attempts but it only takes one success!
At least, if you're hacking up pounds of the stuff.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
in service to Allah for the destruction of the 'Great Satan' and the re-establishment of the Caliphate??
Don't project our values onto a group whose eventual reward is in the afterlife and aren't afraid of hastening their own demise (or others') to achieve it!!
They cannot make a saving throw versus heavy metal poisoning. They cannot substitute religious faith for proper engineering practices. And in any fight between radiation poisoning versus human will, radiation poisoning wins every time.
I'm not saying that they can't build a nuke. I am merely saying that they won't build a nuke, only to break it down, walk it across the Mexican border, and rebuild it on the other side.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Heavy metal poisoning is a result of ingestion or inhalation:
Rule 1: Don't eat the material
Rule 2: wear this protective mask while machining these parts!
All you have to do is live long enough to make the parts. Minimal precautions should let you live for a couple of weeks. Do you think they care if you live longer than that????
The extensive engineering is required for efficiency and smallness. All the comples electronics is to control the 'when' of detonation. They never even built a test version of 'Little Boy' because they knew it would work!! The design was that simple. Get enough material together and you don't have to be efficient.
Radiation poisoning isn't instantaneous. Depending on the amount of exposure it can take days, weeks, months or even years. If you're going to nuke yourself and a few hundred thousand infidels what does it matter if you or any of the workers get sick?? After all, you're going to be rewarded with 70 virgins in heaven!
...even as we speak, and they'll be recreating the first episode of Jericho on Memorial Day.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
into detail..it was always stressed that a scenario of a detonation inside the US was not farfetched. That was 25 years ago without the crazy jihadists.
...along the Southern border. Geiger counters to every Border Patrol staffer. Standard charts showing the effects of radiation sickness in the main square of every Southwestern town. We might as well go whole hog with it.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Into an A Bomb. Interesting solution for the housing crisis.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
HTML Help for Red Staters
"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/07/15/595641.htm?site=scienc...
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk
1) That nukes are big - They're not!
2) You can sail into a port without being detected - You can't (the radiation is detectable from long range)
The complexity of our nuclear weapons is a safety factor to prevent unauthorized or unexpected detonation. The bomb part is very simple:
a) enough fissionable material to cause a sufficent chain reaction.
b) keep the material separated so that the chain reaction doesn't take place
c) have a method to bring the material together in a short period of time to start the chain reaction.
Having 'heavy water' changes your 'fission' bomb to a 'fusion' bomb having more power but isn't necessary.
Getting enough of the material is the hard part but will be made much easier with Iran having all those new centrifuges!!
Besides a 'dirty' bomb is more effective for terrorist purposes and even easier to move around!
Oversight along the border is less stringent! Besides all you really need is a small plane flying under the RADAR or a long tunnel under the border!
Please don't conflate the immigration issue with the jihadist issue.
The 19 terrorists of 9-11 did NOT sneak into America through our southern border. They came in from Canada and America's own airports.
We have problems with illegal Hispanic aliens. But they're not invaders, they're not here trying to kill us.
As for sneaking in nukes, why bother. In the Boston area where I used to live, there is a liquefied natural gas (LNG) port in Everett Massachusetts. To get there, a supertanker loaded with LNG has to sail up the narrow Boston Harbor. Happens every few months.
LNG is one of the most volatile substances known. If terrorists blew up its cargo of LNG at the moment the supertanker transits past downtown Boston, half of downtown Boston would disappear.
Obama is saying that Iran isn't as potent a military threat as the USSR was.
But back in the 1970s, liberals were saying the USSR wasn't all that much of a threat either!
Back then, it was fashionable to claim that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were equally morally culpable--"two scorpions in a bottle". You got that view from the entire fashionable Left, from The Nation to Carl Sagan's Cosmos to even Scientific American's arms control articles.
In 1972, George McGovern campaigned on a pledge to cut U.S. defense spending by one-third, including mothballing half of America's existing aircraft carriers. Remember that his campaign slogan that year was "Come home, America."
And of course, there was then President Carter's infamous "inordinate fear of Communism" speech.
The Left has never believed in existential threats to America. Never.
They fear war above all else. Denying the existence of threats dovetails neatly with this, because it makes it possible to take the war option off the table and slash defense spending without worry.
What Obama is saying is just the latest invocation of that same mindset. And as McGovern did in 1972, he is hoping to capitalize on a war-weary public to put across this neo-isolationist foreign policy.
The difference between now and then, though, is that by 2008, the McGovern coalition of college liberals and blacks has grown larger. Much larger. And in a close election, this time it could actually win. Economic issues will decide that.
"Obama is saying that Iran isn't as potent a military threat as the USSR was."
No he is NOT saying that at all. You just have to change what he said to fit into your talking point attacks. He said they are not the same type of threat as the soviet union was, a point made and agreed to by most of the people attacking him on it. If MCCain had made the exact same comment 71% of the posters here would have agreed instead of attacking. (given that a demostrated 29% are beyond rational political thought) The hatred for Americans on the right has to end.
As far as the crazy liberals not wanting to waist money on big military items and spend more on pet contracts for more cariers etc. The point you miss complelty there is they where proven to be 100% right. Spending twice as much money as we did would not have helped one bit. Your point is the "Liberals" did not spend money (we all now know)we did not have to spend, to defeat the soviet threat.
Avoiding uneccesary war does not mean you are "taking the war option off the table." Can you not be against irrational war, irrational spending and not be "talking the war option off the table"? Again you change the arument to attempt to make a rational point.
This is what has killed the republican party today. Let's have serious, rational discussions and debates over the facts and stop trying to just twist something the other side says into something I can restate and then make a valid argument aginst my own made up issues.
When your lad has well and truly put his feet in it ?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I kept your comments in mind, but still concluded Obama was pooh-poohing the Iranian threat and revising history.
first, I was born in the Soviet Union. My grandfather lost twenty years of his life to a Soviet gulag. So, I know full well the extent of the Soviet's evil. That said, the main difference is that the folks that controlled the Soviet Union also believed in the human condition of self preservation. If we pointed enough nukes at them, the threat was neutralized because they themselves never wanted a war to end the world because they would go with it. Iran, and its terrorist allies, aren't like that. They are perfectly happy to die in a war that ends all wars as long as we go with them. It doesn't matter how much they spend on defense. As long as they can find anyway to kill enough Americans, Israelis, and anyone else they consider a non believer that is enough. They will be perfectly happy to go with us as long as we are gone.
That apparently is something lost on Obama. He doesn't understand the basic lack of rationality the Soviets had that Iran and its terrorist allies don't have.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor
It really didn't take much pondering to conclude that the Soviets knew they'd ruin the rich lands of the West if they nuked them and that would never have been their first choice. Ahmadinejad and his fellow Shi'ite end-timers really do believe they can hasten the day of the Hidden Imam's return to purify the Earth.
"And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet."
And I think the words we used were to the effect of, "And then we'll blow YOU off the planet."
That's probably not what Obama intends to say in Syria.
In the Vienna Summit of 1961, Khrushchev threatened war: "Force will be met by force. If the US wants war, that's its problem."
President Kennedy replied: "Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be a war. It will be a cold, long winter."
Does anyone imagine a President Obama saying that?
There is nothing to indicate otherwise. If you are against Obama to start with, you can assume or Guess he wouldn't say something like that. Your prejudice however does not change any of the facts in the situtaion at all.
Can anyone imagine Kennedy or Reagan thinking rushing into Iraq without getting the facts was a good idea?
October 23, 1983, Iranian-backed Lebanese attacked both the U.S. troop base and the French troop base in Beirut.
The French retaliated with air strikes on Hezbollah positions in the Beqaa valley. Reagan cut and ran.
In 1985 & 1986 senior U.S. officials including SecDef Weinberger and members of the National Security Council were involved in selling weapons to Iran. President Reagan claimed he knew nothing about it.
What does paragraph 3 have to do with 2? Or is it that you though something that gets nods from your bong buddies would fly outside of your bong circle?
"First you win the argument, then you win the vote." - MARGARET THATCHER.
So let's start winning the argument.
Obama claims that if Iran ever attacked us, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Yet he also claims we have to withdraw from Iraq, a country with only one-third the population of Iran, because military victory there is impossible.
Isn't that a contradiction?
If Obama thinks he can win against Iran, why does he think he can't win in Iraq?
Win in Iraq against what army? What is a military victory in Iraq? Wasn't that "mission accomplished" long ago? There is a difference between beating a country in a military conflict and succeeding at whatever the mission in Iraq is. You realize this, but in a partisen hatred for American's (that disagree with the failling policies of the right), has enveloped todays right wing, you attack with points and comments that you would agree with if comming from a different source. This is why the republican party is falling apart today. When you have to restate and change the apposing view, just to p make a point, then you really have no credible point to make.
...or whatever version of it Senator "Senior Moment" can remember at the time. Is Al Queda Sunni or Shi'ite, supported by Iran or not? Doesn't matter, bomb 'em all.
I take it we're just going to all overlook the fact that McCain was all about starting a dialog with Hamas just two short years ago. Don't remember it, it doesn't count.
We'll also overlook the fact that Sec. Def. Gates just said a couple of weeks ago that we should talk to Iran. Didn't hear about it, didn't count.
Oh, and do we REALLY want to use Beirut as an example for this? Anyone remember who was president then? Anyone?
Meh. Memory is for sissies.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Oh my mistake he's not is he ?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
you would have heard that talks would have depended on Hama's actions! There were conditions attached!
Again Sec. Def. Gates attached conditions.
Gates said the EXACT SAME words used by Obama the Day before the President attacked him for it.
There is no way to spin out of this one, just deny it , re write it, Change what was said. or tlak about flag pins.
I've read the presidents words many times and don't see his name, or even a side reference to the Senator from Illinois. His spokes-people have said he specifically wasn't speaking about Obama, but rather a certain ex-president who DID talk with the terrorists.
But if you really want to wear that shoe....
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them" - SecDef Gates
(my emphasis)
"Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded.." -Washington Post
(my emphasis)
Hmmmm!
So do you not agree that Iran does not pose the same type of threat to us that the soviet union did? Do you not agree the the soviet army and it's superpower war effort was a different type of threat than what we face in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela?
You attacked, you name called, but you did not offer any related point or information about what was actually said at all.
"Barack Obama is stupid or willfully ignorant. Iran will never attack us directly. They cannot."
Where did he say they will attack us directly? Your point made here that he is so stupid because he does not recognize that the threat from Iran is different? My point would be that you are so "stupid or willfully ignorant" that you do not realize that is exaclty what he did say!
"They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us"
Do they pose thge same threat or don't they? Obama said they are different and you said he is ignorant because you agree with him?
Master it, please.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Obama is repeating alot of what Ron Paul said on the trail, have to wonder how many weak minded cons are listening and thinking they'll just let him win because his FP is "liberty" minded.
I agree, this post is a great recommendation to vote McCain.
didn't pose a threat after Khrushchev was ousted to the USA. But everyone forgets that JFK met Mr. K in Vienna where K decided this fellow was a lightweight & sending missiles to Cuber was okay. JFK went all in & called K's bluff. But JFK fought in WWII & was widely read & a student of the REAL world. So was Nixon & in his own way, Reagan. Carter was not and Obambi is beginning to display that smiley-face shallowness the peanut farmer still has.
I want Obama challenged to show his International Policy degree transcript if he challenges Cindy McCain to show her tax returns. I'm sure Obambi is another Kerry, who turned out to have a lower GPA than GWB, after all the stupidity jokes. Clever, but a bantamweight in the ring.
And don't forget that the guy who called Israel a "stinking corpse" will say to his voter-public, see, Obama will talk to me. BHO HELPS Ahmadodojihad & his religious mooonbats when he says stuff like BHO did. Even in a political campaign. Iran may re-elect the prancing dodojihad if BHO is elected.
Just like Hitler exposed the French Army in '36 as garlic-eating surrender-monkeys when he invaded the Rhineland on a wing & a prayer. [The Adolf was bluffing & the Froggies couldn't make the call], Ahmadodojihad is trying to roll a light-in-the-loafers candidate---Hamas likes BHO, that's for sure.
Iran is a country under the control of a crooked bunch of clerics who have a stranglehold on the levers of power. Obambi is a silly fool who probably flunked a lot of his foreign policy courses at Columbia!!
Surely you don't expect a sitting Senator to act as if attacks against that sort actually matter.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.I've been usurped!