…is unjustified, so he is clearly insane according to the sober judgment of experts in Talk Radio and the War Party whose wisdom stampeded us into a foolish war less than a decade ago. Now we are, yet again, being spooked with visions of mushroom clouds over American cities, yet again, and, yet again, being told that only a fool or America-hating lefty could possibly want to avoid a fresh pre-emptive war (which, by the way, the Pope reminds us is not in the catechism).
You know, like the America-hating lefties who constitute Pentagon intelligence. What do those cowards and America-haters in the military know in comparison to the damp-handed chickenhawks and bellicose perma-civilians who constitute our Ruling Class, our field of GOP candidates, and our conservative pundit class? Ron Paul is clearly insane to rely on people who know what they are talking about and ignore the consensus of exactly the same people who plunged us into the debacle of Iraq using exactly the same scare tactics they are deploying now.
What I don’t get is how republican presidential candidates square balancing the budget with waging a war against Iran, contra recieved wisdom Wars are actually quite expensive to wage; indeed although I don’t have the exact figures to hand I believe that U.S. Debt was under control until Bush got us into afganistan and Iraq and I seem to remember that Clinton actually managed to balance the budget a couple of times.
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more of a money-trail matter. I don’t know the facts, so all of this is conjecture, but it seems to me that not a few military contractors (Halliburton, for example) will be losing money because the U.S. has pulled out of Iraq. Now that the money tree has withered they need new, fertile soil to plant some seeds, and war with Iran, or at least the threat of war with Iran, is the best option at the moment.
If lobbyists for these contract companies aren’t working towards promoting a fearsome view of Iran I would be quite surprised. It would seem to be in their best interest to do so, after all; the product they’re selling doesn’t have a wide market without an occupation, war, or threat of war. So politicians of both parties are gearing up for the promotion of Iran as the next global threat, hoping to get a slice of the generous pie that military contractors will be handing out as a sign-up bonus for a fresh investment in the war market.
Again, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories and I don’t think there’s a hidden cabal running the government from the shadows. Banal human greed and indecency from the Fall goes far enough in explaining such scenarios. It’s a very dangerous thing when war becomes a marketplace, not because of big conspiracies, but because of petty human sinfulness.
Peace and God bless!
Ghost
I have a friend who firmly believes that there is a one-world government, the bogey man of many conservatives and christians. I used to think that he was a bit off-base, but given the past 15 years or so I am starting to think he is right. It is not the UN however, which is his stated government – it is a shadow government of big business, of the various members of the ruling elite of the US and other countries.
These people are driven by greed and the desire for power without responsibility. They are driven by fear that the life-style they have might be somehow reduced – you know only 4 weeks in the Bahamas instead of 6; or only one Mercedes a year instead of 2.
I do not think it is a conspiracy, because that means that there is a way to uncover it. I think it has become the government which can at will hide documents, objects and now people.
Ghostly,
Agreed. There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy among men to push forward this and other evils, because there’s a much greater conspiracy involving the Evil One that coordinates things quite well without any paper trail or other such nuisances.
What you propose, my friend, is a conspiracy theory and probably one with considerable truth to it. “Banal human greed and indecency from the fall” is what leads to conspiracies among banal, greedy and indecent humans. The only alternatives to conspiracy theories are believing that everything happens either by chance or by some vast historical force operating independently of human free will. If you believe that humans sometimes cooperate with other humans to do evil, then you believe in conspiracies. But “conspiracy theory” has been given such a negative connotation (by conspirators?) that some feel obliged to say they don’t believe in conspiracy theories right before they propose one.
Wow, Ghosty. Pretty cynical. And since there’s no hard facts to support your theory, I’m supposing it’s been hard-wired into your brain by such luminous intellects as George Cloony and Sean Penn.
I have no proof, but I’ve come to believe that Hollywood and media types are out to pervert popular opinion and beliefs. They do this while salting the media with pornography and libel. All the while they are serving their puppet masters in the comintern with the goal of enslaving middle class america, and turning our religious nation to godless atheism.
This could be a world-wide conspiracy, or just the accumulated vanity of shallow people who have become accustomed to appearing on the cover of US magazine, I don’t know.
I don’t even know what George Clooney and Sean Penn say; I literally know nothing of their views except that I think I recall Sean Penn flying down to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
My analysis is based purely on business sense: if you have a product you want to market it. A major market for this product just closed, so why wouldn’t there be efforts to open a new one? It’s the same principle with soft drinks as it is with military supply contracts. I just can’t imagine that a sensible, business-savy military contractor would sit back and not promote their industry and market.
This isn’t cynicism, it’s economics 101. The only cynicism I have is that I regard humans as Fallen and poisoned by the sin of our First Parents. Since that cynicism is Dogma, however, not to mention backed up by simple observation of human behavior, I feel comfortable holding it.
People and God bless!
It’s a good thing, then, that we have enlightened public officials to balance the needs of our military establishment with the blood sweat and toil of all the rest of us, when it comes to making appropriations decisions, and assessing the security needs of the nation.
Jack,
That’s mixing apples and oranges.
One should not go around looking for wars – which is what GW Bush did when he invaded Iraq. There simply was no need to do that at the time. Wars cost not only lives but also money (this affects your “balanced budget” argument) and binds energies, which might be needed elsewhere when something unforeseen comes along.
So the US should not go looking for wars. But if they can’t avoid fighting one they should do so inspite of budget concerns.
Let’s just pretend that Ahmadinejad doesn’t mean a word that he says as Iran gets ever closer to achieving his goal–a nuclear bomb.
Let’s pretend that Iran is not behind Hamas and Hezbollah.
Let’s also forget that in a speech several years ago he suggested that those listening should think of a world without the United States.
Let’s pretend Islam is the real religion of peace.
Skay
For all his rhetoric Amadinejad is not going to use a potential Iranian bomb against the United States( even via proxies); for the simple reason that he knows that the American President of the day will immidiately order a retaliatory strike. Likewise he is not going to use a bomb against Israel for the simple reason that the last concious act of IDF command will be to send their nuclear armed aircraft and Cruise Missiles on a one way mission to downtown Tehran/Qom ect ect, in addition I would guess that any Israeli survivors would immidiately start slaughtering the palastinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza; remember that most Israeli civillians have done time in uniform an sizable number of expats still return every couple of years for refresher training.
Also he’d have to worry about retaliation from the Mossad and Shien Bet, remember that these guys spent 20yrs systematically hunting down and assasinating the masterminds behind the munich massacre.
Tehran can bluster all they want to, the leadership must know that to use a nuclear bomb would be to sign their own death warrents.
“he knows that the American President of the day will immidiately order a retaliatory strike.”
Given the results of the last time that happened, I can only see that being an encouragement for anyone wanting to get an American President to order a retaliatory strike.
Wouldn’t it be difficult to launch a retaliatory strike if you’ve closed your bases and taken home/destroyed your nukes?
Or am I reading too much into Sen Paul’s statements on non-intervention and unfairly painting him as an isolationist?
Can’t seem to find a clear answer on what that actually means, and it’s important.
Ron Paul hasn’t said we’d dismantle our military, just move it closer to home. The U.S. is still quite capable of launching a counter-strike in very short order.
The only way for Iran to prevent a counter-strike by the U.S. would be to wipe out the U.S. all together, and that simply won’t happen. The amount and size of the nukes required for such an action simply aren’t within Iran’s reach, and that’s without consideration for delivery capability.
Quite simply Iran is not a threat to the U.S. It’s not even a significant threat to Israel, not because it wouldn’t attack Israel, but because Israel is more than capable of defending itself from Iran. If Iran makes significant strides towards building a nuke, Israel will wipe out that progress just like they did to Iraq 30 years ago.
Peace and God bless!
How did your argument about delivery capability go over with the 9-11 hijackers?
Did they deliver a nuclear device that crippled, or even significantly damaged, any U.S. assets?
No, of course they didn’t. The event was horrific (I lived in a New York suburb when it happened, and I saw people coming home with dust and ashes on them), and the loss of life was awful, but in terms of a military strike it was pretty mild: a handful of buildings destroyed in a one-off event. It was an atrocity, and it was an act of war against the U.S. but it wasn’t a major military attack.
Seeing as there isn’t any indication of Iran planning anything like 9-11, I don’t see this as a sensible argument. Iran is a nation with a desire for self-preservation and stability, while Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization with an agenda of lashing out at the West and their enemies in Asia and the Middle-East, and has no goal of stability nor self-preservation.
Peace and God bless!
What about contagion? It seems clear that N. Korea – that other evil axis nation – has divulged nuclear secrets to asymmetrical entities. How does the “state sponsor of terrorism” tag for Iran figure in your analysis?
Actually, North Korea and Pakistan work together alot. Pakistan gave many capabilities to Nort Korea.
1) The most likely country to launch a nuclear strike in the Middle East is Israel.
2) The most likely Islamic nation to use a nuclear weapon is Pakistan.
3) The greatest purveyor of nuclear secrets to our enemies is Pakistan.
4) Ahmadinejad has little authority in his country and may be a huge distraction.
I think the real enemy is Pakistan, next followed by Indonesia, yet we pour money into their hands. Iran does us less damage. Thinking otherwise is due to certain commitments to talk radio faith-belief systems, and desires to enhance certain war industries.
SKay, you use the same old scare tactics that have brought us to how many wars now? I’m not buying them any more.
I can remember the first time that I heard about a terrorist plot to fly a large airplane into a building in the United States. I do not remember if the twin towers were the named targets are not. All of the very smart people in Washington and in the msm at the time said that it would not be possible — gave the reasons why-etc. I also remember thinking at the time-these are people who should know what our capabilities are and are surely much smarter than I am about these things–so–I believed them.
It took a while–but 9/11 happened. Not exactly the way the very smart people imagined it–unfortunately they were nieve and underestimated those who were determined to attack the United States and kill innocent people.
I believe these people are serious- and I think we make a mistake to think that they use the same thought process that we do. Even during the height of the cold war–the Soviet Union did not attack our embassy and take hostages. I also don’t remember them using suicide/homicide bombers. There were “some”boundries that we both recognized.
I certainly don’t think that Iran is the only muslim country that we should take seriously–but Iran can use a small nuclear bomb in many different ways once they have the capability.
Hugo Chavez has said that he will work with Iran to get their people across the southern border. Perhaps he already has.
Skay, you might be interested in reading Pat Buchanan’s, “Suicide of a Superpower”.
Thanks William–I like Pat-but I do not agree with a lot of his ideas lately.
I am reading a book now about what happened in Germany and Russia between WWI and WWII.
Unbelievable.
If fighting wars to a pyrric draw has been a tiresome waste of time and resources, how about some winning strategies? The enemy is still out there, we’re just tired of taking a beating. The outcome is still out there looming: either we turn to the living God, or the stranger comes into our house, binds us, and takes away the spoil. I’d to believe that Paul is up to the task, but I don’t believe it. Too much drugs and prostituion on the table.
Turning to the Living Od means turning one’s back on evil self-indulgence. That includes fighting wars for oil and choice without Just Cause. Anything else suggests the war advocate worships a pagan god of destruction, self-interest, and death.
There’s nothing particularly christian about the Peace of Westphalia. There are plenty of people who have just cause to war against Iran but due to the restrictions of the ground rules flowing from the westphalian system, they are being suppressed from engaging in retaliatory strikes. Is nation-state repression of those retaliatory and just actions an evil?
An illustrative example may suffice. John creates a farsi initiative to spread the gospel to the persians. The government of Iran is not amused and hangs some of John’s associates and a fatwa authorizing the killing of John is published in Qom. John’s group, planning and funding from US territory, strikes back and several key figures behind the repression of John and his group are attacked. The FBI arrests John and others and they are charged and brought to trial.
Putting aside the legal technicalities, do you vote guilty or not guilty if you are on the jury? US law permits a free vote (jury nullification).
Who’s suggesting war for no reason? I’m reminded how many times our current adversaries “declared war” on us before it finally hit home. Don’t you believe it when your adversaries call for your destruction, call you “the great satan” and subvert your interests at home and overseas? What are you waiting for, Pearl Harbor?
I have a friend who firmly believes that a one-world government already exists. I used to think that he was off-base, but now I tend to agree with his theory. It is not the UN, his particular candidate, it is the interconnected businesses of the world, who have bought and paid for their servants in the various levels of government.
Amadinejad is not apt to use his nuclear weapons, if Iran gets them. However, he like Hussein is an easy target to use so the hidden government can make more money. THis hidden government is driven by greed and fear. Fear of the masses who do not live or look like the ruling class; and greed to continue to the lifestyle they have.
I am not a Ron Paul fan, but there are times when he makes absolute sense.
“Ignore the consensus of exactly the same people who plunged us into the debacle of Iraq using exactly the same scare tactics they are deploying now.”
I believe the Pentagon is among this group of people who “plunged us into the debacle of Iraq.” It’s a relief to know that we can now rely on its intelligence to decide what to do about such a momentous issue.
Jack: September 11 may have had a little bit to do with “Bush getting us into two wars” and, GINGRICH may have had a little bit to do with balancing the budgets back in the 90′s.
September 11 legitimately got us into ONE war. For the other war it was at most a convenient excuse. Our September 11 enemy was Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein. Transferring vengeful American animosity from the latter to the former, along with some hand-waving about unrelated issues (WMDs, UN resolutions, etc.), was one of the most audacious and consequential PR/propaganda stunts ever perpetrated on American citizens. (Yes. surpassing even the massive campaign to make Barack Obama look like a qualified candidate.)
Hindsight is always 20/20.
I love to hear people lambaste Bush for Iraq, when, how many, 90%, 95% of Congress agreed with him. In fact, both of Bush’s wars were fully authorized and constitutional, which is more than can be said for his successor or predecessor.
All this handwringing is disingenuous, unhelpful and in the end degrades our fighting force and military reputation. Remember Vietnam?
Bush was right about an “evil empire.” The only thing he overestimated was US resolve over anything more strenuous than operating an iphone. I wonder if there’s an app for surrender?
Bush’s wars weren’t remotely constitutional.
That your nation hasn’t conducted war in accord with its own governing documents within the living memory of the majority of it citizens ought to frighten you.
No, instead you all just play-act and pretend.
In what way were Bush’s wars unconstitutional? Because you didn’t approve of them (before or after they began to sour)? I believe what you mean to say is that they weren’t supported by the hierarchy of the RC Church, but that’s not the same as unconstitutional. The fact that these wars may have been ill-conceived and may have worked out to our detriment has more to do with idiotic domestic politicing than anything that happened overseas. It’s our own weakness: in preparing for, entering and executing a war, that all the chickenchickens are lamenting with such conspicuous and doleful crocodile tears. They can blame themselves for the failure of Mr. Bush’s wars, not Bush.
Actually, Saddam’s actions persistently violating the cease-fire accords over a decade got us into the war with Iraq. The connection to September 11 was we had a moment of clarity where we said that we’d been absolutely nuts to engage in certain tolerant national security practices and initiated a review on more realistic grounds. Saddam’s actions barely avoided restarting a war and he’d been doing that for a decade. Under the changed rule review, his actions did not pass the test and the war’s resumption was on.
Due to the long time we’d been in cease-fire conditions, we made additional steps prior to actually pulling the trigger on invasion that were not strictly necessary from an international law perspective but were a good idea. The only thing actually necessary (which was done) was to notify the UN that the US and its allies were withdrawing from the cease-fire accord due to Iraqi violations of the terms. Just turning on anti-aircraft radars and targeting our overflight planes was sufficient and the Iraqis were doing that virtually every day.
Scott my point about the budget (regardless of whose influence prevailed) was that the clinton administration at MOST got the US in a couple of peacekeeping actions that were multi-nation actions (YES somalia contary to recieved wisdom WAS and remains a multi-nation action) and therefore the DOD didn’t rack up the huge costs associated with two Major Regional Engagements and trying to create satalite states, and before you talk about “the coallitoin of the willing” lets face it that the only one who really stood by Dubbya was Tony Blair, other countries contributed at best a token force.
As for 9/11 when on earth did the Bush administration decide that the raison d’etre of the afganistan mission was nation building? I was in high school at the time and I thought it was about hanging bin-laden from the nearest gibbit, Bush was perfectly willing to let the Talaban be if they’d handed Osama over to him for a nice little trial followed by the gas chamber.
I have a friend who believes that there is a one-world government. I used to think that my friend was having one of those the bats are busy moments, but now I am not so sure. I do not think it is the UN, my friend’s target, but I believe that it is the international military-industiral complex. The inter-relatedness of these companies and their minions – our ruling class is hard to deny.
Amadinejad will not use he nuclear weapons, if he gets the, he has no delivery system and really has no power. However, the international military-industrial complex needs a new bogey man to aim at and to use the death of soldiers and civilians as a way to make money.
Nikita Khrushchev promised that he would “bury” us. You bury people who are dead, so he was threatening to arrange the deaths of countless Americans. Yet his bluster was just that–bluster–because he knew that the U.S. would “bury” the Soviet Union in return. The Soviet Union, at the time, had thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to lob them into our country. In later years the same situation held with China. I can remember when some conservatives were arguing, in the late 60s, that we should have a preemptive strike against China, to wipe out its nuclear weapons; fortunately, nothing came of that suggestion. China then, and the Soviet Union then and before, were much bigger threats to us than Iran ever could be, yet war was avoided.
Well, it appears that way. As of now. Right now. Who knows what the biggest threats will be in a year. In five years. In ten years. I’m sure, though, that as we plod along losing war after war, what we think about who’s the big threat will matter less, and less, and less to the world at large.
I was informed by a linguist that a proper translation of the Russian was “we will survive you,” not “we will bury you.”
Makes sense – he was saying, with a rhetorical flourish, ‘we will outlast you because our system is better.’ Not quite the same as Greedo pointing the blaster and saying “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
A bigger question would be: how was war avoided?
You seem to be conceding Iran it’s nukes, and that seems to be Obama’s position as well. And why not? Besides Russia and China, theres Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, the European “allies.” What’s the harm of another nation in the nuclear club?
That’s the 9/10 mentality. After 9/11, I remember Iran as the country where our embassy was stormed and our people taken hostage for 444 days. They’re the same nation responsible for rockets over the kibbutzim. They popularized the term “islamic state.” They are our unstated enemy in Afganistan and Iraq. Even our pasty-faced state dept considers them among the worlds top state sponsors of terrorism.
I’m not saying bomb them into oblivion because we don’t like their style of turban. But you’d have to be pretty short-sighted to ignore the threat.
The second real question is: Is the “American Way of Life” even worth preserving. Except for those herioc human beings I meet in my daily walk of life who continuously inspire me to love, and who will never see the light of a newscam, I would say no. What most likely will happen is that these determined enemies will roll over the US in the same way they brought down our signature buildings. The people who could defend us are being given the shaft by chattering, pusillanimous know it all elites who would be better served by working on a pig farm.
Iran has a serious electoral bloc that believes that they should provoke the end of the world by spreading chaos and violence. Ahmadinejad is part of that bloc. Any such force needs to be kept WMD free.
Maybe the Mullahs should declare them terrorist sympathizers and indefinitely detain them. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that they be on the next Muslim Mayflower to the shores of MA.
There are plenty of clerics under house arrest in Qom in indefinite detention so that isn’t a problem for Iran’s current regime. These guys run free because they’re acting on the lines that the government wants them to act and provides plausible deniability.
In the US, running your own foreign policy gets you a federal trial and a definite prison term. That’s the westphalian deal, foreign policy doesn’t get run by freelancers and we avoid a lot of wars that way. Iran is breaking the deal and that’s a cassus belli, a cause of war. It’s been one for the past 30 years.
Amen.!!! How true! Can you hear the drums of war beating…. its getting louder. Your in the right Mr
Shea!
The entire cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to the present day is still less than what was spent in the “stimulus” in one year. The defense budget makes up 20% of the US budget, even including Afghanistan/Iraq. Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security take up >40% and rising.
The problem with comparing Iran with the old Soviet Union is that the Soviets had the power to destroy us with nukes but were rational enough not to use it. The Iranians don’t have the power to destroy us, but aren’t rational enough NOT to use it.
But much if the stimulus came back to the US despite talk radio’s propaganda otherwise. The cost of war, usually trivilaized and reduced by the varied conservative sources cited, avoiding accounting for the vairous defense emergnecy fundings that are routine, is only framed in dollars. Not in the ethical cost to our reputation. Not in the broken minds and bodies of the troops sent to fight that war. Not in the blunder and morale destruction that participation in an unethical war does to a nation’s armed services.
As far as your approach to assessing the rationality of the enemy-I’ve heard that before. Often the browner, more alien cultures are less likely to be rationale. So was the argument about China.
The clerics ruling the country are in the driver seat. The President is not. Rationale, disciplined, autocratic rule has allowed that country and its leadership to survive. Such characteristics have been the routine since Khomeini.
They have survived a war with Iraq, life with Afghans on its borders, with a Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, an American invasion on two bordering countries. Disciplined control and rule has been the norm.
Oh Man! Broken Bodies and Brown Bodies. What are you, a refugee from Agitprop School?
The real reason the war is not worth it has nothing to do with casualties or racism, it’s because of our deeply divided national purpose, and our inability to form consensus around any policy – foreign or domestic. We’re down to renewing the federal lease on a month to month basis. Also, the “reasonableness” of the same policy depends on who’s in office. Us: good; them: criminal.
What’s more, this division is based on real differences. And unless and until these are resolved and put on a solid basis, we’re just an atom bomb with no guts. And with pres. obama, even that’s going to go away. We’ll be a pagan people worshipping at hollywood mount.
You better like that “disciplined rule” a whole lot, because it’s coming to a neighborhood near you – and soon! (Of course you’re expecting to be the “disciplined ruler” in the whole scenario, I know.)
You promote paranoid fantasies satisfied only with bloody human sacrifices to a strange God bearing no likeness to a Christian God.
Have I said anything about God? Have I even war-mongered. All I’ve said is that this self-mutilation on “our sins and mistakes” is self-indulgent and self-defeating nonsense. I’ve said that national self-preservation is a valid and important function of government, and that all this quivering before the “Supreme Leaders” of Iran is little more than thinly disguised cowardice. I think your idea of a “Christian God” is more akin to a rainbow-attired hippie than the biblically revealed Deity. Or maybe obama is your god, with his vision of internationalism (with him as the chief potentate in charge). I find your thinking very shallow and derivative.
You lack any embrace of papal teaching on war that has constituted the considered opinion of popes from John 23 forward. That’s 50 years of magisterial teaching you clearly reject, making of yourself a two-dimensional caricature conservative war-mongering. Surely there is a more Catholic formation in someone attracted to this blog.
The fundamental muslim challenge that is the problem here is not the challenge to the US but rather to the underlying westphalian international system. I’m not aware of any papal writings that address modern anti-westphalianism at all, much less in a serious way that could provide guidance. The Vatican is out to sea on this so far as I can tell, ignoring the subject.
The problem is that the muslims are playing games with who is us and who is them. The westphalian requirement is that Iran the nation-state is supposed to domestically repress those who play those games or they suffer national responsibility for the private actions of those outside the government. But those requirements are not being followed. We’re left with a broken system that desperately needs fixing.
Since we’re talking about Catholic formation, my underlying point concerns the catholic preparation of a people to fight wars, internal or external, to organize programs that address peoples needs, and to witness christian values to a non-christian world. Do you think our formation as catholics has allowed for any of that? Or do we merely spend other people’s money, criticize other people’s wars, and tell other people how to raise the children they’ve had the temerity to give birth to. Mr. Shea talks about qualifications a person should have to hold political office, but I think he doesn’t go far enough. A potential voter should be a qualified adult, who has not just read papal encyclicals, but has evaluated them in his or her own life, found them to be worthy of reliance, and who has relied on them to make one or more life decisions. Humanae Vitae, for example. Knowing about the Christian life is often not enough. Only living it really suffices. Peace to you.
Cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars: $3.2 – $4T. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
Cost of ARRA (stimulus act): $1.2 T (including tax cuts) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulus_Bill_of_2009
Your links prove my point. The “cost” given for the Iraq-Afghanistan wars in the wikipedia articles include medical care and veterans benefits to the year 2050 – which kinda inflates things a little bit. Not only are those costs truly unknowable, but in some cases (like veterans benefits), we would be paying those anyway even if we had never set foot in those countries. If you look deeper into the article to find the source of your inflated war numbers, you’ll find that they come from an outfit (costsofwar.org)with a clear idealogical slant. Might not want to hang your hat on that.
Perhaps to calculate the true cost of the ARRA, we would need to calculate the interest we’ll be paying on the money we borrowed to “stimulate” the economy, that didn’t really “stimulate” anything. That would be a more apples-to-apples comparison.
In an apples-to-apples comparison, you’d calculate costs out to the same end year. You would also add in all the stimulus spending (the ARRA was not alone). For instance our current payroll tax holiday is not considered part of ARRA but it is Obama administration stimulus. It’s unlikely that the balance would remain as you think it is.
Those two articles do not do the necessary apples-to-apples calculations.
Whether anyone wants to recognize the fact or not, Iran has been at war with the U.S. since the ‘students’ occupied the embassy in Tehran way back in Carter’s era. It has been a low level war for the most part, to be sure. Though they did ramp it up quite a bit during the Iraq era by supplying our enemies with those explosive formed penetrators (shaped charges) which killed so many of our soldiers. So it would not be ‘starting’ a war to recognize that we have had one on our hands for the last thirty some years. And in all those years we have seen both parties ignore it.
We should recognize the true state of things. Congress should pass a resolution which simply recognizes that a state of war with the Islamic Rep. of Iran exists. That doesn’t commit us to invasion, or regime change, or nation building. It simply recognizes reality. Formal recognition of the fact that a state of war exists and has existed would allow us to do a number of useful things far short of invasion and occupation. Good policy depends on a clear vision of reality, and the reality is that these folks are at war with us.
And Jack. Amadinajab (sp?) is an apocalyptic who would WELCOME the destruction of his own country because he believes that will usher in the return of the 12th Imam. It is a bad idea to let people like this acquire nukes.
Also, Jack. We weren’t at war with Osama anymore than we were at war with Yamamoto. We were/are at war with the political institutions they serve. In Yamamoto’s case it was Imperial Japan. In Osama’s case it is the Caliphate as ordered by extreme Islamists. Bush didn’t do us any favors with his silly ‘War on Terror’ meme. Terror is the tactic used by the political institution. We are at war with the political institution, not it’s tactics.
So david who died and appointed America the world’s policeman? Who gave the ‘leader of the free world’ (a laughable proposition now that the president can declare anyone an enemy of the state and suspend habeus corpus) the moral authority to pre-emptively attack any nation that may or may not pose a threat to the national security of the nation.
I’m sorry but I don’t buy the line that Iran would attack America and/or it allies with a nuclear attack, for one thing Achmadinijad being the President of Iran cannot order a nuclear attack, that power belongs to the Supreme Leader who (lets face it) is saner than his subordinate and didn’t get to where he is today by being a hot-headed moron.
Hi Jack!
Here is a newsflash for you. There
is NO world policeman. All there are are nations. Nations which have interests. Sometimes these interests are in conflict. Which is why we have a military.
Another thing, Jack. You have a lot riding on your evaluation of the sanity of the Iranian leadership. I’m not a gambling person, but I sure hope you win.
If you hadn’t guessed David I was being sarcastic, I was merely emphisising the fact that for the past 65yrs or so the US has had a tendency to stampede in with its millitary in order to bully other nations into acquiessing to its will. Now the rest of the free world tolerated that when the russians were trying to impose communism on the world but ever since the USSR failed America has increasingly looked like a big bully that dictates the course that other nations take.
BTW I do think we have a body which one could vaugely call the world’s policeman……………. its called the UN and its aim (like its ill fated predecessor) is to prevent conflict. Now whilst I don’t believe in the gay rights crap that the UN tries to impose the actual idea of some body to which nations are accountable isn’t a bad one.
Of course if the One True Faith domminated the world, things would be much easier.
Jack. The whole Iraq thing was done to ENFORCE the numerous U.N. Resolutions. What use, Jack, is an organization which talks and talks but never acts?
Precisely.
One must never forget, that the reason the citizenry of this country so largely supported the Iraq War, was because of failed U.N. Military Resolutions which ended the last Iraq War.
The U.N. is a joke. Diplomacy in this region is a joke. The jackals will do what the jackals will do: whatever they want.
Conflicts of interest do not justify wars in the Catholic ethos. It may do so in some non-religious ethical system based on advancing one’s own interest. It is not however the system by which military action and willed deaths of humans are permitted in Catholic Just War Evaluations.
And a military acting to DEFEND a nation against unjust attack? What is that, Dan, but a just war? On the part of the nation defending itself, of course. We fought a just war against Nazi Germany.
Yes, let’s praise the Supreme Leader.
When your embassy is taken over and held, this is considered an invasion of home territory and a just cause of war. No presidential candidate of any major party ever has taken a position otherwise. Iranian behavior since then has furnished other just causes of war.
The international system demands that Iran keep its private citizens from organizing to kill foreign nationals. Iran does not do so and it doesn’t even make the national news most of the time when some American or group of Americans come under a death fatwa. Sometimes these private religious judicial decisions are successfully enforced and those who write them are not brought to justice as the whole practice is legal in Iran.
These existing causes for war moots the whole “pre-emptive war” subject. For Iran it doesn’t apply and hasn’t applied since 1979. For policy reasons we have not pursued the war we could have. To let us sleep at night, we ignore these just causes of war and pretend that they do not exist. Such a pretense is at least in part based on a double standard of behavior.
Why do you take the position that Muslims should not be held to the same standards of international behavior as everybody else? That sort of double standard in the US is usually characterized as bigoted. Why would the label not fit your position?
No David, the United States has been at war with Iran since 1953 when it deposed its democratically elected leader Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and in his place reinstalled its puppet the Shah.
Thank the Lord someone pointed that out!
Oh. There were NO Iranians in favor of the Shah instead of Mossadegh? We just picked someone and imposed him on an entirely unwilling nation? That is a pretty shallow view.
When England supported parties in France who were opposed to Napoleon, and, after twenty years or so of war managed to bring regime change to France, what in your view where the Brits guilty of? As I said above, nations have interests and that sometimes means that support for one internal faction over another is advisable. It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, if some nation had engineered a coup overthrowing Adolph sometime around 1936.
“There were NO Iranians in favor of the Shah instead of Mossadegh? We just picked someone and imposed him on an entirely unwilling nation?”
Yeah, that’s pretty much the common narrative. How else do you suppose it’s entirely our fault? Are you trying to say it isn’t? That’s pretty radical.
Marv. What is sacred about ‘democracy’? If the majority of the citizens of a state vote for an evil policy how do you figure we should not oppose it, tooth and claw? It was the ‘democratic’ will of the citizens of our southern states that black folks should not be integrated with white folks. Should we have respected that ‘democratic’ decision, Marv?
In fairness it’s not really democratic if not everyone has a vote.
Although I see your point. In itself democracy would allow the “tyranny of the majority.” Punishing Jehovah’s Witnesses for not saying the “Pledge of Allegiance” might be something Americans would still support. Almost certainly was at one time. But Constitutional concerns overturn democratic ones in that case.
Moving beyond us in Egypt the majority, I believe, does favor severe punishments (maybe even execution) for apostates and adulterers. For them it’s looking like the democratic process may indeed mean less human rights for certain minorities.
The British were involved -because of their oil company.
In France? in 1795 to 1815 ???
Sorry–I was referring to this point–
“the United States has been at war with Iran since 1953 when it deposed its democratically elected leader Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and in his place reinstalled its puppet the Shah.”
Mosaddegh had nationalized the Iranian Oil company. As I understand it-previously -the British had interest in the company and that became a big problam.
It kind of reminds me of what Chavez has done in Venezuela.
Sure, the threat of nuclear war was avoided during the Cold War. But the greater the proliferation of nukes gets, the greater the probability of someone using them becomes. Hence, using any political means to avoid a further spread, especially when it involves regimes like that in Iran, especially if we know about it and can do something about it.
Saying that “Iran will surely not nuke the US” is just plain selfish. Why did America’s allies bother to join in the war on Al-Kaida or the liberation of Afghanistan. After all, Bin Ladin never attacked us.
Saying that “preemptive war/strike” is “not in the catechism” misreads church teaching and anyway is not a good argument in political matters.
Ron Paul is a fool – an honest fool!
No, it’s not selfish. It’s based on that notion that we have found the cause of problems in the world, and it is us. Somehow had we not done the things we did, everything would have fallen into place and the only thing left for the world to do would have been to sit around and sing John Lennon songs all day. Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps once America has been kicked into second or third rate country status, the better off the world will be. We’ll have to see. Since we’re heading there, we’ll probably get to see the results soon enough. I hope the Pauls and his ilk are correct. I really do. Because if their appraisal of the cause of problems in the world isn’t correct, then we’ve just put the screws to our posterity. And that would be a shame.
“It’s based on that notion that we have found the cause of problems in the world, and it is us.”
Then it’s more self-absorbed than selfish. Things happen in this world, bad things, that don’t have anything to do with us.
Radical Salafism was a reaction more to British imperialism than us. In fact much, maybe most, of Radical Islam’s origin is not really about us as we weren’t that involved in the Mideast before WWII. Qutb responded, some, to our separation of church-and-state but Mahdudi of Pakistan I believe dealt with other things. Many Islamist organizations started as a reaction against Arab nationalism and Kemalism in Turkey.
And then there are things beyond Radical Islam too. Violence in Rwanda or Sudan or wherever isn’t necessarily caused by us. We have great power, but we’re not the center of all human action.
Self-absorbed. That’s the term I was searching for.
Pre-emptive war is unethical and against Catholic teaching. It is no misreading of Church teaching. Your suggestion is dishonest and misleading.
Thiswas the statement by then Cardinal Ratzinger from his position in CDF.
Pakistan is more of a nuclear threat than Iran. Indonesia is more of a theeat to Australia than Iran is to the US.
You make an argument from the viewpoint of what you would term “the real world” yet it is immoral and anti-Catholic.
You misread even the linked statement of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger. But even if you parsed him correctly, opinions of a Cardinal or even a Pope do not dictate church teaching. And though the catechism is a good and reliable source for the latter, it is also not identical.
Sure, Pakistan is more of a NUCLEAR threat because Pakistan already has the bomb while Iran doesn’t. Unfortunately, being a nuclear power more or less amounts to immunity in international relations. There’s nothing anyone can do to make Pakistan a non-nuclear power but there is still time left in the case of Iran.
Although I originally supported the Iraq War I do agree pre-emptive war is morally questionable at least.
However I think “humanitarian intervention” can be justified if there is good reason to expect success and the goal is to protect a people from destruction. I think intervening in Rwanda would have been morally just and I think even the Church was not opposed to NATO’s presence in Bosnia.
Non-interventionism, however, I don’t think allows for such intervention. If even a small country, as intervening in a small country I think generally has a greater chance of success, engages in genocide I’d think non-interventionist approach would be nothing. And the faith does speak of “what I have done AND what I have failed to do.” Even if Paul has subsidiary down, a non-interventionism that involves cutting all foreign aid and never aiding humanitarian peacekeeping I think would likely be in violation of solidarity. Granted most Republicans are not in-tune with solidarity, and it’s something I struggle with at times, but to me Paul’s “America alone” attitude is maybe the most extreme Republican lack of solidarity with the world’s poor.
Whatever else they may be, the Iranians are not crazy. Their desire to go nuclear is very much rooted in logic. In fact, they’d have to be blithering fools NOT to seek that capability. We’ve made it very clear in words and actions that we consider it our prerogative to invade and occupy ANY non-nuclear country at any time for any reason. They see that our bravado falls apart very quickly when it comes to confronting, say, North Korea.
I didn’t get that. So they have to get a nuke because we always say we will invade any country that gets a nuke but we never actually do it. What’s that mean?
No, they desire a nuke because the United States imposes its will by whatever method it deems expedient in its dealing with non-nuclear countries.
It is acquiring nukes which keeps the US from running rough shod over you. Mostly because cowards rarely pick on folks who might black an eye.
And if there’s a word, besides the two used by Nakasone, to describe Americans and America, it is cowardly.
I hope you’re right.
You’re right in exposing an overbearing and ill-considered American policy.
But that that is no justification to now turn a blind eye to horrendous developments, including Iran going nuke.
That, Garrett, was a lovely bit of libel. Do you think it is an act of Christian Charity to toss off deadly insults like that?
Yeah. The U.S. is overbearing. Doing things like shutting off trade to Imperial Japan because of their actions in China. Yep, the U.S. is a Big Bad Bully in your view. Our national interests are NEVER grounded in a desire for true progress and the common good. According to you.
Tell you what, Garrett. Come to Texas, Garrett. Try your insults in the first bar you find. See what happens then. If you aren’t what you accuse us of being.
Texas. Explains a lot. Established in large part by the same fine folks who settled Tennessee.
I think the history speaks for itself.
(Oh, and I did that once in White Settlement, in ’97 I think. I got my ass whipped by my own friends and family later, for putting them in the spot, but ‘locals’ seemed to sit and act most respectably.)
Exactly.
This, combined with the fact that the U.S. has overthrown their government in living memory gives them more than enough incentive to build nuclear weapons.
I don’t want to see a nuclear Iran, but then I don’t want to see nuclear weapons at all. Given the reality of the world we live in we have to accept a nuclear Iran, and eventually a nuclear world. Just as people went from sticks to swords, from swords to guns, from guns to missiles, they will go from missiles to nuclear missiles. As I’ve said before, if Iran gets erratic they to worry about Israel, which is our ally and has proven itself quite capable of neutralizing nuclear powers in the past.
Peace and God bless!
I’m trying to remember when we invaded Syria, Venezuela or Zimbabwe and drawing a blank. At the very least we “must” have invaded Venezuela. I mean they have oil, their leader hated Bush, and the Monroe Doctrine says it’s okay. After all in the 1980s we invaded Panama.
But for the life of me I don’t remember the US invading Venezuela. In fact Chavez is still there. Or do you think we gave Chavez cancer? Even then that’s not exactly the same as an invasion.
Your problem, Thomas R., is that you are living in Reality-Ville and not Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
It is only logical to violate your treaty obligations if you think you can get away with it and you entirely take morality out of the question. So much for the Islamic state of Iran
Or the United States for that matter. Your entire history is founded on the regular violation of your treaty obligations.
In fact, not much is funnier than an American sputtering about bad-faith treaty partners!!!
Garrett. Time for some citations to support your accusations. Other that bad faith with the various Indian Tribes, point out some of these ‘treaty violations’ please.
Matt B,
No, I meant precisely what I said. If you have any evidence of the US congress declaring war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Granada, Serbia, Vietnam, Korea or any other nation we have invaded since VJ day, you provide it.
Maybe suffrage should be limited to those with a functional understanding of us civics.
Garrett. A resolution authorizing the use of force IS a declaration of war. Apparantly you think that using different words to describe a thing changes the nature of the thing. You need a retro course in ontology.
What, Garrett, is the difference between a ‘pre-owned’ and a ‘used’ car?
Unless David Davies hails from Poland or the sudetenland, someone ought to clue him in that hitler never did succeed in attacking us.
We declared war on Germany due to their alliance with Japan. We justly declared war on Japan, but didn’t wage it justly at all.
Look folks, I know the world’s a scary place but you’re going to have to grow chests and relinquish your illusions of control. Whacking Hitler in 36 could very well exacerbate the situation there at that time. And I’ll lay dollars to doughnuts it’s folks trying to save us from annihilation who will bring the nuclear winter.
Not for any reason but that’s how things work.
Oh, and for David Davies, your a liberal! I bet that’ll be a shock!!!
From what I know, and what seems to fit what I find, war can be just to protect another nation from invasion or annihilation. Christian nations could, and did, defend certain kingdoms from Muslims or Mongols.
So although going to war with Hitler in 1936 could not really be justified doing so in 1938 perhaps could have been after he took all of Czechoslovakia and not just the Sudetenland. Particularly if one had reason to think Nazism was a threat to the faith in that land. And certainly when Hitler attacked Poland, and our allies went against him, the US could have justly sided against Hitler. At least so is my understanding.
Quite wrong, Garrett. It was Germany which first declared war with the U.S. We accepted their invitation. If Hitler had kept his head and stayed out of the Japan vs U.S. war, who knows what would have happened. I think FDR wanted to get into it on the side of Churchill’s U.K., but he needed a clear reason. Hitler gave it to him.
As for attacking us, while it is true that Nazi Germany didn’t manage to drop any bombs on our country, they killed lots and lots and lots of merchant sailors with their submarines. All within view of our coastal cities. They even sank a U.S. Destroyer BEFORE Pearl Harbor! Did you know that?
The discussion, Garrett, was over whether it was a legitimate activity of a state to try to influence the government of another state. Not ‘whacking’ Hitler. I maintain that if the Poles and the French could have maneuvered forces within Germany to overthrow the Nazis it would have been both a good thing and a legitimate thing. Like our actions in Iran in 1953.
If our actions in Iran in 1953 were such a good thing, why do we have so many problems with Iran to the point where our rulers wax hysterical over the possibility that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon which its rulers say they don’t want and reject on moral religious grounds? In Iran in 1953, the US overthrew a secular democratic regime in favor of a secular authoritarian regime and wound up after a half generation with a religious half democratic and half authoritarian regime which the US regime considers its main enemy. In Iraq the US regime overthrew an anti-Iranian secular authoritarian regime replacing it with a pro-Iranian religious half authoritarian and half democratic regime. Now our rulers wax hysterical about the increase in Iranian influence in Iraq. Is the US regime crazy, evil, or stupid? How about all three?
You forgot Jimmy Carter’s part in bringing in the Islamic rule of Iran by the Ayatollahs that brought about the US Embasy hostage situation.
This past Iranian election showed just how “democratic” Iran is and Obama handled it all so well.
Aside from all the utilitarian and defense arguements, there are other considerations for Christians.
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1