Iran Nuclear Deal

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
542

You lambasted me for pasting opinion pieces before. Why would it be ok for you and not for me? What do I care what Robert Kegan thinks? He’s a Harvard Psychologist, so he’s an expert on Israeli diplomacy? He’s as much of an expert as anybody here.

Netanyahu was invited to speak, by the House Speaker. He was absolutely within his right to do so and it would actually have been diplomatically stupid for him not to. Do you honestly think, snubbing the only people who like you within your most important ally is a good idea? Of course you would.
Believe it or not, we do not live in a dictatorship or monarchy so Congress does not need the president’s permission to invite an ally to speak.

What was bullshit is to ram the deal through without considering the people who would be most affected by it, Israel. They are the one’s in range. They are the one’s who Iran has sworn to destroy. Netanyahu was invited, he spoke and was snubbed by the President who was imposing a bad deal against the will and the security of Israel.

543

There is an opposing viewpoint-

544

They may be terrorists, but their “our terrorists”… That’s what it looks like to me.

545

I think Putin is a more serious ally to Syria but not because we didn’t blow the place to hell and sacrifice a bunch of soldiers. It’s because when it was time to act, early, early on we didn’t act. And that would not have required enormous amounts of blood and treasure. It would require that now. In the end, may be the only option left. Let’s hope not…
This situation is tense. And a couple wrong moves could seriously escalate this war into something we cannot ignore.

If you remember, nobody intervened in Syria early on. Not the U.S., not Russia. All by itself, it completely came unglued. Then ISIS explodes on the scene (figuratively and literally) and we have a quagmire.

So what if everybody just stayed out? Well it’s hard to imagine it could be worse, but the death toll would probably be in the millions and the humanitarian crisis even more unimaginable.
Sometimes the cost of doing nothing is higher. People had to intervene. And since we didn’t have people on the ground, Russia took the opportunity to plan their flag. Literally, there are Russian flags on Syrian soil…

546

Mmmm, No. ISIS has existed for quite a while. In different forms and as parts of different groups, they have been developing for over a decade. Uniting under one flag and storming a weak Iraqi defense force was very dramatic, but it was a long time in the making. The Syrian and Iranian border territory has been a shit storm of insurgency from the get go.

547

Thank you for your response, Pat.

People often think that when you say “Diplomatic/Political” solution…it is merely stiffs; sitting around a table sipping water and singing Kumbaya.

A diplomatic/political solution ALWAYS has military action as an “underpinning”. It is NOT merely “trusting the talk.”

Ultimately this is what I believe…

The thousands of Intelligence and Military People who put their Lives on the line every day…and probably have a deeper Love (in many cases) for this Country that all of us combined…AND ultimately will be the ones often to make horrific sacrifices…are neither “dumb” nor “don’t know what they are doing”. I also think that the President does his best in an area of the World where choices are often between horrific and unimaginable death and carnage.

The ME too often is not a place of “good” and “bad” choices…but trying to stop one bleeder and hope that another, often larger one, doesn’t open up.

Why do I support the President and the Policy so far?

  1. We are engaged. Stretched thin…but engaged…

  2. I feel the President, the Intelligence Community and the Military are making the best decisions they can in what are often “no-win” scenarios.

  3. Whether “forced” or not; despite the rhetoric and his disagreements with Netenyahu; he continues to support Israel (which is also important to me).

  4. I will always support our President; despite how much I may, or may not disagree with him; over a Thug like Putin with a Napoleon Complex who runs his country like Al Capone.

  5. C-5’s are not making daily trips full of American Flag-Drapped Coffins, and Dover Mortuary is not running at capacity

That’s it.

Those are my feeling and my thoughts.

548

I know that. What I mean by ‘exploding on the scene’ is that they went on the offensive, took over towns and territories, caused a bunch of terrorist attacks, etc. I do not mean ‘began to exist’ I mean, they showed the world they existed by means of terror and violence.

It like I said “The Nazi’s exploded on to the scene in 1933”, I don’t mean that’s when they started I mean that’s when they made themselves known.

549

My God, you have elevated bumbling ignorance to a fucking art form.

Robert Kegan is a Harvard psychologist.

Robert Kagan, who wrote the adduced article, is – and has for a long while been – one of the most influential members of the (neo)conservative foreign policy community.

To be clear, this isn’t merely a typo. You tried to look up Robert Kagan, misspelled it, got Kegan, and ran with that. The problem isn’t the misspelling. The problem is that you had to look up Robert Kagan in the first place. You are constantly babbling about foreign affairs on this board. Every foreign-policy related thread gets instantly cluttered with your deep and ornate ignorance. And yet you don’t follow this stuff at even a basic-enough level to know who Robert Kagan is. It’s mind-numbing.

550

Ok. It just seems that the contemporary narrative is that we have these pop-up terror groups of rag tag militia coming out of the woodwork, when the reality is that the seeds of what we see now were actually planted just shortly after I was born (mid 70’s).

551

Fair enough. I am reeling about the recent past. Meaning, not taking the opportunities available to us that could have prevented it from descending into the current situation. In other words, I wish we took appropriate action when it was appropriate to take it.
This is not merely hindsight, either. The courses of action we were, or were not taking was driving me nuts. Especially when I see horrific suffering darkening the skies and we stay silent and do nothing until we’re forced to move.
Now, we cannot get a redo.

552

The rise of salafi islam or however you may call it is a direct result of Saudi efforts and money, beginning in late 70ies and continuing to this day.

There are many fascinating accounts of how the Saudis spent hundreds of millions in Pakistan, even editing the Quran and adding more anti-Christian and anti-Semitic content (thus, ironically, commiting the mortal sin of editing the word of god).

One of the more bizarre results of this educational/propaganda drive is that Pakistanis exibit on average extremely negative opinions about the Jews, despite most of them never having seen or met one.

Same thing with the Pakistani community in the UK.

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553

Fuck. YPG just announced that US ordered/threatened them to withdraw from Manjib.

Apparently clueless Biden did some dirty deal with Erdogan to ensure that islamists survive. Would be interested to know how it is better that ISIS or Al-Qaeda control a city than a bunch of secular socialists.

Mother of all backstabbings.

554

loppar:

This is the VERY thing I have been alluding to!

Biden, the Administration, the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community didn’t just wake up this morning and say:

…“Hey…let’s screw the Kurd’s…and while we are at it, provide the Right with some more Fodder to throw at us…!”

There were most likely no “good” options in attempting to balance all options available.

The question is “why” they did what they did; I am confident that it was not because of some great Love of Turkey and a hate for the Kurd’s.

555

We just can’t make enemies fast enough in that region.

I’m starting to look at the middle east like a block of swiss cheese. Every new admin or leadership change sees another hole and sticks their dick in it, thinking they’ve found a fresh hole. None realize that they’ve all been fucking the same stinking block of cheese for decades.

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556

Ok, let me try to explain this is an incredibly, incredibly bad deal, probably reached at the spur of the moment under Turkish pressure. Turkey has been ramping up the rhetoric against the US and this is probably results of some serious blackmailing.

  1. Erdogan’s government is tolerating, often actively supporting ISIS. ISIS funds itself through oil sales. To whom are they selling it? Turkey. Erdogan’s son is coordinating the business side of things. He even had some Western journalists killed over it.

All those thousands of dumb-as-rock ISIS recruits from the suburbs of Brussels, Birmingham and Paris - how DO they reach Syria? Well, it seems that the only thing they have to do is buy a plane ticket to Istanbul, after that they just magically appear a thousand miles away in Syria. It’s no mean feat crossing Anatolia even for a local, not to mention if you don’t speak the language and are a dumb petty criminal from Marseilles.

  1. Turkey is basically going in to save ISIS.

This may sound bizarre, but unfortunately it is true. Erdogan is trying to resurrect the Ottoman empire and ISIS are fellow sunnis. A bit weird and a tad overzealous for him, but his guys nevertheless. Very useful for killing Kurds, with their “horrendous” gender equality and socialism.

So Turkey is coming into Syria before someone else (the Kurds) has a chance to go in and actually finish these guys off. Sure, they won’t be called ISIS anymore, but the rank-and-file ISIS soldiers will be nominally captured, then integrated into islamic militias under Turkey’s control, and Washington will be informed that ISIS in northern Syria is “destroyed”.

In return, Erdogan gets (already got it) a free hand against the Kurds, and that means some serious murdering. Probably by those ex-ISIS guys.

  1. Turkey and ISIS really hate the Kurds.

Ever wonder how all those ISIS suicide attacks in Turkey ALWAYS target the Kurds? Always secular anti-government Kurds, preferably women? Surely a coincidence that ISIS always targets HDP (Kurdish opposition party in Turkey, whose members are subject to regular extrajudicial killings) and never Erdogan’s faithful?

All that socialist meetings where decisions all made by voting, women’s rights, social equality fixation really pisses Erdogan off. If you listen to his speeches, after he starts foaming at the mouth and listing these “crimes” I listed above, it’s always the Kurds who are according to him responsible for everything bad that is happening in Syria. Occasionally, for external consumption he’ll unconvincingly add “and ISIS” but it’s clear where his sympathies lie.

In short - a horrible, treacherous deal, improvised at the last moment, betraying the only pro-American people in the ME. I don’t think from Carter you’ve had an administration that was so horrible and incompetent and horrible in terms of foreign policy.

EDIT: Just checked some islamist twitter feeds - jubilation that the “secular terrorists” have been humiliated by the “faithful” and that “stupid Americans” unwittingly took part in it.

EDIT 2: Kurds are incensed, feel betrayed to the point of tears. Pretty much confirm what I wrote earlier, about ISIS fighters changing uniforms and simply handing over towns and villages to Turkish forces.

Worth a look: https://twitter.com/Hevallo/

Simply shameful.

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557

Please refer to the opinion piece and lambasting in question. As for Kagan, see an excerpt of smh_23’s post below:

It is highly inappropriate for a head of state to intrude in the political system of an ally. Netanyahu skirted the executive branch - a peer - in an attempt to influence U.S. policy. Good intentions or not, it was an unacceptable violation of diplomatic decorum. Would it have been ok for Obama to visit the Knesset to speak of the virtues of the JCPOA and why it must support the arms control agreement Netanyahu was publically opposed to the deal? Of course not.

Against the will and security of Israel? Israel doesn’t dictate U.S. foreign policy. A nuclear Iran would be an extremely disconcerting development for Washington. While interest between allies often align, they are never identical, as no states are identical. From an American perspective the JCPOA rightly prioritized U.S. interests.

It’s clear that the deal significantly strengthens the military option in terms of both international legitimacy and efficacy. Because of this, even Iran Hawks should be for the deal. Consider also Israeli strategic thought, and in particular, what is called the Samson Option and Israel’s unwillingness to accept mutual nuclear deterrence.

558

See my post above and have at it, Sig (Sauer?).

559

loppar:

These are great explanations and scenarios…but am I also to believe that the Intelligence Community and the Administration are oblivious to all this?

That the final decision was made at “the spur of the moment”; out of incompetence and treachery; with no thought whatsoever about the best interest of the U.S.; and absolutely “zero” thought given to the Kurd’s?

While your thoughts are certainly plausible; they are just too “clean-and-conspiratorial”; with too many holes that just don’t add up. (For me).

However, if true; we better throw the LOT of them out, ASAP; from the whole Intelligence Community to the Administration; and have Trump straighten it all out, since Clinton would be just more of the same.

And I say this seriously if no more fore-thought is going into these decisions that we would give to changing our shoes.

560

Would be more than happy to elaborate on each of the alleged holes in the theory.

Here’s some food for thought - Kurdish YPG suffered 264 casualties in liberating Manjib from ISIS - ISIS lost more than a thousand soldiers.

Today, Turkish sponsored militas “liberated” Jarabulus, a major ISIS stronghold with a grand total of one casualty.

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561

Well, what happened was that I clicked on your link and I had exceeded my freebies from the Post and all I got was “Opinion” and the guys name and it flipped to a screen that told me I needed to subscribe. So thinking I had the name I tried to find it elsewhere and I suppose I got the name wrong… and found the wrong guy. I had a 5 second look. It’s not a shock I mixed up the letters in a 5 second look, I am dyslexic, which is no secret.
So I got the wrong guy… Ooops.

You think it’s inappropriate for an invited guest of the United States Congress to come speak to congress, even though he was invited by the Speaker of the House and house leadership?

Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. I am sure if it were a Bush White House and Congress invited somebody Bush didn’t like, I am sure you’d be fine with it.

Congress has the right to invite an ally to speak at Congress, independent of the President. Again, we don’t live in a dictatorship, thank God.

And the fact that JCPOA was our deal, does not make it free of consequences for our allies in the region. Israel has every right to bitch as they are affected the most by an empowered, potentially future nuclear Iran.