Just my two cents, which actually has no cash value at all....
Of course the O'Bama administration is touting the new Iran / 5+1 (or whatever it's called) nuclear freeze deal, and now our living rooms are being blasted with TV commercials saying it will be the end of the world and we must stop it. So who's right?
IMHO both are. There is no way we are going to get (our definition of) a good deal with the Iranians. They are led by religious zealots who don't care what the world or even their own people want. Oh sure, they trotted out the guy with the neatly trimmed facial hair and a suit of western-style clothes to be their front man....
....but it's really this guy, their Grand Exalted PooBah, who holds the real power, and he has said the agreement will in no way alter his determination to destroy Israel or deter him from spreading his pro-Shia Muslim influence across the Mid East. I don't trust him, or the rest of the Gubment of Iran, and look for them to cheat every chance they get.
They'll get the world's sanctions off their backs, get the go-ahead to buy critical "stuff" from the West, then they'll be off to their old shenanigans again. (Before the ink even dried they announced a deal with Pootie Poo Putin to buy 100 Ilyushin aerial-refueling tankers, enabling their shitty little air force to extend their range to cover virtually the entire Mid East.)
BUT....
Let's get real here....we can't stop them. With regard to this particular crisis, we're essentially powerless. Sure, sanction hurt them, or more specifically hurt their people, but the religious zealots who call the shots there haven't cared about their people in decades. Why start now?
A few years down the road this will surely look like it was a bad deal. But at least on paper it bought us some time. Time to figure out what to do. Time to develop some miracle new technology that can zap their nukes, or scramble their computers with some new computer virus. I dunno. Anything is possible.
So I guess we should take the deal, but NEVER let ourselves think this will be the peaceful end of those pesky old Iranians. Like your slug of a brother-in-law, they'll be back. Count on it. *sigh*
Fortunately (?) for us, the Egyptians, Turks, and Saudis, and of course the always vigilant Israelis are making noises like they might step to the plate and do something. 'Course, if they succeed, what will be the unintended consequences from those odd bedfellows?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On a totally unrelated (believe it or not) topic, this evening I'm going to the gun club to shoot this:
You know what they say about men and their toys. :)
Now where did I put my tin foil hat?
S
Totally agree. The sanctions only served to keep the Iranian masses poor. Poor people are dangerous people. A prosperous Iran might just find other things to be concerned with than blowing people up and threatening their prosperity...maybe.
ReplyDeleteLifting sanctions will no doubt help the masses, and that's good, but I wonder if they'll only get the left-overs after the zealots fund their regional destabilizing? "Peaceful coexistent" is not part of their thought process. There are some CRAZY people over there!
DeleteIt's interesting, the US was faced with a similar issue in 1946 with the Soviet Union. The particulars are different, religion wasn't an issue, but the same choices were present. There were those, mostly in the military and joint chiefs, that wanted to confront the Bear right then and there, militarily. General Marshall was in the minority of generals with his Marshall Plan, which was adopted. We achieved an uneasy detente with the USSR, it had it's ups and downs, but we managed to get through the next 70 years without a war.
ReplyDelete“Force is all conquering, but it's victories are short lived.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Too bad Bush and Cheney didn't read a bit more of old Abe before heading to Iraq.
Even more interesting was that back in 1946 we still had overwhelming power, outside of a head-count of troops. We COULD have crushed them, but didn't. Smart move. Today we couldn't militarily disarm Iran even if we wanted to.
DeleteI don't know about 'crushing' Stalin's army. I think it was smart not to try.
DeleteI think we still had enough military might, including our early nuclear arsenal, if not raw numbers of troops in uniform still on active duty, to have taken the USSR out. But yes, it was smart not to try. And the Russians were smart enough to know that they had better not push us too far. That's why MAD worked for all those years.
DeleteIt's this deal or war. I say give it a try. The politicians goading us into war over this won't be the ones fighting or dying.
ReplyDeleteNice HK, hope you have fun with it.
ReplyDeleteYes, had a great time. It is an awesome gun!
DeleteGlad you did, it is above my pay grade. I did have a good hour with my FN 9mm, I love that gun.
DeleteTwo questions:
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck is that thing on Kerry's head?
And what do they say about men and their toys?
;-P
1. Looks like a bad dye job, or some sort of dead critter.
Delete2. "You can tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys."
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ReplyDelete