Iran: What would the Iranians have done had they been attacked on Sept 2001?
It's interesting to turn the tables.
Then we can get an idea of whether the planning is prudent.
Link: Because the American government is risking Americans' lives, there's no sense in recognizing their legitimacy: We can refuse to recognize their power [ Precedent: Click ][ Flyer ]
I’ve been thinking about Iran and the retired flag officer’s comments.
One argument I’ve heard in support of an invasion caught my attention. The argument is that if the US invades, the Iranians will rise up against their leadership and remove it.
That struck me as curious, especially when considering what happened in the wake of Sept 2001. Last time I checked, an external attack tends to do the opposite of what the Americans are assuming with Iran.
Rather than mobilize the people against the leadership, it does the opposite.
Let’s put aside what actually happened in the wake of Sept 2001, and focus squarely on the argument the Americans are offering: That once a country is attacked, the people should rise up against the leadership.
Suppose we were to apply that argument to America in the wake of Sept 2001. By inference, implication, and insinuation – are the American leaders not implying – given what they are saying about Iran, and what should happen after a US attack – that the American people “should have” done the opposite?
Rather than rally in unity, they should have been disorganized;
Rather than unite against the external enemy, they should have rallied against the government;
Rather than stand tall in the wake of an unprovoked attack, they would go their own way, then destroy the leadership?
The point isn’t that Americans did the wrong thing. The point is that Americans are asking the Iranians to do what Americans refused to do: Attack their own government.
It is arrogant to believe that any nation and people would do anything other than what Americans have shown they are willing to do: Unite, look outward, put on their boots, and throw it back, then many times over.
The Iraqis have done the same. It is arrogant for anyone in the White House to suggest to anyone in DoD or the Congress that the Iranians are going to do any different.
Rather, the real issue is, as was with Sept 2001, what can those we attack reasonably be expected to do in response.
This is a key area which the panniers fail to publicly discuss: How many Americans are expected to be killed in a lawful counterattack by the nations of the world?
Yes, I mean just what I said. Under the laws of war, when a nation like Iran is illegally invaded and attacked, it may lawfully ignore the laws of war and reciprocate.
It is one thing to theoretically plan for an invasion of Iran. It is quite another to think about the real consequences on Americans.
B-2 pilots spend their evening hours at home with their families. Are we to believe that if they illegally attack foreign civilians, that they are immune to lawful reprisal or that their families can rest assured they will be safe?
Put yourselves in the shoes the Afghanis in August 2001. If you knew that your life would turn upside down, would you put an end to the imminent attacks of Sept 2001?
Or would you stay silent, hoping -- by some magic -- the end result would be better off?
Your leadership does not think beyond the sunset. Rather, it thinks only of what sounds good today.
The Taliban failed because they did not think of the consequences.
Those attacked came into their homeland, and destroyed all that the Taliban valued.
Make a good case why the world will not do the same against those who wage illegal war in the Middle East.
You are dreaming if you believe those so abused will say, "I guess we had this coming."
No, they will do what the world did after Sept 2001: They will rally, they will unite, and they will engage their enemy in the land and on the soil that the enemy is unprepared to fight.
The Taliban miscalculated.
So too are American war planners.
The world has seen enough. They have nothing to lose but the bully.
They have everything to gain by waging lawful war on America.
Think back to the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo pictures. Notice who was in there. Military personnel abusing civilians.
Should the Americans decide to wage illegal war, the world may choose to wage the same abuses on America.
American service members took photos of what they were doing. They thought it was funny. It was abusive.
It is reasonable to review history. What did the Nazis do after WWI. They felt entitled to abuse others. They took photos.
It is reasonable to assume that foreigners will gleefully watch American civilians being tortured on television. Is this what the war planners have thought about?
It is one thing to keep all the options on the table. It is quite another to realize that your government is serious in what it says: It is willing to sacrifice X-thousands of innocent American civilians at home just so that it may attempt to execute a plan that they’ve been told will not work.
The use of nuclear weapons is always an option. But once they are used, no other nation is constrained from inflicting similar abuses on Americans. Nor will there be anything that will stop foreign networks from recording the abuses live for the world’s entertainment.
America’s leadership and war planners are delusional. They openly brag that they are willing to bargain with American civilian lives
Americans have to decide whether they are willing to be civilized by choice or by force.
Once the US uses nuclear weapons, or engages in an illegal war of aggression, the world is no longer contained by the laws of war. Rather, they will laugh as innocent American civilians are brutalized on live TV. It will be their entertainment.
America is a bully. Free people around the world – once they see the US is planning/considering using nuclear weapons against a target that is not an imminent threat – will likely decide they no longer need to be retrained.
Rather, they will look at America as merely a playground for lawlessness. Recall the images of Iraq. Image that being downtown New York, or a small town in Ohio. Americans you are outnumbered. You do not have enough resources to put everyone under guns. The world no longer cares whether you are powerful or upset.
They are more upset. And the law is on their side. Free people when they have a choice between assenting to abuse, and being free to exercise their power, will choose to stand up and even die.
That is what American war planners and leadership are asking the world to do: To do something that Americans refused to do after Sept 2001.
Make no mistake. The leadership in America has vast resources and wealth. But there is one thing they do not have: Leadership, prudence, and statesmanship.
The openly brag about options, but refuse to discuss what they are really doing – putting the lives of innocent American civilians on the table to be bargained with as if pawns.
They do not have the right or power to do this.
Americans will have to decide whether they want to be civilized by choice or by force.
Once you violate the laws of war – as has already been done in Iraq – the world no longer has a “red line” that they will avoid crossing.
Rather, they will simply cross it first. Then they will gleefully use your illegal war and unlawful conduct as the opening to the worst imaginable things.
Against American civilians. The world no longer feels compassion for Americans. Nor are they restrained by morality or civility when interacting with Americans.
Humans can be mobilized to do brutish things, especially when shrouded under the doctrine of reciprocity.
The same shorted sightedness the RNC uses to justify attacks on Iraq, are the same arguments used to do the same in Iran.
Other nations are equally capable of mobilizing their citizens. But they do not have to whimper. Rather, they will have earned the sympathy of the world – and get others support to retaliate against American civilians.
Think of what happened after Pearl Harbor. Americans did not rise up and attack FDR. They turned outward. They faced the threat. They even rallied against those who might be a threat: The Japanese-Americans.
There is no reason to expect the Iranians to do anything else.
Rather, the Iranians should fully expect to get support from sympathetic governments in Latin America, the Middle East and also Eastern Europe.
There are rumors that the Russians supported the Iraqis with intelligence. There’s every reason to expect Latin America to continue to provide intelligence to support operations in America.
But the Iranians are not simply living far away. They will have the support of the Arabs, Sunnis, and Shiites. The US currently made the mistake of assuming the militias would fight each other; they did not anticipate that the factions in Iraq would unite against America.
The US did not expect the Iraqis to demand the Americans leave. This is what the Iraqi leadership is demanding, and what is behind the American desire to have new Iraqi leaders. So much for America exporting democracy.
American democracy also has mud on its face when it comes to the elections in Palestine. Free people chose an outcome America doesn’t like. America doesn’t like democracy; it prefers to obedient tyrants like Saddam and the South Vietnamese.
America may have many nuclear weapons. But that does not give them the moral high ground.
Think back to Sept 2001. The American government could have launched nuclear weapons. But who was it going to attack?
The Americans have a problem. They have weapons that can only be used against physical locations. They do not have weapons of hope, inspiration. They have no such weapons because the greatest force in the world is simple that -- your example. The Americans are hypocrites.
When you hear of the Americans planning to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, ask who the Americans are going to then attack and with what.
The problem America has is that once it opens the nuclear genie bottle, it cannot be sure what is going to happen.
The world only needs the nuclear option to be used once, and then all their wishes will be granted: They will not longer be bound by any law, nor feel any sympathy for any hardworking woman supporting her husband.
Rather, she and her family will be what the American government truly thinks: Expendable, collateral damage, and merely a trivial loss.
That’s how your American leadership considers you: Baggage, something to be cast to the wind, something to be thrown like paper Mache to a wind machine.
America is not willing to seriously discuss issues. America has already decided on outcomes and war, regardless facts.
The events and results of Iraq show us one thing: That the planning has failed, and the rule of law and logic are disconnected.
Cheney’s daughter is in charge of bringing Democracy to Iran and Syria. Who will bring democracy back to America?
Democracy for the middle east and Syria are not serous options. America doesn’t like democracy in Iraq and Palestine when the results are not consistent with the pre-selected outcomes.
Americans need to make adverse judgments about what the American planners have already decided are the range of acceptable outcomes. How many American mothers and children will be “acceptable” losses?
The world has well seen what America’s idea of democracy and free debate are: Arrive at the pre-determined outcomes.
The world is less inclined to discuss issues with Americans. Rather, the world will simply act on the basis of adverse inferences.
Think back to what Senator Kennedy said when discussing the Iraq invasion. He well stated that the very events about to unfold might precipitate the very violence we hoped to stop.
How right he was.
The lesson should not be lost when it comes to Iran. Just as the US action in Iraq has backfired and prompted more violence and backlash against America, so too should America expect the same with Iran.
If the US is going to talk about invading Iran, the war planner and public need to openly discuss:
We’ve already seen what happened to one Democracy in the Middle East when they lose support and their cash dries up. Hamas doesn’t have the support it needs – and deserves – to keep going.
The same could very well happen to America.
If the US is willing to use nuclear weapons without any credible reason, why should the world have any reason to use the US dollar?
America is about one thing: Power. It is wiling to use any pretext to inflict that power on anyone.
America is actually powerless. It cannot be civilized. Rather, it openly proposes absurd results and outcomes that are not only unachievable, they fail to look at the real costs.
America is a sham society. It talks about democracy. But it refuses to accept what free democracies choose.
Iraqis do not want Americans there. America’s solution is to change the government. Again.
Palestine had an election. They chose Hamas. Americans want the right to impose their choice.
The US isn’t serious about anything. It is serious about the idea of power. But it is not serious about the consequences of that power. Whether the US does or does not change another government is not the issue.
The question is why Americans should expect others to assent to abuses they refused to embrace on Sept 2001.
Americans chose to turn outward.
So too will the world – they will join forces, just as Americans joined forces with others after Pearl Harbor.
They may ultimately be destroyed. But they will be free.
The US likes to take money off the table when they bargain. They do this because the outcomes are at odds with “their agenda.”
The US terrorists of 1775 became Presidents.
The Israeli terrorist of 1949 because Statesmen.
The Palestinian terrorists of the 1960s became Nobel Peace Prize winners.
The Iranian terrorists of the 1970s now stand up to American arrogance.
America may be able to make grand coalitions to isolate people. They may be able to spread propaganda to manipulate minds.
But there is one thing absolutely clear: America has no moral authority or legitimacy.
It brutalizes other nations. And now it shows the world it is willing to sacrifice its most vulnerable at home to achieve nothing more than an agenda.
But this agenda has already been discredited. Yet, despite the failure, they continue to move like Hitler’s Blitzkriegs along a timeline.
The world is not a permanent meadow of nice weather. The earth still spins around the sun; and each six months we go from extremes of heat and cold.
America has over reached itself. It now wants others to overreach for them.
Those days are over.
The American leadership shows it will brutalize others. Now it shows it is willing to enjoy letting American civilians be brutalized at home.
The American leadership and planners have no solutions. They have no answers. They cannot explain how they are going to create or nurture conditions to sustain themselves.
They have run out of arguments.
They have already shown they will abuse their own citizens’ rights.
They show they are not willing to assent to treaties.
It is well within the scope of possibility that the American government will use force against its own civilians, and fail just as it has done in Iraq.
The US government is not legitimate. It can no longer say with a straight face that it serves any useful function.
It cannot protect its own civilians. Rather, it openly bargains with civilians lives.
It cannot guarantee it will be civil. Rather, it is unsustainable and moves at odds with the law.
It cannot guarantee that it will protect rights or prevent the abuse of power. Rather, it recklessly demonstrates that it is at odds with the laws of nature and reason.
This government is reckless, irresponsible, and untrustworthy.
It remains at odds with the interests of the people.
Next time you take a drive and see the open highway, imagine what that might look like if the conditions of Iraq where there.
Ask: What do you prefer – what you have or could have; or what may imminently thrust upon you by the recklessness of your “leaders.”
They have within themselves the power to choose whether you live, or whether you die. They were not given that power. But it is America that grants them that power to abuse.
Going forward, all bets are off once America launches illegal war in Iran. This is not a threat. Rather, it is clear to the world that America of 2006 is no different than Japan of 1941.
America’s leadership has failed.
America’s historians have not sung out. They remain silent of the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden. That could happen in America.
You should take many pictures of those open fields by the highway. They may soon be littered with the corpses of burning automobiles.
There’s one person who you can thank for this. You refuse to lawfully compel him to assent to the rule of law.
The world is ready. They may be weak, but they are also willing to die free than to continue for one more second under this insanity.
You wished this.
In re Iran, possible retaliation against American civilians: Because the US govt. risks Americans' lives, we do not need to recognize their power.
Precedent: Click ]
This government intends on playing brinkmanship, exposing Americans to the threat of lawful retaliation. There's no reason we should cooperate with our own destruction.
Tell your friends: We can quit working until they agree to talk. What they're doing is illegal -- and there's no reason we should agree to support the illegality.
Tell the American government to stick it. You will not expose Americans to this kind of insanity. Spread the word! We’re not going to cooperate with our destruction.
What are they going to do, abuse us? They're already doing that.
What are they going to do, make us support illegal war? That's not lawful.
They have no legitimacy.
There's nothing that they can do, but use force. The we'll see what they're really all about: Willing to abuse Americans so they can wage illegal war.
They're putting us at risk. We don't have to recognize their power.
Tell the American government to take a hike.
posted by Constant @ 1:37 PM
<< Home