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On May 20 2019 23:00 Rasalased wrote:
Military power is a political tool. Can the US throw bombs on Iran? Yes. Can the US achieve anything in Iran by using military power: no.
The US can declare war on Iran, unleash a whole bunch of violence and kill many people. But what is their political goal and how can they achieve it? The US still hasn't won in Afghanistan. The US is not winning in Yemen either.
What does the US want? They can bomb the shit out of Iran and then tell Saudi Arabia to try to invade Iran. But that doesn't work either. The US wants a weaker Iran because they want a weaker Iran. But they forgot about the 'why'.
If they ever go to war, of course there will be why. The why will be any number of combinations of
Some people getting rich from it
Oil
Military contracts and industry
Making Israel, Emirates and Saudi money happy
Possible short term electoral gain/distraction from internal issues
Control of the Persian Gulf
Bolton is not just a hobbiest. He will have his personal why's
Will it be good for the US as a whole. No. But it will be good for some people.
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On May 20 2019 23:38 Rasalased wrote:
I think it is more important to point out that Bush and Blair faced zero consequences. Saddam Hussein was hanged.
1) The international political situation was very different. The US could still count on international sympathy for the 9/11 attacks and they hadn't yet invaded Iraq under false pretenses.
2) Saddam Hussein had no international allies. Basically everybody was happy to see him go.
Now obviously the comparison with Germany invading Poland is also not apt. It'd very obviously depend on how exactly the US went about waging war with Iran how other countries would react, but I could definitely see international relations with the US cooling considerably from all current allies as they realize that troublesome internal politics leads to warmongering, as there is literally no believable excuse the US can dream up for a legitimate casus belli with Iran.
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Bolton was also involved in the second Iraq invasion. And there they definitely didn't know what they were doing. I understand you are cynical and I don't deny that some won't benefit from it. But the idea that the US will have this clear and achievable political goal with Iran, and they can just use their military power to achieve it, that is based on nothing.
In the second Iraq invasion, they really believes they could just walk in and the common people would accept them as saviors and then everything would automatically be fixed. People like John Bolton have zero understanding about the internal politics of a country like Iraq or Iran. And they also didn't learn anything. They are delusional. They have their own world view nothing that happens in reality can affect that world view.
If Bolton thinks he can achieve any of his political goals in Iran with military force, he is completely wrong and delusional. The US is too weak for many reasons. Just destroying your opponents tanks and airplanes means nothing. The US can arguably do that, but it won't achieve anything.
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Of course no one can stop the US from bombing Iran. However they can make it difficult. Apart from Saudi Arabia there won't be many bases to operate from.
The thing is that although the US has the capacity to level Iran doing so will almost certainly be a Pyrrhic victory. It's not a pushover country like Iraq so you will need to invest a large portion of the US military, almost certainly blowing the budget many times over (especially due to logistic difficulties) and opening the US up to economic "attacks" from the rest of the world. If you commit to little forces even an air campaign could get costly.
If you decide to invade you break the tenet of "never start a land war in Asia" and start the biggest ground war since Vietnam and probably an insurgency worse than both Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
If you go full scorched earth you alter geopolitics forever and make sure that every country on earth knows that they need defensive allies (and nukes) against the US in case they decide to bomb you.
And if you just drop some bombs on Irans air force there is 0 % chance of achieving anything.
Also this is not Iraq.
There is no 9/11 and not even a plausible casus belli.
The rest of the world has learned from Iraq even if the US hasn't (won't make the same mistake again).
And everyone outside the US thinks Trump is a retard.
I'm sure there are many countries (Russia, China, SA, Israel) that would LOVE for the US to go all in on Iran. Together with tariffs and a trade war, Trumps overall disdain for allies and internal rifts inside the US I could easily see Iran being a turning point for US hegemony.
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I mean, it's so bad that even if the CIA has overwhelmingly convincing proof that Iran is close to creating nuclear weapons, most of the world will still point at the US and say "well, that's your own stupid fault now, isn't it?"
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Well, if that happened, no one will believe the CIA/US. And it will literally be their own stupid fault because the US pulled out of the treaty that made it really hard for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
And I think that most countries in the world are worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons because then Saudi Arabia would also want to get them. And Saudi Arabia is just behind North Korea in being batshit crazy.
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Strange, I thought everyone in this thread has already moved away from the whole "USA can bomb the shit out of Iran" phase of immaturity, but apparently some of us has not. Yes, USA can throw weaponry on any country it likes and kill millions of people, so what? All that is achieved is that USA has killed millions of people for the purpose of killing millions of other people, and alienated every other country in the world. In the future, it'll be Trump, not Hitler as the cartoon villian incarnation as a shorthand for evil. Well done.
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On May 21 2019 02:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Strange, I thought everyone in this thread has already moved away from the whole "USA can bomb the shit out of Iran" phase of immaturity, but apparently some of us has not. Yes, USA can throw weaponry on any country it likes and kill millions of people, so what? All that is achieved is that USA has killed millions of people for the purpose of killing millions of other people, and alienated every other country in the world. In the future, it'll be Trump, not Hitler as the cartoon villian incarnation as a shorthand for evil. Well done.
Unless I missed a post, I'm seeing no one saying anything other than exactly what you're pointing out here.
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On May 21 2019 02:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Strange, I thought everyone in this thread has already moved away from the whole "USA can bomb the shit out of Iran" phase of immaturity, but apparently some of us has not. Yes, USA can throw weaponry on any country it likes and kill millions of people, so what? All that is achieved is that USA has killed millions of people for the purpose of killing millions of other people, and alienated every other country in the world. In the future, it'll be Trump, not Hitler as the cartoon villian incarnation as a shorthand for evil. Well done.
You may not have caught it (or may be highlighting that this position is being endorsed by posters that consider themselves "left), but Republicans and conservatives are basically openly endorsing the idea that ethics/morality/human rights stop at the border of the US. Elsewhere those are the concerns of the country in question and only apply in so much as they can enforce misconduct against an offending nation or force.
That's to say the argument that disregarding the human rights of people outside of our border is amoral rather than immoral has been gaining traction here and elsewhere among not only the right, but varying degrees of those in the "center".
Which is another way of alluding to the supposition that Hitler is symbolic of cartoon levels of evil because he lost.
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On May 21 2019 01:04 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Of course no one can stop the US from bombing Iran. However they can make it difficult. Apart from Saudi Arabia there won't be many bases to operate from.
Unfortunately I can't really find a non shitty sourced map (only lots of anti-war propaganda/meme ones) of the current situation but isn't Iran pretty much surrounded by US military operations from all sides but north?
Best i could find is this recent Guardian one but that doesn't show Afghanistan or the drone bases in Pakistan. And Israel would help 100% too.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/fxFmv0r.jpg)
I guess it's unknown how many of the countries shown would allow operations against Iran from the bases, and huge upscaling would be required, but still.
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On May 21 2019 03:30 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2019 01:04 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Of course no one can stop the US from bombing Iran. However they can make it difficult. Apart from Saudi Arabia there won't be many bases to operate from.
Unfortunately I can't really find a non shitty sourced map (only lots of anti-war propaganda/meme ones) of the current situation but isn't Iran pretty much surrounded by US military operations from all sides but north? Best i could find is this recent Guardian one but that doesn't show Afghanistan or the drone bases in Pakistan. And Israel would help 100% too. I guess it's unknown how many of the countries shown would allow operations against Iran from the bases, and huge upscaling would be required, but still.
That picture really draws attention to how Iran has positioned it's borders aggressively close to US troops.
With that in mind we're not actually tuned for the type of large scale conventional bombing campaigns that devastated Europe in WWII. Granted there's been lots of technological advancements since then, they haven't really been geared for that kind of total annihilation campaign.
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On May 21 2019 00:02 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2019 23:38 Rasalased wrote:
I think it is more important to point out that Bush and Blair faced zero consequences. Saddam Hussein was hanged. 1) The international political situation was very different. The US could still count on international sympathy for the 9/11 attacks and they hadn't yet invaded Iraq under false pretenses. 2) Saddam Hussein had no international allies. Basically everybody was happy to see him go. Now obviously the comparison with Germany invading Poland is also not apt. It'd very obviously depend on how exactly the US went about waging war with Iran how other countries would react, but I could definitely see international relations with the US cooling considerably from all current allies as they realize that troublesome internal politics leads to warmongering, as there is literally no believable excuse the US can dream up for a legitimate casus belli with Iran. I think this is a big one. There has been basically no overt international support for the US attacking Iran like there was after 9/11 with Afghanistan. We've seen leadership from the coalition forces on the ground repeatedly rebut a good chunk of the claims that Bolton, Pompeo, and all are putting out. I cannot see the EU supporting this war given that they were part of the Nuclear Deal that was working until the Trump Administration stopped their participation and started lying about Iran's behaviour.
From the outside, it 100% looks like the US backed out of the deal to raise tensions, and is now using those raised tensions to justify a war that looks increasingly like it is politically motivated. It's the same type of move they did with the supposed illegal crossing emergency at the border. Illegal crossings were trending downward massively from the early 2000s until 2017 until the Trump Administration made crossing legally incredibly difficult, which caused illegal crossings to spike back up, which let them then claim that there's an emergency.
Everything this adminstration does follows this stupid pattern. Same deal with the recent lifting of tariffs with Canada and Mexico for steel and aluminum. It wasn't an issue until the Trump Administration made it one, and now that the tariffs are lifted, they're suddenly claiming victory even though it was their own stupidity that caused the issue in the first place. It's like they're relying on their base not to pay enough attention to realize that it's the administration causing most of the issues.
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From the outside, it 100% looks like the US backed out of the deal to raise tensions, and is now using those raised tensions to justify a war that looks increasingly like it is politically motivated.
How dare you say that? Didn't you see the fabricated lies evidence in regards to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Have you forgotten the factually proven to be bullshit claims incredibly dangerous attacks of imaginary north korean torpedo boats on the USS Maddox that were clarified by the Commander of the Naval Group of the ship that was allegedly attacked, making clear it never happened, that ultimately led to the US invading Vietnam?
No. The US would never run underhanded strategies like the bay of pigs this.
America is the good guy, remember?
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In a news two-fer it appears that a judge has ruled that Trump's lawyers' arguments do not hold water and that the accounting firm Trump used, Mazars, must hand over their accounting records for Trump. An interesting thing to point out for this is that in their 41-page opinion on this case, the judge specifically cited Watergate:
"History has shown that congressionally-exposed criminal conduct by the President or a high-ranking Executive Branch official can lead to legislation," Mehta wrote, citing the Watergate investigation by the Senate.
"It is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a President for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct -- past or present -- even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry," he added.
Mazars has seven days until it will have to comply with the subpoena, Mehta said in his opinion Monday, but the judge refused to halt the subpoena after that. Another court would have to do so. Trump's team has not yet appealed the ruling. I had expected this to be the ruling since last week the judge seemed rather incredulous at the case Trump's legal team was making, since it more or less boiled down to claiming that congress does not have the legal authority to get Trump's records. The judge even pointed out how ridiculous this argument and had brought up prior investigations of presidents, forcing Trump's lawyers to either cede the point or claim that Watergate and the investigation into Bill Clinton weren't valid investigations.
Also, Michael Cohen said under oath in a closed hearing that Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow instructed him to lie under oath about when the Trump Tower Moscow project ended.
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former longtime personal attorney, told a House panel during closed-door hearings earlier this year that he had been instructed by Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow to falsely claim in a 2017 statement to Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, according to people familiar with his testimony.
In fact, Cohen later admitted that discussions on the Moscow tower continued into June of the presidential election year, after it was clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. Cohen is serving three years in prison for lying to Congress, financial crimes and campaign finance violations.
House Democrats are now scrutinizing whether Sekulow or other Trump attorneys played a role in shaping Cohen’s 2017 testimony to Congress. Cohen has said he made the false statement to help hide the fact that Trump had potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in a possible Russian project while he was running for president.
If true, I think this could get potentially ugly, especially since the House Intelligence Committee is already looking into this matter and seeing if they can find out who else was involved in telling Cohen this. Thus far Trump's lawyer's lawyers are basically arguing against this by attacking the character of Michael Cohen, something I think is rather risky to do since he has frequently backed up any of his claims with some form of documented evidence.
I expect more to come from this closed door hearing as Adam Schiff has already stated that he will be releasing the transcript from it minus anything classified.
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On polling : I am trying to understand what is happening to the Rasmussen poll on Trump's job approval. It was consistently between -2 and +5 except during the govt shutdown when it went to -14, and suddenly for one or two weeks, it has been going sharply downwards for several editions, to -10. Since the poll is supposedly skewed a few points towards conservatives, and other polls haven't moved much, I'm trying to find out if they have changed anything in their methodology?
If someone has an idea, do chip in.
http://m.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history
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On May 21 2019 02:46 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2019 02:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Strange, I thought everyone in this thread has already moved away from the whole "USA can bomb the shit out of Iran" phase of immaturity, but apparently some of us has not. Yes, USA can throw weaponry on any country it likes and kill millions of people, so what? All that is achieved is that USA has killed millions of people for the purpose of killing millions of other people, and alienated every other country in the world. In the future, it'll be Trump, not Hitler as the cartoon villian incarnation as a shorthand for evil. Well done. Unless I missed a post, I'm seeing no one saying anything other than exactly what you're pointing out here.
+ Show Spoiler +On May 20 2019 10:05 Mohdoo wrote:
Why does Iran talk like they are remotely capable of handling even the slightest flick of the US' giant military dick? This whole thing is so weird to me. Trump is a moron, but Iran is what I would describe as "the tallest midget" when it comes to military strength. Countries could wipe them out, but choose not to. Its like talking shit when you're in a wheel chair because you know no one would attack a cripple. On May 20 2019 10:30 Danglars wrote:
You chant Death to America enough with nothing happening, and people start to think America won’t ever bomb or invade. It’s weapons are used to kill our servicemen in Iraq. I don’t fully blame them.
One of their clients, Hamas, has shown particular success against Western democracies by packing their missile launch sites with kids. Retaliatory strikes on the launch sites have dropped. How many civilian casualties will we tolerate in a war against a lesser power? On May 20 2019 22:40 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2019 21:31 schaf wrote:
The US military can beat any opponent on the globe. The question is "but at what cost?!"
Iran is 4x the area of Iraq with a lot of mountainous territory and a pretty modern military with fighting experience. And don't forget at least the revolutionary guard (~125k personnel) would likely fight a guerilla war similar to Afghanistan. Sure, but if we decided "entirely destroy the entirety of Iran" while Iran decides the same thing of the US, Iran would be wiped out in probably less than a week. The only thing preventing the complete wipe out of Iran is ethics. Guerilla doesn't do much when you decide to eliminate the country. You just kill the entire thing. But we don't because that would be grossly inhumane. So if we decide nothing will actually ever happen, why not just be as nice as possible? It is pretty cowardly that Iran always just tries to do as much as it can without being worth the cost of wiping out. But my understanding is that according to their brand of Islam, they still believe that Muslims will conquer the world some day. So they've got their eyes on the prize and are only being allowed to do so because it would cost too much to wipe them out. So they've got this ridiculous fantasy that only continues because they are so benign.
It's actually quite scary reading posts about "wiping Iran out" "entirely destroy the entirety of Iran" "The only thing preventing the complete wipe out of Iran is ethics."
What exactly does wiping out Iran entail? A nation may be a construct, but it is made out of people. After the Jewish holocaust, enough Jews existed to form Isreal. After the Armenian genocide, enough Armenias existed to form Armenia. As acknowledged, ethics become a factor in not wiping out a country because it involves massacring the entire population. This is not the advocation of simply installing a new government or of assimilating and destroying a culture to your own, but simply genocide.
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On May 21 2019 06:40 Ben... wrote:In a news two-fer it appears that a judge has ruled that Trump's lawyers' arguments do not hold water and that the accounting firm Trump used, Mazars, must hand over their accounting records for Trump. An interesting thing to point out for this is that in their 41-page opinion on this case, the judge specifically cited Watergate: Show nested quote +"History has shown that congressionally-exposed criminal conduct by the President or a high-ranking Executive Branch official can lead to legislation," Mehta wrote, citing the Watergate investigation by the Senate.
"It is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a President for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct -- past or present -- even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry," he added.
Mazars has seven days until it will have to comply with the subpoena, Mehta said in his opinion Monday, but the judge refused to halt the subpoena after that. Another court would have to do so. Trump's team has not yet appealed the ruling. I had expected this to be the ruling since last week the judge seemed rather incredulous at the case Trump's legal team was making, since it more or less boiled down to claiming that congress does not have the legal authority to get Trump's records. The judge even pointed out how ridiculous this argument and had brought up prior investigations of presidents, forcing Trump's lawyers to either cede the point or claim that Watergate and the investigation into Bill Clinton weren't valid investigations. Also, Michael Cohen said under oath in a closed hearing that Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow instructed him to lie under oath about when the Trump Tower Moscow project ended. Show nested quote +Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former longtime personal attorney, told a House panel during closed-door hearings earlier this year that he had been instructed by Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow to falsely claim in a 2017 statement to Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, according to people familiar with his testimony.
In fact, Cohen later admitted that discussions on the Moscow tower continued into June of the presidential election year, after it was clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. Cohen is serving three years in prison for lying to Congress, financial crimes and campaign finance violations.
House Democrats are now scrutinizing whether Sekulow or other Trump attorneys played a role in shaping Cohen’s 2017 testimony to Congress. Cohen has said he made the false statement to help hide the fact that Trump had potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in a possible Russian project while he was running for president. If true, I think this could get potentially ugly, especially since the House Intelligence Committee is already looking into this matter and seeing if they can find out who else was involved in telling Cohen this. Thus far Trump's lawyer's lawyers are basically arguing against this by attacking the character of Michael Cohen, something I think is rather risky to do since he has frequently backed up any of his claims with some form of documented evidence. I expect more to come from this closed door hearing as Adam Schiff has already stated that he will be releasing the transcript from it minus anything classified.
The legal position of the WH is both absurd and dangerous. The idea that the executive branch can pick and choose the issues they can be investigated on is anathema to a healthy democracy. Hell, Barr thinks the President can end any investigation into himself he feels is unjust. What a fucking crackpot.. how is this guy the AG??
I both hope, and expect, to see them continue to lose in court on this issue. Hell, I hope it makes it to SCOTUS quickly for that reason. Let's put those originalist/textualist credentials to the test!
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Trump will appeal the ruling. Congressional democrats are trying to get around passing legislation to force any president to disclose his tax information. They also tried to get around legal action against the IRS to produce them by subpoenaing the accounting agency that prepares them. Pretty ridiculous, but that's this Congress. It will drag out in the courts for a while, maybe even past the 2020 election. Maybe we'll get a supreme court ruling on legitimate Congressional oversight vs separation of powers, and rights relating to private accountants and lawyers.
The DoJ's OLC released a memo on their legal opinion of McGahn testimony. The House subpoena'd him to testify about his testimony to Mueller. The lawyers of the OLC say that the DoJ legal opinion for the past 5 decades still holds. It includes a good quote from Janet Reno. It also draws the comparison to the President commanding Members of Congress to appear at the White House.
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EPT
