If the country fits...

[D_Raay]

A question for all you intellectually superior posters that frequent this particular board... Do you suppose that this administration, the one who thought Iraq would be a cakewalk, would have invaded at all if they knew then what they know now?

At first when I asked myself this, it seemed easy enough to answer, however, after thinking on it a while now I am not so sure. Would appreciate the input, thanks.

[DroppinScience]

Hasn't Cheney and/or Bush said so themselves if they knew then what they know now, they'd still invade Iraq?

This was uttered perhaps a year or so ago, so I don't know what if any of their minds have changed NOW.

[D_Raay]

Hasn't Cheney and/or Bush said so themselves if they knew then what they know now, they'd still invade Iraq?

This was uttered perhaps a year or so ago, so I don't know what if any of their minds have changed NOW.
Yes but that is rhetoric. Of course they would say that after the fact, or risk looking like John Kerry to their base.

[Schmeltz]

Yeah, I think they would still have invaded - remember Rumsfeld's initial reaction to 9/11 was "How can we pin this on Saddam." But they wouldn't have made so many of the grievous errors that have hamstrung their strategy since day one - like allowing mobs to loot Baghdad, and disbanding the army, and aggravating the already subpar infrastructure and support services of the country with their masturbatory shock and awe bullshit, and putting hicks from Booniesville, WV in charge of the prisons. There would have been more cold, clear calculation and less of the bumbling, arrogant, thickheaded ideology that substituted for it.

[DroppinScience]

Yeah, I think they would still have invaded - remember Rumsfeld's initial reaction to 9/11 was "How can we pin this on Saddam." But they wouldn't have made so many of the grievous errors that have hamstrung their strategy since day one - like allowing mobs to loot Baghdad, and disbanding the army, and aggravating the already subpar infrastructure and support services of the country with their masturbatory shock and awe bullshit, and putting hicks from Booniesville, WV in charge of the prisons. There would have been more cold, clear calculation and less of the bumbling, arrogant, thickheaded ideology that substituted for it.

That sounds about right.

Personally, I think they would've wished to handle the Iraq war much the same way Bush Sr. handled the Gult War: have the war over and done with in a week or two and pat themselves on the back.

In a way, I think it's just as well that Iraq turned into the quagmire it is. Just think of it: if Iraq was a cakewalk like they all thought it was, then they could have easily had the means to go into Iran, Syria, etc. Shit, who knows how many interventions they'd have liked to have pulled off if Iraq went smoothly. With things being the way they are, the PNAC agenda is born and dies right there in Iraq. On that level alone, it's a relief. Everything else... well, quite a different story.

[drizl]

you know how i feel about the situation..PNAC. of course they would have. and i have this terrible feeling that war with iran is totally inevitable.

[Ali]

As Don says, there are known knowns (http://nerve.fugacious.net/drf/archives/2003/12/what_do_you_know.html)...

One of the best ways to maintain control when you are a minority is to sow dissent amongst the people you are trying to control. The Afrikaner regime did this in South Africa in the 80's and 90's. They made sure that the underlying feuds between Zulu and Xhosa kept the focus of anger off themselves and used the violence as an excuse not to change their apartheid policies.

This tactic of 'divide and rule' has worked for the British in Northern Ireland, with Catholic and Protestant violence drawing the focus away from WTF the British are doing there in the first place... and giving them a reason to stay.

Bush is desperate to stay in Iraq. He was begging for permission to send more troops last night... quite a change from last year (although he STILL managed to mention 9/11). The Hawks knew about the potential violence between Shia and Sunni, we all did fekrissakes. Saddam and the Ba'aathists were a Sunni minority oppressing a Shia majority. Iran is Shia governed... you really don't need a degree in military strategy to work out that the first thing that's going to happen after you eliminate the armed and police forces with shock and awe, do you? They knew about it and did nothing to make sure that it wouldn't happen. That implies to me that they wanted it to happen. Giving all the reconstruction jobs to foreign contractors (http://nerve.fugacious.net/drf/archives/2003/11/executive_vulture_order_13303.html) also made sure that everyone was jobless, hungry and angry.

Bush and Cheney are shedding Crocodile Tears, claiming that the fight they are in is not the fight they entered... what crap. The fight they entered was Sunni vs Shia. What has changed?

[D_Raay]

As Don says, there are known knowns (http://nerve.fugacious.net/drf/archives/2003/12/what_do_you_know.html)...

One of the best ways to maintain control when you are a minority is to sow dissent amongst the people you are trying to control. The Afrikaner regime did this in South Africa in the 80's and 90's. They made sure that the underlying feuds between Zulu and Xhosa kept the focus of anger off themselves and used the violence as an excuse not to change their apartheid policies.

This tactic of 'divide and rule' has worked for the British in Northern Ireland, with Catholic and Protestant violence drawing the focus away from WTF the British are doing there in the first place... and giving them a reason to stay.

Bush is desperate to stay in Iraq. He was begging for permission to send more troops last night... quite a change from last year (although he STILL managed to mention 9/11). The Hawks knew about the potential violence between Shia and Sunni, we all did fekrissakes. Saddam and the Ba'aathists were a Sunni minority oppressing a Shia majority. Iran is Shia governed... you really don't need a degree in military strategy to work out that the first thing that's going to happen after you eliminate the armed and police forces with shock and awe, do you? They knew about it and did nothing to make sure that it wouldn't happen. That implies to me that they wanted it to happen. Giving all the reconstruction jobs to foreign contractors (http://nerve.fugacious.net/drf/archives/2003/11/executive_vulture_order_13303.html) also made sure that everyone was jobless, hungry and angry.

Bush and Cheney are shedding Crocodile Tears, claiming that the fight they are in is not the fight they entered... what crap. The fight they entered was Sunni vs Shia. What has changed?
Excellent response (y)

[Whatitis]

Bush is not desperate to stay in Iraq, he's desperate to get out and in his mind he thinks more troops will do it. He doesn't have much time left and he for sure doesn't want another administration to take the credit for getting out of Iraq.

[kaiser soze]

Absolutely...it's not the "Freedom" they are fighting for, it's the Profits and the shift of focus from shifty ass domestic policies they have this war for.

[Schmeltz]

Bush is not desperate to stay in Iraq, he's desperate to get out and in his mind he thinks more troops will do it. He doesn't have much time left and he for sure doesn't want another administration to take the credit for getting out of Iraq.


Jep.


One of the best ways to maintain control when you are a minority is to sow dissent amongst the people you are trying to control. The Afrikaner regime did this in South Africa in the 80's and 90's.


An even better way, just as historically common, far more productive, and way less strenuous on the forces involved in maintaining order and control, is to co-opt local elites and cultural symbols in order to foster unity. The CINCPAC regime did this in Japan in the 40s. Donald Rumsfeld would have hanged Emperor Hirohito for war crimes, but Douglas MacArthur had the foresight to realize what a mistake that would have been. Instead he assumed control of the Emperor's symbolic value and used it to perpetuate and legitimize the presence of American troops in a country with powerful martial traditions that had never in its history been occupied by foreign soldiers.

This would have been the intelligent thing to do in Iraq, and would have resulted in an exponentially easier and more profitable occupation of the country. The administration's position at home would be much more secure and the military situation in Iraq would be much more stable. Again, it is simply inconceivable that the opposite course was deliberately taken on the strength of the notion that weakening the government's position at home and the military situation abroad somehow translates to an advantage. It doesn't make any sense. What fits with the character of this administration, on the other hand, is the arrogant, presumptuous, entirely superficial notion that a religiously and ethnically divided country can be successfully and profitably occupied simply by the force of arms of a totally foreign culture.


This tactic of 'divide and rule' has worked for the British in Northern Ireland


Your first example was on point, but this one I have to question. Catholics and Protestants have clashed in Ireland for centuries and occupying a tiny corner of Ireland has gained the British nothing but subway bombings and bad press. Why would the Brits pour so much effort into holding onto Northern Ireland while allowing their enormous and wealthy possessions in India and Africa (which are just as susceptible to division as Iraq) to simply slip through their fingers? What exactly is the real reason for British presence in Northern Ireland? It certainly hasn't helped Britain maintain its pre-eminent role as a world power, the Dutch have a bigger navy now than the British, as the First Lord of the Admiralty caustically remarked a couple of weeks ago.


They knew about it and did nothing to make sure that it wouldn't happen. That implies to me that they wanted it to happen.


I think you're wrong. I think this administration, as blinded with radical ideology and self-importance as it was (and is), sincerely believed that Saddam Hussein constituted a devilish foe who would exact a severe price in battle. I remember all the amped-up warnings about the last stand to be made by the elite Republican Guards. I remember the maps and charts with the hypothetical kill zone that would be created around Baghdad by the use of chemical and biological weapons. And I remember how Saddam's army was unwilling to risk its total destruction in combat, how its formations melted away and avoided giving the coalition the open confrontation they had prepared for. Any third-world army would have done the same.

And this left the coalition with a huge problem. Their armies were designed to destroy the existing Iraqi forces, but when they failed to do this in battle they were forced to somehow accomodate them - an eventuality for which they simply had not planned, what with the idiotic Rumsfeld doctrine of sending as small a force as possible into a combat theater (a notion with which the top American brass, as you may recall, vehemently disagreed). So Rumsfeld was faced with half a million (presumably) Sunnis under arms, led by a fully intact officer cadre, with Saddam Hussein and most of his government still at large and potentially able to assume command of elements of this army, and with a fairly minimal troop presence in a country whose security situation was already deteriorating beyond the point of control in the first weeks of the invasion. The intelligent thing to do tactically would have been to co-opt as many of the Iraqi forces as possible into the maintenance of order, putting them on the Pentagon payroll if necessary. But this was impossible in the heavily politicized environment of the Iraq war: hiring Saddam's thugs and goons, the murderous criminals who ran the rape rooms and killed Olympic athletes for not winning medals (or so we've often been told) would have looked like pure hypocrisy - especially to the Shiite exiles who had been advising this whole clumsy effort in the first place.

So Rumsfeld panicked. To me it seems like he ordered the army disbanded because he couldn't think of anything else to do with it and was afraid that remnants of Saddam's government would use elements of it to mount whatever resistance they could. If he'd been an ancient Roman he would have had them all massacred but he couldn't very well do that. So he disbanded it in the hope that this would break its ability to mount an armed challenge to his own forces. Unfortunately his practice of using low troop levels to minimize casualties and supply problems meant that he couldn't secure Iraqi military caches and ordinance dumps, to which all the newly unemployed Iraqi soldiers still had access, and he couldn't seal the borders to prevent foreign elements from sneaking in to help coordinate these angry, unemployed soldiers into insurgent and terrorist cells, and he couldn't maintain order in the cities while attempting to replace the Ba'athist government structure with some sort of replacement that satisfied all the dissident elements in a society that had been promised democracy and were clamouring for their say in government.

And the rest is history. No grand conspiracy to create chaos "necessitating" the continued presence of American troops, no deliberate ploy to waste billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers on schemes doomed to failure from their inception. Just incompetent, ideological buffoonery performed by people unwilling to listen to anybody but their own arrogant, thickheaded selves.

[Ali]

Mr Schmeltz, you are a very bright lad and you make a very, very valid case for the incompetence of the Bush administration - but you make it sound as if their intentions were good and pure, that all of this was for the benefit of the Iraqi people and somehow they fucked it up through pure stupidity and arrogance. This is certainly how it looks and I guess you are disinclined to suppose a covert intention, probably because you don't want to be branded a conspiracy theorist and therefore dismissed.

Saying that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld fucked up is letting them off the hook, in my opinion. I think that they had an alterior motive and if you want to dismiss me as another Wearer of the Tin Foil Hat, then so be it, but there is simply too much evidence (http://nerve.fugacious.net/drf/archives/2003/11/executive_vulture_order_13303.html) of collusion for me to consider their intentions pure. Yes, most of it's anecdotal and very hard to back up, but this is often where the truth lies - away from the main stream (who don't want to be branded as conspiracy theorists, either).

Your example of Japan is valid, except that the US and Japan were officially at war, wheras the US is now at war with a noun and the Emperor of Japan was not oppressing the majority of his subjects in the same way as Saddam, so it wouldn't have done for the US to assume control of Saddam's symbolic value (although they did put his detention facilities at Abu-Ghraib to good use). Perhaps they could have tried to emulate MacArthur, but they didn't even consider it, which again makes me think that they wanted chaos to follow shock and awe, not peace.

Yes, Catholics and Protestants have clashed in Ireland for centuries, as have Sunni and Shia, Zulu and Xhosa but the British government used these pre-existing underlying tensions to keep them fighting one another, instead of uniting against the occupiers. I believe that this is what the US intended in Iraq. As for what are the UK doing in N.Ireland, there's the small issue of North Sea Oil as well as the United Kingdom to consider - energy and strategy - another raison d'etre for the US in Iraq.

The amped-up warnings about the Republican Guards and so on was CNN hype, designed to get the public to support the war and make it seem as if it was going to be a Big Deal for the US - the wealthiest and most heavily armed nation on the planet to go to war with Iraq. Everyone knew it was going to be a route, especially the Republican Guard! They didn't bother to stand and fight, did they? They dropped their guns and uniforms and melted into the background. Perhaps Rumsfeld did think that they would put up some kind of resistance and kindly and neatly get themselves wiped out, leaving only grateful civilians, ready to put the past behind them and welcome the liberators. Perhaps he did and he really is as stupid as you say, but I simply cannot bring myself to believe that neither he nor any of his advisors did not figure that this might happen and plan accordingly. Yes, I know that the military commanders warned him thousands of times, but this is even more evidence of an alterior motive, isn't it? Even if he was dumb, he was told this would happen and did it anyway.

Now, I will say that I don't think that every bit of the chaos that has followed Shock and Awe was premeditated and perhaps things have gotten out of hand and the tribal violence has exceeded Rumsfeld's expectations, but I do think that the chaos was planned as part of the bigger campaign to hit Iran. Rumsfeld has had years of experience in the middle east and the potential for unrest after Saddam was removed from power was as clear as day, so why did the US do nothing to stop it? I'll tell you why. If Iraq had been peaceful after Saddam and there was no unrest and everything had been Peachy, then the US would have no reason to stay in the area, would they? And you have to admit that the prospect of an attack on Iran has always been a reality since long before Iraq was invaded. The US has either meddled (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/16/newsid_2530000/2530475.stm) in Iran's internal affairs or actively supported (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/rumsfeld_saddam.gif) Iran's enemies for decades and is still beating the war drum in the UN. What makes you think that Iran is not the next target and that a massive US military presence is required in Iraq for this purpose (hence the stirring up of violence in Iraq to provide a reason).

As for my prediction of Iran being a springboard for the control (not invasion) of China, what do you think of this (http://news.google.co.uk/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-36%2CGGLJ%3Aen&oe=UTF-8&tab=wn&q=china+satellite+missile)?

[D_Raay]

I think the notion of being a full blown conpiracy theorist has actually been antiquated a bit in recent years.

When an administration is clearly shown to be dishonest and the "liberal" mainstream media/legislative branch fails to truly hold them accountable, well it makes the theorists appear to some to be the only genuinely honest source of information.

Which begs the question, is there something to that? Can we simply accept that dishonesty on a major scale, such as has been shown recently, is somehow more viable than speculation that oftentimes hasn't been disproven, merely dismissed as too unlikely?

[Schmeltz]

Mr Schmeltz, you are a very bright lad


Why thank you. I hope you don't find it gratuitous of me to return the compliment. :)


but you make it sound as if their intentions were good and pure


Oooh. I certainly didn't mean to convey that sentiment, only to offer what I consider a more realistic appraisal of the situation, past present and future. A more... reductionist perspective, if that's the right word. At bottom I think they did it for the oil, and because the post-Cold War hawks feel they've somehow earned a free hand to extend American influence without being haunted by the spectre of competition with an equally powerful military-industrial unit. And not only is that a disgusting and destructive idea, but also they fucked it up through ignorance and incompetence.


Your example of Japan is valid, except that the US and Japan were officially at war


Yes, and your example of South Africa is valid except the Afrikaners didn't preside over a recently invaded and occupied territory divided between fundamentally opposed adherents of a major world religion. There's no such thing as a perfectly applicable historical precept, comparison of historical trends proceeds only in terms of generalities. Naturally the neo-cons couldn't have co-opted Saddam himself (it didn't work out the first time, now did it?) but every society has dominant symbols that can be adapted to suit the needs of new rulers. And the fact is that the coalition was in tune with that - to a limited degree. Why did FOX put so much effort into staging that statue-toppling? Because symbolic actions have cultural value. Why was all that effort spent on removing the innumerable posters and paintings and murals of Saddam from Iraqi public life? Because a personality cult is exercised for its pervasive symbolic value, and erasing it was the first step toward exercising control over its former adherents. I think there was some consideration of the symbolic conversion that invariably accompanies any far-flung military conquest, but the real problem is that nothing was prepared to serve as a substitute.


As for what are the UK doing in N.Ireland, there's the small issue of North Sea Oil as well as the United Kingdom to consider


Territorial possession is not necessary for British companies to claim rights to the extraction of North Sea oil, and by your logic should we be getting ready for the next British invasion of Scotland? How prepared are the Welsh for the forthcoming annexation? Come on, mang.


Yes, I know that the military commanders warned him thousands of times, but this is even more evidence of an alterior motive, isn't it?


Nah. History is packed to the brim with examples of military men who ignored all the best advice from their subordinates and, confident in the empty feeling of superiority they gleaned from their position at the top of cultural discourse in their societies, embarked on ventures that ultimately led to their resounding defeat on the field. Check out Hitler on the Eastern Front for a good example, or Crassus' expedition into Parthia. When men are in charge of the exercise of fantastic amounts of military and cultural power they get superiority complexes and swollen heads, and conceive of their own ideas - however distant from reality they may be - as the sole source of wisdom in the entire structure of their command. Megalomania, I think we can all agree, has been a feature of the Bush administration from start to finish, and nowhere is this more apparent than in their mishandling of the Iraq war.


What makes you think that Iran is not the next target and that a massive US military presence is required in Iraq for this purpose


The very fact that a campaign against Iran would require hundreds of thousands of troops and the commitment of enormous proportions of the American military's remaining undeployed equipment and materiel, which could only be performed at the expense of its domestic operations and commitments in other theaters. The US military presence in Iraq right now is not massive, that's the point: it's not even major enough to keep order at the rear of the forces that would be needed to invade Iran, which would necessarily require a safe and orderly haven through which to run their lines of supply and fall back on in case of defeat . And defeat remains a very real possibility if only 150 000 American soldiers, at least somewhat exhausted and demoralized, confront half a million regular Iranian troops and twelve million paramilitary forces as well as Iran's proven and unknown missile capabilities. Two aircraft carriers aren't going to help much if their planes get shot out of the sky (remember that a couple of weeks ago it took the Iranians all of about four minutes to down the American surveillance drone that "wandered" into its airspace), same goes for the Israeli air force (and it has to be questioned whether Israel would risk the commitment of even a major portion of its aircraft, since its loss would significantly cripple the military advantage it enjoys over its neighbours).

You are right when you say that the United States has spent a half century interfering in Iran (I've read All The Shah's Men and Killing Hope too) and that their saber-rattling gunboat diplomacy hardly makes one think that the Bushies are inclined to a purely peaceful settlement of US-Iran policy differences. And I don't pretend to be an expert on military affairs, I only surmise what I can from what I know based on a few general principles and not nearly as much specific information as I'd like to have the time to read. But from where I stand it just doesn't strike me as a realistic possibility and it seems like I've been repeating the same points over and over while you and drizl and everyone else just don't bother answering them.

Let me ask you again - given the enormous strain placed on the American military and National Guard by the Iraq war, in terms of men and material deployed, how is it possible in practical terms to imagine those forces exponentially widening the war without making such drastic sacrifices in the commitment of human and physical resources as to severely negatively impact the American armed forces? If 150 000 Americans cannot operate safely or efficiently in Iraq, how can they hope to engage a numerically superior opponent in a vastly larger area on its own home turf without securing either their current base of operations or their lines of supply?

It doesn't. Make. Any. Sense.


As for my prediction of Iran being a springboard for the control (not invasion) of China, what do you think of this?


I think it demonstrates the obvious expansion of Chinese military power, and we should be looking for more to come - I bet China will lay down the keel of their first aircraft carrier in the next few years, maybe once the Olympics are over and China's riding a real cultural high. And I imagine that the American brass are probably quite concerned at the possibility of the emergence of another military-industrial unit capable of offering serious competition to the American sphere of influence. But if they're smart enough to realize that, they're smart enough to realize that a quagmire in Iran won't get them any closer to being able to deal with that perceived threat.

[Ali]

Dude, you keep telling us that the Hawks were too dumb to realise that they would get stuck in Iraq and then you say to us that they are too smart to do the same thing in Iran.

Which one is it?

I'm saying that it's all part of the same campaign. The insurgency in Iraq was allowed to happen, is being blamed on Iran and used as an excuse to build up troop numbers (and keep air bases) so that an attack on Iran can be mounted. US troops are not the ones being killed in Iraq, it's Shia and Sunni civilian casualties that are mounting up - who cares about them? There's no need to stabilise Iraq before attacking Iran, in fact an unstable Iraq is a necessity for the attack to be successful, because the last thing the US wants is Sunni and Shia insurgents to unite against them in Iraq.
All you need to defeat an enemy country is air superiority and a complete lack lack of regard for civilain casualties - something which Israel and the US have both been shown to have. Iran is as easy a target as Iraq was, in terms of air defences, thanks to UN sanctions and Iranian troops are all conscripts, just like the Iraqi troops were supposed to be, so there's no difference between Iran and Iraq, in terms of whether or not the US will invade, is there? The only difference is that US forces are apparently exhausted from trying to bring peace to Iraq... another smokescreen, if you ask me.

I hope this answers your question and I promise that I have been doing everything I can to address the points you raise and I'll try to keep doing so.

Check out Hitler on the Eastern Front for a good exampleYes, Hitler had air superiority and look what happened to him... got too big for his bootzen and bit off more than he could chew. Interesting point you make, comparing the Bushies to the Nazis... are you saying that the US's intention for invading Iraq was the same as the Nazi's attack on the Eastern Front? To rid the country of an evil tyrant and impose democracy on the people? I thought it was world domnation... still do ;)

Territorial possession is not necessary for British companies to claim rights to the extraction of North Sea oil, and by your logic should we be getting ready for the next British invasion of Scotland? How prepared are the Welsh for the forthcoming annexation? Come on, mang. Scotland and Wales were invaded centuries ago and the English are currently desperately trying to stop Scotland from declaring itself and independant state (and claiming the North Sea oil reserves at the same time). But this is besides the point, is it not?

...comparison of historical trends proceeds only in terms of generalities. which is why I mentioned the Afrikaners and the British and drew the conculsion that the same thing was happening in Iraq. Mark Twain said that History does not repeat, but it Rhymes and it's certainly ringing a bell in Iraq right now.

it demonstrates the obvious expansion of Chinese military power, and we should be looking for more to come and seeing that Iran is an ally (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55414-2004Nov16.html) of China and a major source of oil to fuel its economy and armed forces,Last month [2004], the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border. Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquefied natural gas from Iran over a quarter-century. does it not follow that attacking Iran (not necessarily invading with ground troops, just using well-guarded air bases in neighbouring Iraq to hit strategic points in Iran) will be a major blow to the Chinese?

[Schmeltz]

you keep telling us that the Hawks were too dumb to realise that they would get stuck in Iraq and then you say to us that they are too smart to do the same thing in Iran.


No, I keep saying that having made colossal errors in getting stuck in Iraq, the hawks are essentially precluded from mounting a similar effort against Iran. Even if they were dumb enough to try invading Iran, it would be impossible to do so with any hope of success given the current circumstances.


I'm saying that it's all part of the same campaign.


So you are saying that the American military chose to deliberately weaken itself, wearing itself down with mounting casualties (which include not just dead but wounded soldiers, who now amount to something like fifteen thousand troops), declining recruitment, equipment shortages, and reduced capabilities elsewhere, before dramatically expanding their theater of operations and making exponentially greater demands on all of these deficient areas. Stage one was to weaken the army in order to make it severely more difficult to prosecute stage two, which is itself merely a prelude to a totally unattainable stage three.

That's a historical first, alright. Surely you see how ludicrous that sounds.


All you need to defeat an enemy country is air superiority


This is simply not true. It has never been true. Likely it never will be true exept in the case of total nuclear annihilation, which is even more far-fetched than this China plan. Air superiority is supplementary to ground campaigns; this has been the case in every war, won or lost, fought since the inception of military air forces. And the destruction of the Iranian forces and occupation of the country would necessitate a ground campaign orders of magnitude larger than that required in Iraq, which can scarcely be called a success story.


so there's no difference between Iran and Iraq


Iran has proven anti-aircraft missile capabilities vastly more sophisticated than anything possessed by Iraq, Iran has larger regular forces and immensely larger paramilitary forces who would mount an insurgency even more devilish than its Iraqi counterpart (you make a good point about the conscripts - doubtless they would fall back from any invading American forces, just like in Iraq, and prove an even bigger headache), Iran is much bigger than Iraq and has much more varied terrain including a sizeable mountain range, Iran is not divided by sectarian religious strife, and Iran does not have significantly large dissenting ethnic minorities to make the invading forces' job "easier." There are enormous differences between Iran and Iraq that would necessitate an entirely different sort of campaign even if the situation in Iraq allowed for it.

And it doesn't. The large forces that would be required to subdue Iran would require lengthy and complex lines of supply and it would be suicidal to run these through areas as chaotic and vulnerable to disruption as Iraq. They can't even mount routine convoys through Baghdad without being beset by IEDs and snipers and suicide car bombers - what makes you think they can safeguard lines of supply and retreat under even more difficult circumstances, especially when the forces are already worn down from trying to keep what control they can over the security situation (and this is not a smokescreen as any of the widely available soldiers' testimonials will tell you).

Look, I'm tired of bringing these points up all the time. I don't think your grasp of the situation is very grounded and I don't think you're taking into account the realities of conflict on this scale.


does it not follow that attacking Iran (not necessarily invading with ground troops, just using well-guarded air bases in neighbouring Iraq to hit strategic points in Iran) will be a major blow to the Chinese?


It would be impossible to justify attacks on Iranian oil and natural gas facilities. And that's a pretty costly, roundabout way of dealing with the prospective threat of Chinese military modernization. Why not just use aircraft carriers or long-range bombers? Why go to the trouble of establishing air bases in a volatile, chaotic, hopelessly out-of-control country?

[sam i am]

Ali,

Schmeltz has you in this argument.

Iran also has a well-trained and financed air force, capable of much more than either of you are acknolwedging.

Iran has tested ballistic missiles that can threaten American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, not to mention the ability to shut of the Strait of Hormuz and stop oil shipments.

Plus, the first Iranian move would be to lob said missilles at targets that would continue to disrupt oil supplies throughout the Middle East - what would they care, at the point of being attacked, about Saudi or Qatari sensibilities?

Far too much to lose with far too little to gain - much like the Arab states invading Israel mutiple times throughout the second half of the twentieth century - inexplicable, inexcusable, and completely infeasibile.