I Know You Are, But What Am I?

[_JS]

I'll entitle this: "Our Middle East Policy Going Forward," and ask JS to fill in the details based on the sensibilities he has advocated here.

I'm not sure if this is a token shot at me over our disagreements on Israel, but I'll answer anyway Domer.

To be honest, I don't see anyway that Iran doesn't come out of this as the long-term winner. Well, I don't see any possibility short of a United States backed unfairly tilted Sunni regime. There are simply too many groups that favour Iran, even passively. I'm not saying that Iraq becomes a province of Iran or anything of the sort. But, Iran will have influence in Baghdad and with whatever form the Kurdish region takes.

I think Iran will have more influence than most nations and for them this will mean a serious increase in diplomatic, political, economic, and religious influence. It will be the first time in centuries that the Sunni don't have political authority in that region.

Now, what will that mean for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan? And even Iran and Iraq's long-term?

What do you think? There are numerous possibilities.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Interesting armchair quarterbacking. You might not say that if you were one of those hostages.
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That is really beside the point.

A number of the Embassy Employees were seriously involved in planning political dirty tricks, assassinations and such. We should not assume for a moment that they were all pencil-pushing visa interviewers or facilitators of carpet merchandising. I imagine that they came to realize why the Iranian students decided to hold them captive.

Observe that they were better treated than nearly any of the current 'guests' at Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib. They were not forced to wear orange clothing, locked in cages, smeared with shit, stripped and forced to form pyramids, led with leashes or threatened with large dogs, hooded for days on end, or treated to hours and hours of bad music, such as heavy metal and Barney the Dinosaur.



The local Cubans in Miami are always comparing Castro to horrid dictators like Somoza, Trujillo, Varela and Pinochet, because he took away their plantations or made their car dealerships, for-profit hospitals, insurance agencies and real estate agencies superfluous.

But the fact is that no one has been driven from their home. It's just that once you leave, you can't have it back.

Castro is far from being truly competent as an administrator, but he is also far down the list of cruel dictators.

Iran is also perhaps bad, but nowhere near as nasty as Saudi Arabia, where Bandar Bush hails from.

[domer]

From my legal training extended to the international realm, where I have little experience, I can nonetheless venture the position, based on the materials produced here, that Israel's 1967 Six-Day War was justified as a matter of international law and especially under the tenets of the just war theory. To argue otherwise is just an attempt to blow smoke up someone's ass to hide the smell of cigarettes. The UN Charter envisages defensive wars. Historically, that doctrine had been embodied in retaliatory strikes, yet wasn't so logically limited. Especially in an age of terror and weapons of mass destruction, preemptive wars had to be considered within the orbit of the defensive war doctrine if tightly tied to the original notion of defense and not aggression. Thus, as I've argued, a strike can be deemed justified if 1) it meets a standard of certainty, 2) will be of a serious character (wherein the notion of proportionality enters), and 3) is imminent, meaning on the brink or having reached a point where the prospects of events intervening or decisions being rescinded have passed the point of no return. Plainly and simply, Israel's Six-Days' War meets these criteria.

[Amianthus]

I forsee a reappearance of a Caliphate in the region.

[domer]

I hate to anticipate a defeat, JS, but I agree that Iran is now and will remain a preeminent force in the Middle East for quite a while to come, and according to present indications, a nuclear-armed one. This won't eclipse but will instead dilute and complicate the mirror- image preeminence of the major Sunni states: Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Eqypt. They will, by present indications, carry on at least a politico-religio-ideological struggle with Iran. At the same time, especially if Iran is nuclear-armed, the region -- with yet indeterminate alliances among the Muslim sects -- will become embroiled in a post-modern Cold War with the West. For America, this very description of the situation mandates a policy strong on diplomacy and cultural exchange -- with the purpose of forging a trans-cultural, supra-religious consensus which all faiths can embrace as natural offshoots of their own thinking.

[BT]

Then again the "america needs to butt out"  crowd might be wise in their advocation to sit back and watch Saudi Arabia join the nuclear club and let the divergent sects fight it out.

[domer]

I honestly don't think an isolationist policy ("butting out") is either wise or even possible. With growing globalization, what appears to be an inexorable process, at least economically but by extension far beyond that, disruptions in one part of the world (using oil as a paradigm) can cause serious harm and dislocation elsewhere, and in a hurry. So too, those disposed to be frankly more belligerent, can act more destructively and on a wider platform than at any time before in history. A "hands off" policy seems to me to be an open invitation to discord, trouble, mayhem and catastrophe.

We should engage the world in an enlightened way, providing APPROPRIATE leadership for this new age. And, I believe, the age will ultimately produce either a formal or de facto system of governance beyond the initial post-World War II efforts.

[sirs]

Your particular response in this case was useless and sarcastic, or do you disagree?

No more than "Also, if we are challenged to a dance-off, we have to let the opposition choose the music first. Plus, we can only kick it old school with some of the Afrika Bambataa or DJ Herc and none of that Adeaze Pasifika lyrical lapse!"

You mean we've never given anything in diplomatic discussions before?

What's that old saying....never say "never"

Similar to your references of how Israel pre-emtively attacked Egypt & company, while acknowledgind how you weren't defending Egypt & Co's actions, which largely triggered Israel's pre-emptive act. Interesting ommissions and innuendo

Israel did pre-emptively strike in 1967! Go ask them and many of those intimately involved will proudly tell you so.

What are you ranting about, Js?  Did I say or even imply that they didn't??

"Ommissions and innuendo" are simply your way of reading what I post.

Well...yea, that's pretty much the fact in all these discussions.  When you accurately reference how Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon in 1967, with the apparent ommission of the massing of the armies along the borders of Israel, the closing of the waterway specifically to Israeli shipping, and Nasser's pledges to destroy Israel, you paint a picture of how overtly aggressive Israel is supposed to be considered.  When you claim how we need to reimbuse Iran for our attacking Iranian oil platforms and shipping, when deftly ommitting such attacks were largely all in retaliation and in international waters, you appear to be trying to paint a picture of how "wrong" America was during the Iran-Iraq war. 

The question then becomes are these ommissions on purpose, in order to paint a picture more towards your version of what is is, or were these ommissions honest negligence.  If this were a discussion with Tee, it'd obviously be the former, where as in your case, I'd vote the latter

[BT]

I honestly don't think an isolationist policy ("butting out") is either wise or even possible. With growing globalization, what appears to be an inexorable process, at least economically but by extension far beyond that, disruptions in one part of the world (using oil as a paradigm) can cause serious harm and dislocation elsewhere, and in a hurry.

The power in the middle east comes from oil. Get away from oil and the middle east is not quite as important. Move to ethanol and food available for export is now possibly worth more converted to energy.

Don't change the game, change the rules.

[The_Professor]

Good point, BT. But, we as a nation need to get serious about this by offering serious incentives to move toward energy independence. Do you see this happening?

[BT]

What is stopping you from switching to biodiesel or other alternative energy solution right now?

Does the government need to make it worth your while or is the action on its own merits worth your while?

[domer]

Power in the Middle East comes from oil, obviously, but it also comes from contrarian ideologies (backed by ruthless acts), which have a life independent of economic impact, or merely incidental to it, and are magnified in a media-saturated world greased by the internet.

[BT]

Conflicting ideologies notwithstanding, if we don't need their oil, we don't need to be so up close and personal with them.

[The_Professor]

What is stopping you from switching to biodiesel or other alternative energy solution right now?

Does the government need to make it worth your while or is the action on its own merits worth your while?

Well, if you told me that the Government would pay for insulation for my home and/or a solar energy system, etc. I would be at Lowe's tomorrow morning. As it is, I must put up the money and in the case of solar, the payback is at least a decade. Biodiesel? How might I do this?

[BT]

Biodiesel? How might I do this?

Buy a diesel mercedes and run it on filtered oil from a chinese restaurant.

http://www.biodiesel-kits.com/?gclid=CLG9n4bs9YoCFQVqYAodSWixng