Letters to the Editor
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@DCutler
I somewhat agree with you, that some hardnosed talk of the type you describe does go in in the type of crisis involved. But Newt was not about looking for a diplomatic solution; he was pursuing escalation. You don't approach the other party in such a tense situation and tell them how tiny they are and will look if they don't do what you say.
There was nothing in his comments that suggested the intelligent deliberations and strategizing that went on during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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I read this on Balloon-Juice
but this situation was very telling about how our current administration has handled "combatants" and how others have. The same people who poo-pooed the abu ghaib photos are the first to call the vids and pics of Brits playing games and admitting they did something wrong.
Wait -- isn't the only way you get someone to confess is through torture?
Wait -- they must have gone all Italian -- or was it French?
Appeasement worked? Whodathunk?
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Not a change for the better
I don't mind the permanent username, although I will miss bebop's occasional metamorphoses.
Let me add to the chorus of boos about the new typeface, though, and the lack of visible paragraph processing in preview mode. I'm going to force it with double BR tags in this, and pray that I don't wind up with two spaces between the paragraphs when I hit the publish button.
I wonder what Salon thought was broken, and why this had to be the fix.
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Ugh!
Well, that didn't work out so well, did it?
Let's try it without the tags.
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My considered opinion
This sucks, Salon, truly it does, especially when composing longer comments. I guess I'll just have to go back to previewing in my own text editor.
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Wimps
Unlike the neocons, I don't advocate fighting as a way to solve MOST problems, only a few. I think that if Newty were challenged to a physical fist fight, he would wet himself and fade away. Maybe he would come back with his big friend Bubba. In my mind, this characterizes the neocons, always willing to fight, as long as someone else does the fighting. These people are nothing but wimps. What puzzles me is how these wimps have gotten together and made this country into the schoolyard bully of the world. I wish they would all just shut up and go inlist.
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Re: Salon's Eternal 'Maintenance'
This of course is OT, BUT:
One reason -- of many -- I dropped my Salon Premium membership was the farking "maintenance" crises that periodically subsumed the site. I realize that Salon is an Intertube Pioneer and all, and that it used to run out of money all the time, and that many of its systems are creaky, old, inefficient, or deliberately designed to provide the most aggravation possible in the shortest amount of time, but it got to the point where it wasn't even worth bookmarking and checking the site. Nothing -- or very little -- would be working. Or if they were working, they would shortly be "down for maintenance" -- and sometimes be resumed an entirely different, and typically hostile format.
And look! Here we are again.
Oh well. At least you know where you are... No paragraph breaks in "preview." Oh. Boy. Won't that be fun.
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Mutual Assured Misery is the key to proventing escalation
As Jim Montague writes
> The Iranians have a solid defense system in place. An army
> of 345,000, Air Force of 30,000, Navy 18,000, Revolutionary
> guards 120,000, gendarmerie 45,000.
This is exactly the right idea. The Iranian could make life unbearable for US and British forces in Iraq. They could do it by actively participating in hostilities there, but they could do even more harm by actively arming the Shiite militias and encouraging them to act as their hostile surrogates.
British and US absolute MISERY is the obvious, unmistakable consequence of escalation. If the Iranians had any doubt of the British understanding of this agony, the Iranians should have spelled out for the British exactly how horrible escalation would be for them.
Similarly, the British should have spelled out exactly how horrible escalation would be for the Iranians. Newt's strategy, which takes just a few warships and a handful of SAS, sounds perfect. The British could easily do it, and it would inflict horrible pain on the Iranians.
The Iranians would respond by inflicting horrible pain on US and British forces in Iraq.
Once everybody agrees that this option is totally unbearably bad, the only other course is diplomacy and finding a mutual compromise.
Mutual assured pain, mutual assured destruction, is a very STABLE strategy that results in diplomacy actually working.
It is only when one side or the other thinks that they might win a war with little or no pain, that wars actually happen, assuming rational adults are in charge.
We are in Iraq because a lot of small children were given the keys to our army and thought themselves capable of driving it anywhere they wanted without any substantial pain. If they had understood the level of self agony their actions would cause, and they had been old enough to think rationally, they may have taken a different course.
Newt is absolutely correct, but incomplete. The first step is to make sure everybody recognizes worst case scenario, and then allow the sensible heads to figure out how to avoid it. Newt didn't say the last part, because, well, he's Newt... What do you expect? But frankly, I kind of think this where he was headed in his thinking. He just got caught up in the vaguely racist, vaguely vietmanish, macho sound-bite stuff. The underlying idea, though, is not only sound, but it is also essential. Blair's smart enough to have done the whole thing, and probably did.
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dcutler
You fail to recognize the ability of the Iranians to be the agressor. Their missile capability could take out the Saudi oilfields, the Iraqi oilfields, and those of Kuwait and Dubai, and Qatar, very easily. They could take out the United States and its ability to call itself a superpower in 30 minutes time. Your Cadillac Escalade would make a handy motel for travelers making their way across the U.S. in the future. Never under estimate the ability of the little guy to make a broad statement when pushed against a wall, history has many instances of giant killers in its annals. The Iranians can afford to wait, and we can't.