Bomb Iran

The Los Angeles Times ^ | November 19, 2006 | Joshua Muravchik

[USS Alaska]

I stand with my tag line.

[wayoverontheright]

Since Iran has committed numerous ACTS OF WAR by supplying weapons and personnel to kill our soldiers in Iraq, we should indeed bomb Iran, but not under the guise of preemption. Our attack should be punitive, admittedly retaliatory, and vicious.

A retaliation would be taken by the people of Iran as the consequence of over-reaching by their leadership, while a preemptive attack on their nuclear facilities alone would rally them around their leadership.

Since their nuclear sites seem to be so dear to them, there is nothing wrong with destroying them while we are at it, along with their military infrastructure. President Bush should allow our Generals in Iraq to publicly present the proof of Iran's egregious acts, complete with the death toll that could be attributed to Iranian meddling in Iraq.

Though I wouldn't personally care, the world will be much more accepting of a retaliation for acts of war, than they will be of another preemptive action.

[lentulusgracchus]

A retaliation would be taken by the people of Iran as the consequence of over-reaching by their leadership, while a preemptive attack on their nuclear facilities alone would rally them around their leadership.

Good point.

All the more reason to go after the guys with the messiah complexes.

[WesternPacific]

Removing the mad mullahs with.....

Iran and their leading clerics are the best argument yet for the use of covert assassination teams. Just getting ride of troublemakers while we sleep.

[upcountryhorseman]

Where are “these really smart people” coming from? Surely
not the democrat party!

[jveritas]

Only a massive Air and Naval War will teach the Iranian terrorist regime to stop messing around.

[wideminded]

Kill the mullahs. All of them. Get them all. And kill all the Pasdaran leadership, ... In one night. In one hour.

And we're going to do that by bombing? You expect we are going to kill every member of the Iranian government and every cleric in one night when when our bombs couldn't find either Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Saddam? Did we even kill one member of the Iraqi leadership by bombing?

Are you aware that Iran has a constitutional government and that the members of this government are either elected or chosen by elected leaders? If we didn't want this government to be reconstituted, we would have to either invade Iran or bring about another revolution.

Even those members of Iranian society who don't support the current government still don't necessarily support our meddling in their internal affairs, as we did once before in 1953. Unfortunately changes in the Iranian regime will have to come from within Iran.

Iran is not Iraq. They have three times the population. They are a proud nation. Their government, while not universally popular, is tied up with their religion. They would be even less likely than the Iraqis to greet us warmly if we invaded.

[Eagle74]

Destroy the Iranian Energy Industry

While the MOP bomb will be useful in destroying Iran’s deeply buried nuclear sites. It does nothing to deal with Iran’s support of terrorism that is killing our people, and has been for almost 30 years. What we need is regime change in Iran and the stopping of support for terrorism. To do this we must destroy Iran’s source of funding terror, which is almost exclusively the sale of Oil. So, I advocate a simple bombing of Iran’s energy industry. Every power plant, pipeline, refinery, tanker, tank farm, etc… should be destroyed. These are very fragile targets and in most cases one bomb will destroy the target as they mostly burn, and explode, destroying themselves. It’s unlikely that the hated clerics could maintain control without the oil money to pay for loyalty, most of the bigwigs in Iran already have Swiss bank accounts, and they would abandon Iran like rats leaving a sinking ship once the oil money stops. The Clerics want to live in the 7th century; we should assist them by putting Iranians all on foot and in the dark.

[G8 Diplomat]

Bomb Iran!

[G8 Diplomat]

The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes and tyranny and injustice has reached its end…

I'd say it reached its beginning in 1979

[omega4179]

Nah lets wait for pearl harbor then bomb them back.

[Marine_Uncle]

I am surprised the LATimes editorial staff allowed this to go to print. Perhaps the bombing/missle attacks are closer then some may think.

[omega4179]

I think when it does the media will somehow say it passed the global test. Having France on your side is useful.

[lentulusgracchus]

And we're going to do that by bombing?

So why don't you just dispense with the Socratic incredulity and tell me straight out that you don't think the U.S. military can do it?

And no, I wasn't thinking "bombing". I was thinking MOAB's and daisy-cutters riding accurized MIRV buses from CONUS with CEP's on the order of meters, catching them in conclave, in the middle of the day, in mid-rant, at big political rallies, and at the office. Quds Force, too. Then arclighting their barracks at night. There are ways to accomplish all these things. Means are at hand.

Or is your opposition.....philosophical?

Are you aware that Iran has a constitutional government....?

I am aware of nothing of the sort. I am aware that they have a mullocracy, in which a cabal of vindictive, hateful old men order tremendous terror hits and assassinations all over the world, sometimes within and sometimes without Iranian government participation -- as in the Lockerbie bombing, which was the mullahs' doing, after we apologized and offered reparations for the Vincennes incident, all of which they accepted. (Did you know they tried to car-bomb the wife and family of the captain of the Vincennes here in the States, after they accepted reparations? The bomb malfunctioned, but it was intended to kill them.)

As in the bombings, organized by their dog Imad Mugniyeh, in Argentina and elsewhere, notably Beirut, aimed at Israel, world Jewry, and us, because they hate us and will not be shaken from their hatred nor reconciled nor appeased.

As in the war they sanctioned by the thug Nasrallah and his Hisbollah werewolves in Lebanon -- war by a non-governmental cabal, a were-government or shadow government (Hisbollah), against a sovereign state and non-Islamic, genuinely democratic society, Israel.

No, Iran's mullahs are not a constitutional government. They are a shadow terror regime, a Sect of Assassins that hides not in a mountain retreat, as in the Middle Ages, but behind the forms of government, in the shadows, in their own conclaves where they tell one another what they really think, and plan mass murder for us -- next time, using nuclear weapons.

Their government, while not universally popular, is tied up with their religion.

Precisely the problem. They are intolerant and religiously bigoted, and murderously so -- as in the days of the caliphs so much repined-for by the Sunni Salafists, who wouldn't even get out of bed on a day when they didn't feel up to killing 20,000 Hindus.

They would be even less likely than the Iraqis to greet us warmly if we invaded.

I don't give a rat's ass what they would be likely to "greet" or not. And I don't want to invade them. I just want to kill their shadow government, their hateful black-clad mullahs, stone cold dead in the middle of the night. Right now. No apologies, no justifications, no mewling pleas and arguments, no international "sanction regime" -- just national self-defense, acting on what we know about their regime and their leading personalities. Kill them all, decapitate their regime. Drive a five-foot-long wooden pale through its heart and bury it under a crossroads. Then let the survivors do as they will. That will be the "revolution" that will never occur otherwise.

If you are not willing to do that, then you are just waiting for your own citizens to die the same way. It's them or us. They fully intend that it be us that submit or die. That is where the matter rests. Get your head around it. We are way, way beyond talking to these guys, and they walked away from talking to us long ago. Now they're talking past us, because we are already dead to them, and they are transported by an ecstatic vision of our death and destruction. Recognize that.

[Marine_Uncle]

I believe your right. The finger in the wind test says time to come aboard.

[omega4179]

I dont know the “right” time to Bomb Iran if we go in tomorrow its going to piss a lot of countries off. I’d like to see 3rd party inflame them so we can retaliate with strong justification. like the Kurds or Israel. Or fight a proxy war inside iran like they do to us. They have insurgents too!

[wideminded]

Are you aware that Iran has a constitutional government....?

I am aware of nothing of the sort.

This is the structure of the Iranian government as defined in the 1979 Iranian constitution (according to Wikipedia). As you can see the system is rigged to preserve the status quo. Nevertheless, all the parts of the government, including the Supreme Leader, are ultimately answerable to elected representatives. BTW this chart does not mention that the Supreme Leader is selected by and can be dismissed by the Assembly of Experts.

As a country which promotes the virtues of democracy, it seems unlikely we are going to be bombing any elected bodies, no matter what are the inherent faults of their governmental system.

[lentulusgracchus]

This is the structure of the Iranian government as defined in the 1979 Iranian constitution (according to Wikipedia). As you can see the system is rigged to preserve the status quo.

The wiring diagram you put up does not reflect the presence of a cabal of terrorist mullahs within the Majlis who run rump operations on their own hook. I mentioned Imad Mugniyeh's operations in Argentina as an example; Lockerbie as another. Unless you think the constitutional leaders of Iran signed off on those operations, you are stuck with admitting that Iran's mullahs are off the hook and accountable to nobody, and they have their own armed forces, the Pasdaran, just like the German Waffen-SS.

The SS was a private, party-run army, whose chain of command ran through Himmler to Hitler, and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), was the Nazi Party's security organ. The SD did not answer to the Gestapo, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), or Admiral Canaris's Abwehr. The nominal national intelligence service, the Abwehr was gradually displaced during the war by the RSHA, remnants of which survived the war in the hands of Allied intelligence to become Reinhard Gehlen's Org. Das Org was West Germany's first security organization, and the indirect ancestor of the BND. The Abwehr and RSHA were statal organizations; the SD was not. The Org may have been arguably semistatal, and in part international, since it fed MI-6 and the CIA.

Notwithstanding all the above, Germany still had a constitutional government with extraconstitutional excrescences added by Hitler. Iran's most secret national policies are set by a cabal and executed by non-statal or at best semistatal military and intelligence organizations many of which predated the mullahs' joining the imperial, and then revolutionary government (and Hisbollah is not statal, I think you will agree). Therefore Iran does not have a constitutional government, howbeit that it may have a constitution. Likewise, Cambodia in 1977 had a government -- it just wasn't constitutional.

To sum up, if a state has a number of appendages which are not only unreviewed and unreviewable, but actually secret, or denied and disowned (terrorist groups), then I would argue, if those appendages are essential tools or projections of national policy, and their workings are both secret and deniable, then the government can be said to be unconstitutional, no matter what the legal superstructure of the state looks like.