Posted on 07/17/2008 7:10:54 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
MY greatest worry on Iran's nuclear threat to civilization isn't the military option. It's trying that option on the cheap.
If there's any way to block Tehran's pursuit of nukes short of warfare, I'm all for it. Maybe yesterday's dispatch of the No. 3 US diplomat to observe the European Union's talks with the mullahs about their nukes will work a miracle (don't hold your breath).
Military strikes must be the last resort. Even a successful attack would panic oil markets, interrupt supplies to an unknown degree and make enemies of the Iranian people for another generation.
But the fanatics in Tehran may leave us no peaceful alternative. In that case, the most disastrous thing we could do would be to launch an economy-model attack.
If forced to strike, we have to do it right. When safe-at-home ideologues bluster, "Just bomb 'em," they haven't a clue how complex this problem is.
Nor is there any chance that the Israelis could handle Iran on their own (their recent air-force exercise was psychological warfare). As skilled as their pilots and planners may be, the Israelis lack the capacity to sustain a strategic offensive against Iran - or to deal with the inevitable mess they'd leave behind in the Persian Gulf. Israel's aircraft could do serious damage to Iran's nuke program, but the US military would face the potentially catastrophic aftermath.
Without compromising any secrets - the Iranians already know what we'd need to do - here are the basic requirements for smacking down Iran's nuke program:
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“When safe-at-home ideologues bluster, “Just bomb ‘em,” they haven’t a clue how complex this problem is.”
nice zinger there.
Excellent article. Krauthammer is a wise and smart man.
nice zinger there.)
I would agree with that statement if he is talking about conventional bombs. I would think if a few hundred 1+ megaton nuclear weapons were dropped all over the country sterilizing it, it would be a different story.
“I would think if a few hundred 1+ megaton nuclear weapons were dropped all over the country sterilizing it, it would be a different story.”
A different story for Iran indeed, and a very different and quite long epilogue to boot!
The goal should be to delay the nuclear program by 10 years and punch a hole in their ability to make money. The people of Iran will do the rest. A few well placed bombs should do the trick not a World War two style carpet bombing or invasion and occupation. One or two Atomic Blasts could do the trick—or maybe a few bombs worth of Ebola or anthrax. These could be done with a spies or at night. A good plague, Punishment from God, and the threat could be all over. One needs to think outside the box.
He’s dead right. If you pull the gun you’d better be planning to use it.
A few precision strikes isn’t going to do it. There will be retaliation against Gulf traffic, massive retaliation against our troops. Probably massive attacks against cities in the US and Israel, although our working assumption is that if they could they would anyway.
We’ll have to be prepared from the first shot for a war to the finish, whatever that means. Our positions in Iraq had better be hardened in advance. We’d better be prepared to take down all their shore missile batteries on Hour 1 of Day 1. Their submarines have to be taken out on Hour 1 of Day one. Their Revolutionary Guard has to be decapitated Hour 1 of Day 1. Any troops massing along the Iraqi border will have to be hurt badly, wiped out, if their commanders can’t be bought and turned.
We’ll have to close the Gulf to Iranian traffic while keeping it open for everyone else, not so easy to do during open warfare.
And several dozen sites having anything to do with their nuclear program reduced to rubble even if it means civilian casualties.
We had better have a plan in place for a replacement government and a way to put them in power, preferably without having to enter and occupy the country; and we’d better know what we’re going to do if that doesn’t work. No joke.
We’d better know what we’re going to do when portions of our CIA start exposing our operations to the public, which obviously includes the enemy. We’d better know what we’re going to do when members of congress with access to classified information expose it during open warfare.
We have to understand from the first shot that we’re in it all the way, come what may. It might be over in two weeks but it seems like these things never are.
The better plan will be to develop the capability to exert pressure on them without a bombing campaign that leads instantly to open warfare.
Our ability to control the Straits and to close them to Iranian traffic is as effective as an atom bomb. We need to develop a real intelligence agency with the capacity to influence events within the country while we apply judicious pressure from outside.
The bombing campaign should be a last resort. But if we are forced to it we should not kid ourselves. Once you get on the roller coaster you don’t get off until its over.
Nuke them till they Glow! It worked with Japan, it would work with Iran.
barbra ann
The only options we will have will be utter destruction of Iran with enough nukes to turn the country into a sheet of glass, or we surrender to them. No other choice.
Which means we must have McCain to follow Bush II. In Iran Obama would result in thousands of times worse consequences than Clinton after Bush I in Somalia.
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