Israel considers pre-emptive strike on Iran. Sky News.

[Juliette]

Read what i wrote before your last post...

*frowns* You did it. This will get painful now.
I will be watching this one from the sidelines.

[Legendary Apophis]

Avenger's comment about TV atrocities reminds me about the chapter regarding the "glorious wars" in Voltaire's Candid and how the "glorious fighters" have "heroic needs" (read: rape women then murder them; pillage civilians to collect tributes). Which is exactly what happens in third world's wars, while the weapons manufacturers/sellers make tons of profits out of these merciless clans fighting each others causing great side damages to civilians.

[[KMA]Avenger]

Read what i wrote before your last post...

*frowns* You did it. This will get painful now.
I will be watching this one from the sidelines.

My obvious bad. whatever happened to the "embarrassed" smiley?

I simply meant that he had missed my post due to my PC freezing. i didn't mean it it in a derogatory sense.

My sincerest apologies.

[Coulson]

Read what i wrote before your last post...

I did. Pictures of dead babies are a poor attempt to play at my emotions, which I will not fall to.
What I find interesting is our different perspective. You're very close to earth. Very individualistic. As if you honestly believe every single life is important. That kind of absurd reasoning ruins a discussion on the nature and validity of war, specifically Israel vs Iran. Pre-emptive strikes are very polite. They save lives. And they make me richer.

And FYI, might does not make right. might simply gives you the ability to go around killing people, wiping out whole nations and stealing everything in sight, only to turn around and give China the contracts for the resources...

A very shortsighted vision, but given the influence of governments on wars I can see why you would use only recent history to fuel your argument. In the short history of human society, there's a constant. That constant is the total sum of power. It's divided in different ways in different periods in history, but the end result is always fixed. Power balances itself out. An empire, nation or state has a lot of power, relative to everyone else? Opportunists rise up and break the empire, nation, state and reduce it's power.
I remember Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, the deep sleep, China, the Ottomans, Britain, the USSR, the USA, and China again. All will fall, and new powers will rise. The only time in history where the power was balanced in a selfsustaining fashion was during the deep sleep, but we don't remember much.
Before I obfuscate my point even further, I'll clarify; people ruin their nations. Power is an organism itself, parasitic to some people, symbiotic to others.

If i was you i would go away and read General Smedley Butlers book War is a Racket and then rethink your opinion and what you have said so far.

Why would I read a traitor's book if I can read military or socioeconomic history and see for myself that wherever governments are involved, any action is a racket. Just look at international banks. The whole economy is a racket. Why should I be alarmed or surprised that wars are too?

I won't go away because we disagree.

[[KMA]Avenger]

General Butler in your opinion is a traitor?

The man is to this date one of the most highly honoured marines in US history, who exposed treason to the US congress and wrote a book about how the robber-barons tried to recruit him to overthrow the US Govt...and you call him a traitor?

Did the definition of treason change and i am not aware of it?

If you are aware that wars are rackets then how can you support them?

[Coulson]

General Butler in your opinion is a traitor?
The man is to this date one of the most highly honoured marines in US history, who exposed treason to the US congress and wrote a book about how the robber-barons tried to recruit him to overthrow the US Govt...and you call him a traitor?
Did the definition of treason change and i am not aware of it?

Yes, I consider him a traitor to humanity for defecting from power to weakness. But I won't go into that, as it'd derail this thread way too much.

If you are aware that wars are rackets then how can you support them?

You misread me and made an incorrect decudtion. Government wars are rackets. The principle of war remains a sacred element of humanity.

[[KMA]Avenger]

Ok, i'm going to have to bow out for now, it's not my PC that's freezing, it's my browser.

Off i go to run some scans!

[MEZZANINE]

Would Israel take unilateral action if it felt threatened ?

IMO Yes, they have never backed down and dont bluff on such things. BUT Im sure the US ( UN ) will placate them with assurances that Iran has no Nukes and wont have for several years and even when they do would not use them for fear of reprisals in kind.

Would the US / UK / UN make a joint strike on Iran ?

IMO No, UN may back it on paper but most member nations will do little or nothing as usual, UK forces already far to thinly spread and couldnt even if they wanted to, and US would struggle to justify it to the US voters, essentially it would be an election loser for whoever supported it.

Would an Israely first strike on Iran cause a MiddleEast wide or World war ?

IMO NO, the world dont care, and even in the middle East Iran is a pariah much like Iraq was, the rest wont support them.



Most likely outcomes

1) Israel will make strategic strike to take out research, material production and reactors themselves. They would never invade, just keep pinned down from the air.

2) US / UN will make more inspections and more assurances that if Iran ever got Nukes and used them, the US would retaliate, cold war standoff style.

[Juliette]

Avenger's comment about TV atrocities reminds me about the chapter regarding the "glorious wars" in Voltaire's Candid and how the "glorious fighters" have "heroic needs" (read: rape women then murder them; pillage civilians to collect tributes). Which is exactly what happens in third world's wars, while the weapons manufacturers/sellers make tons of profits out of these merciless clans fighting each others causing great side damages to civilians.

Civilians are targets of war. In my opinion, you should not make a distinction between military and civilian people. A civilian can become military if you give them a weapon. Take a look at Iraq or Afghanistan. Had the civilian population been properly terrorised, they would not have risen up against the invaders. Rather than take into consideration that civilian casualties need be avoided, I would recommend terror bombing as a means of pacification.

The Reaper and Predator drones are the absolute pinnacle of terrorism. Is that a bad thing? No, not when applied to further your war effort. It becomes a bad thing when a nation states their intent not to harm the civilian population, and then uses imprecise weaponry to cause mayhem and death. First off, a nation should never claim to aim to keep the civilian population out of a conflict. This whole 'Let's ignore the obvious mass of potential freedom fighters' embodies a very bad 'mojo'. No wonder wars take ages these days. The separation between civilians and military in the Fatherland is the root cause of wars taking longer and longer to be finished. If the full force of a nation would rise up against an enemy state, there would be nothing left of it before the end.
The reforms of the Roman military back in the day were the starting point of the separation tradition. Once separated, the civilians felt less and less ties to the military, and started to lean upon their governments, because they were their representation. We are talking about a separation process that takes millennia to reach the state we are in today. The military became more and more detached, and with that, the civilian perception of the military became separated from the national interest. In sports terms, the military became boxing gloves, instead of the bare fists of the nation. No longer part of the population (civilians as the torso, heart, mind, and locomotion, government as the head, and the military as the arms and fists), but a separate entity. The best example is in the extinction of the Warrior Monks. Purposeful violence, and in fact any violence became something to be shunned, and as the separated society developed a 'conscience', or rather a weakness to power, the head of the nation (government) decided to play a deception ploy on civilians. You yourself have expressed this countless times, G. The government screws us. The interesting thing, is that while the military serves the national interest, civilians are increasingly separated from that same interest. Individual interest becomes superior to the national interest, and in that environment, war becomes an evil, and the military the embodiment of that evil. Various nations are in different stages of this separation process, but I would like to draw the Vietnam War into memory. Civilian support was lost, and thus failed the war effort. When a nation does not fight a war with all that it is, it will inevitably fail to reach their objectives. I do not count rewriting your objectives as reaching them, as the Obama administration does.

Israel will lose when it fights Iran, for the simple reason that the (majority of the) Iranian population supports a war on Israel, whereas the Israeli civilian population is heavily divided on the subject. So, unless Israel can muster its population to act as one in the national interest of eliminating a potential threat to their lives (like they did in their previous wars for survival), they should not start a war.


If you, as a nation, want to conquer or subdue another nation, you will need to terrorise its civilian population to the point of mental capitulation, at which point a physical war is no longer necessary. Should you be unable to put terror into the population, you should use military force to batter them to the point where you can use terror to finish the job.

But that is controversial theory of war. Something most people will consider immoral and uncivilised, even though it is exactly the opposite. It requires a reverse paradigm shift on the concept of war and society though. I will admit that.

[[KMA]Avenger]

General Butler in your opinion is a traitor?
The man is to this date one of the most highly honoured marines in US history, who exposed treason to the US congress and wrote a book about how the robber-barons tried to recruit him to overthrow the US Govt...and you call him a traitor?
Did the definition of treason change and i am not aware of it?

Yes, I consider him a traitor to humanity for defecting from power to weakness.

That tells me all i need to know about you.

Thanks but no thanks.

[Juliette]

You really have no idea how discussions work, do you G? I am inclined to agree with Phil's assessment; hyperemotional and utterly irrational.

[[KMA]Avenger]

How is it hyper-emotional and irrational to be against war and blowing people up?

How can you also think that a man who exposed corruption and treason at the highest levels be considered a traitor? let alone a traitor to humanity.

How can you possibly think that might makes right?

I bowed out gracefully because i know EXACTLY what he is talking about, his mindset (yours as well, we've had this between you and me before if you remember), his philosophy and so on. that attitude disgusts me so much.i know where it comes from and i see it everywhere...it's sickening!
I also do not consider standing by ones convictions as weakness, on the contrary, i consider someone who can stand by what they believe in as a sign of great strength, and resorting to bombing countries and people into oblivion so you can steal their resources as barbaric. especially when you consider that America has the largest oil fields, and other rare earth mineral and metal deposits on the planet!

So there really is need to answer the above...


Back on topic?

[Jack]

Nothing is going to happen, they'll blow a lot of smoke then nothing. Everyone will forget what was said and we'll move on to the next great controversy.

[RepliMagni]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15621133

[[KMA]Avenger]

http://www.infowars.com/withdrawal-of-u ... y-suspect/


And before anyone starts again about my sources, consider this...Infowars gets more site traffic than most of the mainstream media. also The Drudge Report gets more traffic than all the mainstream media combined and routinely links to infowars articles...which are written by many writers including well know experts in the fields of geopolitics, economics and so on.