Bloodless Coup

That's an excellent analysis - and sending in NATO is a terrible idea.

that's probably the most accessible thing i've read on-topic in a while -- or rather, it's the most effective post i've read in a while that taught me something concrete, made a lot of sense, and didn't leave me with the suspicion that my understanding of the undelrying reasoning was somehow deficient. that's for the link.

thanks for the leak, even.

link. i'm a jackass.

What moon said, minus the bit about the leak.

Considering that hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon support Hezbollah which wants to destroy "The West," probably as many in Iran support it (and I know the tired news story about their social programs--it's just the way Southerners called the Klan a civic organization, but it didn't change the lack of empathy of its members), and given your posts in the other thread there's more and more in Pakistan who want to destroy the West--considering all these people who hate "the West," and who're getting in Pakistan and Iran more nukes, getting more advanced weapons than they've had before and more of them, what are we waiting for? The idea that there are just a few bad apples in the Middle East has been disproven by widespread support for Hezbollah who seek whenever possible to kill Israelis. (At least) Southern Lebanon supports Hezbollah, and they're growing more powerful, and attacking more as they grow more powerful. If this is going to be a fight between the West and radical Islam, why not fight now?
What I mean is, send in NATO, an organization that's capable of fighting them. If it provokes some big attack against NATO or NATO's member states, then that's more evidence that the threat exists as our enemies keep telling us they exist, to ruthlessly destroy us. What exactly gives any of you the idea that they want something else? Iran and Syria actively give weapons to people they know are going to kill Israelis. What's in the Kool Aid that makes you think they are going to somehow change their minds and leave us to live peacefully beside them, when they've done so much to show otherwise? Are more people in the Arab-Persian world going to hate us? What are they going to do, develop nuclear weapons and attack us, or give the advanced weapons they have to our enemies? They did it, they're doing it, they've done it. This isn't a matter of a few bad apples. This is elected governments in Iran, Palestine and elsewhere committed to our destruction. The time for surgical strikes has passed. I have empathy for their citizens who learned to hate us from their leaders, who are told they will be rewarded for cruelty, who believe they are fighting the devil. But I also have empathy for us, and I don't see how it's immoral for us to destroy people who've been given chance, time and again, to live in peace with us. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but what makes you think that's what they want, when they voted HAMAS and Iran's leader into power? At the least, they could care less if we met our own destruction, and knowing they elected leaders who seek that end, in the US we'd call that a crime (reckless endangerment, I believe). We need to stop putting the word "innocent" before civilians so wantonly when they'd be happier if we're dead.

"If this is going to be a fight between the West and radical Islam, why not fight now?"

OK - here's why: launching an aggressive war that violates all of our norms and confirms all of their worst suspicions about us in ways that would make them vastly more opposed to us than they are at the moment, and put US lives at risk on a scale we don't see now. Is that good enough of a reason for you?

And OF COURSE things could get vastly worse for us - in case you haven't noticed, these groups aren't attacking the US. You want to see American's butchered in Iraq and terrorist attacks against us fly up - do what you are suggesting. Personally, I don't want that. And what's to be gained? Hezbollah isn't attacking us - neither is Iran, nor Palestine. Why do you want to go on a murderous warpath that's going to get a long of people killed?

Personally, I find that rather sickening - as I find your appalling notion that civilians are fully legitimate targets b/c of what some leader or soldier chooses to do.

Oh, and if reasons of respect for life and liberty aren't good enough for you - you do realize the likely effects of what you are advocating in terms of the economy right? Bad bad bad bad bad. And that's more than a little bit important if you'd like those of us who live through your proposed war of aggression to be remotely prosperous, much less maintain our position atop the international economy.

"[W]ar of aggression"?
Do you even know what aggression means? As you love to point out, we've lost 2500 of our soldiers lives giving the Iraqis their own government. Israel withdrew from Palestine and south Lebanon so they could have their own goverments. You can try, but your efforts to cast this in some sort of imperialistic, aggressive light don't match the reality that we've been generous in our foreign policies, we've been willing to live and let live. They haven't. But you want to break this down in an atomistic way, remove it entirely from a context in which Americans and Israelis are targetted daily by those who aren't willing to live and let live.
And in case you missed last weeks news, Hezbollah declared war on us, and anyone else who helps the Israelis. They're not attacking us the way Osama wasn't attacking us on 9/10. And again you're ignoring the point that it is not some leader or soldier or a few bad apples. Hundreds of thousands in Lebanon alone rallied in support of Hezbollah, a political force that exists to spill Israeli blood. If they were truly a group about social programs, their leaders would have condemned the attacks and promised to stop them. They didn't. The terrorists in Palestine didn't stop either, despite both of those groups taking aggressive acts against a people of Israel willing to give peace a chance. It's not a few bad apples. It's the tree of radical Islam, rotten and twisted with hatred and intolerance. And it does strike me as a little mischevious that whenever you talk about Iraq, things are spiraling out of control, getting worse every day. But now you're saying that if we attack them, things will spiral out of control and get worse every day. How many thousands of people does Al Queda, HAMAS, and Hezbollah have to kill this decade before you admit that it will probably ten times as many people dying from terrorist attacks this decade as it was during the last decade. And what gives you the impression it won't be ten times worse than that in the next decade? We've tried generosity, forgiveness, and they drew American and Israeli blood. Caring about our survival enought to accept that it actually is threatened, that a war now will be less costly than allowing them to continue attacking us, with nuclear weapons, is called love for the world as it is, not hatred of it in favor of a world that should be. That's what they do. Let's not make their mistake.

morris wrote: "I have empathy for their citizens who learned to hate us from their leaders . . . ." (link to a dictionary added)

now that's irony.

You simply don't know the first thing about these groups, countries or what you claim to talk about. Hezbollah has killed lots of Americans before when we took sides against them - it'll happen again if we are stupid enough to do it again. And no, they aren't attacking Americans last I checked - even though it is our own armaments that Israel is raining down upon them. Things in Iraq are indeed terrible - only an ostrich could deny that. But the notion that they can't get worse is facile beyond belief - and if you really want to up the death tolls of Americans (and they can definitely be raised by leaps and bounds), go ahead and launch a murderous, illegal, aggreesive war (and yes, that's what it will be, b/c no, apart from al Qaeda, the groups you are mentioning aren't focused on killing Americans) and get lots of people killed.

What exactly that's supposed to prove or prevent, I'm not entirely clear on.

I'm amazed you know so little about politics or psych, much less the region, and continue to bother to comment here. Your advice is inane, assuming alliances and similarities where none exist, and thinking that killing the in-groups of millions of people will make them somehow less of a threat to us than they are now (when, apart from GW's folly and mishandling, thankfully few Americans are really being killed be this menacing force that isn't as strong as you think - but will be if we do what you are proposing).

And yes, before you say I'm understating deaths in Iraq, that's what "apart from GW's folly and mishandling" was meant to refer to - and that's terrible - but it has extremely little to do with a war in Lebanon with Hezbollah.

Or it does for now - launch the kind of crusade you are proposing and we'll be violating some of the simplest, "no duh" rules of politics - 1) keep your enemies divided, 2) don't activate potential enemies, 3) don't play into the hands of your enemies (and this would decimate our soft power, arguably our greatest resource), etc. ...