Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Liberals and the Left, the people who think hypocrisy is a greater sin than all others, including mass-murder, never seem to note their own inconsistencies, but only those of others. The person claiming moral superiority and with a need to judge everyone else is far more likely to be a nutbar Leftist than a Christer Mormon Fundamentalist.

Or, like their bumper sticker points out, "Hate Isn't a Family Value" because the Left has done such a great job of defending their sole ownership of it.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at January 6, 2007 09:47 AM

removing dictators who support terrorism is a good thing

Removing dictators who support terrorism is a good thing, but not if they are replaced by warlords who like terrorism even more.

These discussions have lacked all sense of proportion. You have to consider not only whether this or that regime supports terrorism, but also how much they support terrorism. Yes, Saddam Hussein supported international terrorism, but he did not support it as much as Nouri al-Maliki did. Meanwhile Maliki, the current prime minister of Iraq, is just a henchman of the really bad guys.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 10:21 AM

Removing dictators who support terrorism is certainly a good thing, but I don't necessarily accept that "a good thing" justifies the current occupation of Iraq in the current circumstances. It's a highly debatable point.

As to the issue of cloned food, I have two problems with it. The first is a halachic issue involving the degree to which it's kosher. For more on this sort of thing there's an old SF story by a guy named Eric Iverson I read when I was 13 or so about genetically engineered pigs that might actually be kosher.

My other concern has to do with food security. Already, the food supply lacks genetic diversity. We subsist on a remarkably small number of species and foodstuffs. Cloning individuals from these species is not a step in the right direction, it seems to me.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 6, 2007 11:11 AM

No, it isn't a debatable point. It's beyond reasonable debate that Iraq is more dangerous to the United States now than it was four years ago.

Just yesterday Rand emphasized the following true statement: "It is easier for market forces to drive a bad firm out of business than it is for political forces to extinguish a policy that fails to meet the objectives that purportedly drive its enactment." Rand was thinking space policy, but current Iraq policy is an even better example. Benevolent political forces --- to they extent that they exist --- cannot stop the government from taking Iraq from bad to worse.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 11:28 AM

Anonymous:

I think you are trying to combine a critique of the execution of the Administration's Iraq policy with a critique of the wisdom of going in there in the first place. Perhaps my incautious use of "in the current circumstances" confused things - I mean in the broader sense, as in the post 9/11 era generally rather than the January 2007 sense specifically.

I personally agree with you that things are going remarkably poorly there at the moment and I don't think significant numbers of people disagree with this point. Whether the idea of going in to Iraq to begin with was a sound one, however (and I think very strongly that it was not), is still a subject on which reasonable people can disagree.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 6, 2007 11:43 AM

It's beyond reasonable debate that Iraq is more dangerous to the United States now than it was four years ago.

Of course it's not beyond reasonable debate. But that debate is not the point of this post.

Jane, halal or kosher is your problem, not mine, or most peoples'. It's certainly no reason to ban cloning of animals for everyone. As for genetic diversity, that's a worthy goal, and one that can be pursued, or not, regardless of how we decide to reproduce our food animals and plants. It just means spending extra money developing several different versions that have the desirable characteristics, but are genetically diverse.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 12:07 PM

I think you are trying to combine a critique of the execution of the Administration's Iraq policy with a critique of the wisdom of going in there in the first place.

You know, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was a good idea in principle, he just should have done it a little differently.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 12:16 PM

But that debate is not the point of this post.

Alright, alright!

Rand, I'm not a right-winger either. I believe in the war in Iraq, which we will win as soon as we bomb Tehran and Damascus. I believe that abortion is murder and murder is already illegal. I believe that taxation is theft and that the feds can easily solve the so-called budget problem by eliminating Social Security and Medicare and defaulting on the debt. I believe in the personal right to carry fully automatic firearms without government monitoring in any public area in America. I believe that Darwinism should be banned from schools as a leftist cult doctrine. I believe that Joseph McCarthy was just plain right about Hollywood and the State Department; unfortunately so-called "liberals" cut short his good work.

But I'm certainly not a right-winger or a conservative, because I also think that age-of-consent laws should be repealed, and you won't find that in the RNC platform.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 12:51 PM

Well, at least if you actually believed those things you would believe in the Constution as intended by us founders.

Posted by Thomas Jefferson at January 6, 2007 02:41 PM

Rand, I'm not a right-winger either. I believe in the war in Iraq, which we will win as soon as we bomb Tehran and Damascus.

This frightens the bejeebers out of me because NO ONE has ever won a war, anywhere, based solely on airpower. And yet the Bomber Harris types never seem to go away.

Perhaps we need to defeat Syria and Iran but we will need INFANTRY to do that and after those regimes fall we will need to occupy and re-build.

Wars are won with infantry. Been that way for 5,000 years and over-reliance on airpower is why Israel failed to eradicate Hezbollah last summer. The IDF needed to "go Okinawa" cave-by-cave with combat engineers, satchel charges and flamethrowers but that means casualties.

= = =

I suppose we could go for mass exterminate with nukes but for a supporter of Israel to advocate that would unleash the mother of all ironies. Victims of one Holocaust advocating another.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 02:50 PM

Well, at least if you actually believed those things you would believe in the Constution as intended by us founders.

Absolutely! Everything that I believe is right there in the Constitution. It is certified by original intent, strict construction, and above all by obvious, irrefutable, common-sense interpretation of the words on paper.

And yes, I believe in Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson Davis, that is. Granted, slavery was a blemish on his record. On that point and many others, I am a classical liberal; it is further proof that I am not right-wing or a conservative. But there were also a lot of good things about the Confederacy.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 03:01 PM

This frightens the bejeebers out of me because NO ONE has ever won a war, anywhere, based solely on airpower.

Tell it to the Japanese...

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 03:50 PM

Jane appears to have a good point regarding genetic diversity and the health of a species. If I understand this correctly, it is needed to address the accumulation of errors in the replication/reproductive process and also from an evulotionary viewpoint to provide adaptation/fallback for the species in the event of environmental change. Is this concept redundant with mass cloning? If hypothetically every piece of DNA is examined for defects in a some monster scanner? Or is the replication itself compromised in some as yet not understood manner? Nature has taken a long long time to come up with a design that works well; it seems too much to expect that we can bypass that design so easily...

Posted by Offside at January 6, 2007 04:04 PM

Tell it to the Japanese...

Not only do I believe in human cloning, I believe that Rand Simberg is a clone of Barry Goldwater. All we need to do to win in Iraq is to hit the supply lines from Iran with low-yield atomic weapons.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 04:07 PM

The Japanese?

They experienced Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Midway and Leyte Gulf (and others) before Hiroshima.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 04:10 PM

Jane Bernstein makes excellent points (and often does).

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 04:11 PM

Saletan says:

"Why don't reprogramming errors taint your food? Because if they're serious, they kill the animal before it's old enough to be milked or eaten, or they cause defects that make the animal flunk federal food safety inspections. They don't carry over to a clone's offspring, since fertilization, like rebooting, cleans up programming errors. "

That assumes the sperm or egg from the clone is somehow unaffected by the programming error in the clone, doesn't it? Well, we know that's not true. Else how to explain the flaws in aged eggs of older women that cause a greater incidence Down's syndrome or the flaws in sperm that cause older men to have a higher incidence of children with schizophrenia? So Saletan is wrong, I think, since fertilization isn't a perfect clean-up process. It isn't as simple as a reboot of a computer because the hardware acts differently even if the software is unchanged.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at January 6, 2007 05:24 PM

Not only do I believe in human cloning, I believe that Rand Simberg is a clone of Barry Goldwater.

You apparently know nothing about Barry Goldwater other than the demagoguery of one of the most vile campaign ads ever produced.

All we need to do to win in Iraq is to hit the supply lines from Iran with low-yield atomic weapons.

Only a moron could fantasize that I've proposed such a thing, on the basis of anything that I've ever written. But then, we have to consider the (understandably, because the comment is so nutty) anonymous source.

They experienced Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Midway and Leyte Gulf (and others) before Hiroshima.

So, Bill, is it your contention that if we had hit them with two nukes on December 8th, 1941, that they'd have continued to fight on for years?

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 06:03 PM

You apparently know nothing about Barry Goldwater other than the demagoguery of one of the most vile campaign ads ever produced.

No, I looked up Goldwater's ABC interview in May 1964 in which he suggested that the US could use low-yield atomic weapons to defoliate the border between North and South Vietnam.

Only a moron could fantasize that I've proposed such a thing, on the basis of anything that I've ever written.

Bill White pointed out that no war has ever been won with air power alone, which is indeed one of many reasons that the idea of bombing Iran is crazy. You responded to that with the only historical counterexample, the nuclear one. Granted, you may not have consciously suggested nuking Iran, but it is the only kind of bombing campaign that would actually destroy Iran's connections to Iraq. Anything less than that would both radicalize and escalate Iran's involvement.

The problem is that if we did resort to Goldwater methods, it would turn most of the world against the US. Or maybe it's not a problem, since after all the UN and the rest of the international community is such a pile of rot compared to its paragon and savior, America.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 06:29 PM

Rand, if we invented time-travel and send a modern day aircraft carrier back to stop Pearl Harbor. Oh wait, that is from a lousy movie.

Japan surrendered because of the A-bombs AND because they knew there were a million US soldiers ready to launch an operation even larger than Normandy. With soldiers who had defeated the Japanese with bayonets, M-1 carbines and grenades.

Also, the Emperor was respected by the Japanese people and he ordered them to surrender and not resist. How many US troops were killed by Japanese insurgents after VJ day? Very few. What if the Emperor had ordered resistance to the last man, woman and child?

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 06:32 PM

Saletan says:

and further to my last comment on the same claim from Saletan, what if the programming error in the clone was a programming error in the sperm or egg in the clone thus changing the programming for the clones progeny? How can the claim that the clone self-corrects through replication be applicable? It is equivalent to saying that the clone may have errors but none of these errors can be located in the replicating mechanism (eggs/sperm/reproductive components). That's a flawed argument.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at January 6, 2007 07:01 PM

Whether the Japanese would have surrendered after an atomic bomb retaliation on December 8th, 1941 is really ignoring reality. Even if we had the A-bomb and B-29 that would drop it, we would still have been out of range. Without the Navy ships, the Marines, and other forces that fought to hold the land that would become the airfield, we wouldn't get there.

The 1991 Persian Gulf war was the closest to be a pure air campaign, and on the basis of pushing the Iraqis out of Kuwait, it might have succeeded on just air power. Still, when the Iraqis looked at the Apache helicopters and then held up a white flag, the pilots were incapable of raging the war within the Geneva Conventions.

Anyway, that's all a different debate...

Liberals world wide have taken issue with GM foods to the point of allowing mass starvation to continue in Africa in fear that GM food would lead to new illness and cancers. Of course, an adult dying of cancer is far preferable than the same person having died of starvation as a child.

I'm against cloning, but primarily because I think the current method of producing humans is far better. I could care less if my meat missed out on all the fun. However, there are interesting negative side effects to a small gene pool. You don't see it often (though it is often joked about), but incestial relationships can breed offsprings with severe genetic problems. My wife is a neonatel nurse, and she has dealt with some of these kids. They seem normal externally, but they have all sorts of neuro, and other organs, problems.

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 07:04 PM

Leland, the clone and or its offspring may have defects, but I guess the question is, as long as the clone or its offspring had tasty and unproblematic meat in its hindquarters and ribs, does it really matter whether it had all its marbles, couldn't walk straight or had huge genitals?

Geting down to absolute basics, is an error in the clone or offspring capable of an error in muscle tissue that can convey to humans in some manner after ingestion by a human? If that isn't the case we should have little to worry about.

I'm not sure we know enough about the processes involved to venture into this territory as yet.
So I'm with you, I'm skeptical. Just think about how mad-cow propagates and how little that mechanism was understood initially and it's clear we know very little about how certain proteins behave in the human body after ingestion.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at January 6, 2007 07:20 PM

Granted, you may not have consciously suggested nuking Iran, but it is the only kind of bombing campaign that would actually destroy Iran's connections to Iraq.

I didn't even unconsciously suggest that, you moron.

Anything less than that would both radicalize and escalate Iran's involvement.

Nonsense. The Middle East understands nothing except power. They persist in making war on us because there have been zero consequences to them, to date.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 07:29 PM

What if the Emperor had ordered resistance to the last man, woman and child?

Then it would have taken a lot more bombs. But the notion that a war cannot be won with airpower alone is nonsense. It may have been an ugly win, but we would have won.

That's the outcome that we're trying to avoid in this war. The worry is not that we'll lose, but that we'll win in such a way that it will be tough to look in the mirror. Unfortunately, the enemy, with their worship of death and revelry in martyrdom, continues to make that as inevitable as possible.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 07:33 PM

"I'm against cloning, but primarily because I think the current method of producing humans is far better. I could care less if my meat missed out on all the fun. However, there are interesting negative side effects to a small gene pool. You don't see it often (though it is often joked about), but incestial relationships can breed offsprings with severe genetic problems. My wife is a neonatel nurse, and she has dealt with some of these kids. They seem normal externally, but they have all sorts of neuro, and other organs, problems."

That's not an argument against cloning per se. That's just an argument against cloning incompetently.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 07:35 PM

My problem is not with cloning per se for the food supply (apart from halachic concerns, which Rand points out are my problem and that of my coreligionists). The food security argument for me isn't about transcription errors or cloning mistakes but the concern that a single genotype of a species puts our dietary eggs in a very small basket indeed. Imagine, for example, a clever terrorist targeting that specific genotype with a tailored virus. This is the reason that it's arguably a bad idea to rely on too few individuals for something as important as food, as a public health food security issue. I can see merit in some of the counterarguments though, and don't regard anything as settled in this area.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 6, 2007 07:50 PM

And unfortunately, cloning "incompetently" is all that's been demonstrated thus far.

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 6, 2007 07:51 PM

That's not an argument against cloning per se. That's just an argument against cloning incompetently.

True, but then if I just used the Jurassic Park line; "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" might get confused with supporting a indefinite ban. Specifically, I'm against human cloning at this time, but not because I think it cannot be done successfully, but because we don't know what we are really doing yet. Clone a few more sheep, and then work up to animals with an evolved brain. Show me a few cloned apes that act like complete individuals, and then I'll change my mind.

As for medical concepts, I'm ok with taking adult stem cells from injured patients and using them to clone new tissue to restore lost or damaged organs. Precisely because I don't believe in religious concepts of a clone not having a soul, I don't agree with growing a full clone for the purpose of harvesting organs. (side topic, mia culpa)

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 07:53 PM

This is the reason that it's arguably a bad idea to rely on too few individuals for something as important as food, as a public health food security issue. I can see merit in some of the counterarguments though, and don't regard anything as settled in this area.

Jane, I suspect we're not actually far apart. I'm certainly no fan of monocultures (it's one of the disasters of our current space policy...).

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 07:54 PM

Precisely because I don't believe in religious concepts of a clone not having a soul, I don't agree with growing a full clone for the purpose of harvesting organs. (side topic, mia culpa)

Leland, do you know anyone who is in favor of that?

Most proposals that I'm aware of for cloning organs, clone only the organs, not a whole person (including sentient/sapient brain) for an organ farm. I don't believe in souls at all, but I'm pretty sure that even if I did, a liver wouldn't have one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 07:59 PM

The Middle East understands nothing except power.

Which is why we will crush them with an iron fist! If they attack cities, we will destroy cities!

Naturally, once we dominate them utterly, we will give them peace and democracy.

Posted by at January 6, 2007 08:24 PM

From the AMA, here is a 1998 report on human cloning. Skip down to page 3 under "The Realistic Uses of Human Cloning" section B "Tissue Donation". The report is covering the ethics, and points out legal and ethical protections against cloning for harvesting. At the same time, it notes that this is a practical reason for cloning humans and one that seems inviting on many levels.

I'll agree that last paragraph is prophetic, in that technological advances have occurred which pretty much make the scenario moot.

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 08:26 PM

Then it would have taken a lot more bombs. But the notion that a war cannot be won with airpower alone is nonsense. It may have been an ugly win, but we would have won.

Name one example where that has happened. In history.

Again, excessive reliance on efficacy of airpower was the IDF's downfall in Lebanon this past summer.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 08:29 PM

Name one example where that has happened. In history.

Why do I need to? I hope that history will never actually record such an event. But are you saying that if we had obliterated Japan with nukes, that we wouldn't have won?

Which is why we will crush them with an iron fist! If they attack cities, we will destroy cities!

What a typically insane comment. No one has proposed that, except in the fever swamp of my moronic anonymous trolls.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 08:33 PM

First of all, let me make it clear that a using tactical nuclear weapons to do a super Osirak (remove Iran's centrifuge facility) may be perfectly feasible. And it looks increasingly likely it will happen. (I also believe the Iranians are willfully goading us towards doing exactly that -- both to see if we back down and the solidify the Shia Arabs in Iraq against us. We cannot exactly nuke Bahgdad to stop the insurgency noe can we?)

Second, we could also go on to kill just about all the Iranians easily enough. But that would not be winning a war, it would be an extermination.

And I believe the long term winner of our carpet bombing Iran with H bombs would be China, not us.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 08:39 PM

We may indeed need to nuke more than Iran.

This story says that al-Sadr was given the noose used to hang Saddam. Presumably, al-Maliki said okay to that.

http://www.arabtimes0nline.com/arabtimes/kuwait/Viewdet.asp?ID=9485&cat=a

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 08:48 PM

I'm with Bill on this one, Rand.

But are you saying that if we had obliterated Japan with nukes, that we wouldn't have won?

It might have won the war against Japan, but it would have pissed off the rest of the world that we were so barbaric.

I still think you are being too theoretical here. First, the theory is incredible for the time period under discussion, because once again, the B-29s couldn't get from Hawaii (or Midway, or Philippine Islands) to Japan without gaining Guam via naval amphibious assault. Second, you could turn the theory on its head and say that airpower is unnecessary, since SSBNs are more powerful and capable than B-2s today.

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 08:50 PM

I would like to point out that my advocacy of the IDF digging Hezbollah out of their caves with satchel charges and flamethrowers is not exactly your run of the mill pacifist liberal position.

Just saying . . .

And, yes the IDF should have gone Okinawa on Hezbollah. But now the UN has arrived and may well shoot at the IDF if they try again.

Posted by Bill White at January 6, 2007 08:57 PM

Second, we could also go on to kill just about all the Iranians easily enough. But that would not be winning a war, it would be an extermination.

Sorry, but that's a way of winning a war. Not a desirable way, but it seems to be the way they're goading us into. Ahmadinejad seems to hope that it will immanentize the eschaton. But I don't think that it will end the way he fantasizes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 08:58 PM

This story says that al-Sadr was given the noose used to hang Saddam. Presumably, al-Maliki said okay to that.

That's one hell of a presumption. First, you have to presume the story is credible, eventhough not one name is mentioned. The best you have is "Reliable Sources", and we already know that Arab "media" is well capable of interesting propaganda tricks, like providing "police chiefs" to the AP as sources. Second, you have to presume al-Maliki is/was/if ever aware that Muqtada has the rope. Third, you would have ignore the crackdown on the guards, who used the hanging for their own personal propaganda efforts (I say personal, because the government certainly did use the hanging for its own propaganda efforts).

If I was Muqtada and wanted to have my cake and eat it; I'd claim to have the rope to screw with the al-Maliki government and then sell some stuff I picked up a hardware store to which ever chump was willing to pay top dollar for it.

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 09:00 PM

First off, the idea that the Japanese were ready to surrender to US troops b/c of Guadalcanal, etc., is simply false. Richard Frank's Downfall and subsequent analysis of Japanese archival records clearly indicate that the Japanese military was expecting to fight on, despite Okinawa (which came after Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, etc.), in the belief that they could pry better terms out of the US (the main enemy).

Even after two atomic bombs, however, many in the Japanese Imperial Staff still advocated continued resistance, for the same reason---the belief that the Americans ultimately would tire of the war and losses.

It was the Emperor and a handful of civilians (all of whom were nearly assassinated after the surrender decision was made) who decided that the extermination of the Japanese people which the IJHQ was prepared to accept was not an acceptable path.

Second, doesn't "winning" depend on the objectives? One could argue that the NATO forces "won" after an air campaign against Serbia regarding the fate of Kosovo. No ground troops participated, only air and missile (i.e., unmanned airpower) seems to have been involved. (I am open to being corrected on this.)

Yes, of course there was some threat of ground forces. And the "war" itself occurred under rather unique conditions. But insofar as it achieved the stated objectives (compel Serbia to come to the bargaining table, end Serbian military occupation of Kosovo), the air campaign seems to have succeeded.

And that was achieved w/o nuclear weapons used or threatened.

Posted by Lurking Observer at January 6, 2007 09:02 PM

It might have won the war against Japan, but it would have pissed off the rest of the world that we were so barbaric.

Are you claiming that Atilla, or Genghis Khan lost wars, because the rest of the world thought that they were "being so barbaric"?

So? That just means we would have had to wait while we developed longer-range bombers. What would Japan have done to us in the meantime? Yes, they would have raped much of Asia, but what would have been the consequences to us?

War can be won with air power. The problem is the moral cost.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 6, 2007 09:03 PM

I say SSBN's. You can control the world's oceans and saturate your least favorite island with nuclear weapons.

But I conceed your point, Rand, and give many kudos to LO for coming up with an even better example.

Posted by Leland at January 6, 2007 09:12 PM

Where does this idea that exterminating the Japanese would've pissed off the rest of the world come from??

In Asia, I'd suspect that most of the Asians would've happily had the Japanese exterminated. After all, China was losing something on the order of 1000 people every week in Japanese occupied territories. Ditto the Koreans (Wanna get a black eye? Call a Korean a Japanese.) Vietnam suffered one of the greatest famines in history in 1944, when the Japanese stripped the country of foodstuffs for the benefit of the Home Islands.

Americans? Find a WWII Pacific vet, and ask them about the Bataan Death March. Ditto for Britons, Aussies, and Kiwis.

I'm sure, of course, the Soviets, with their well-known respect for human rights, would've protested. How many Japanese prisoners of the Kwantung Army actually made it home?

But then, how many would've felt the extermination of Germans was morally unacceptable? See the Morganthau Plan, for what some Americans were thinking of doing. Or, again, look at the number of German POWs who actually returned from the Soviet camps were, as a percentage.

Had there been no Cold War, one wonders what the post-war policies towards the Germans would've been. One suspects that it might've been quite a bit uglier than what current outraged moralists would countenance.

War tends to have a logic of its own. Unfortunately, it's a brutalizing, dehumanizing one.

Posted by Lurking Observer at January 6, 2007 09:24 PM

Kosovo is indeed an air war only example. So do the folks here now praise Wesley Clark? ;-)

As for Japan, I never said the A bomb wasn't helpful or even necessary. Unlike many on the Left, I approve of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. However this was an "airpower only" thread not an "is airpower vital" thread.

Japan in 1945, unlike Islam, had an Emperor who surrendered. There is no Islamic Emperor to surrender and had Tojo prevailed rather than the Emperor US riflemen (INFANTRY!) would have stormed the Home Islands despite the A-bomb.

Remember, my point was about airpower only.

= = =

Also, with nukes we do not need airplanes. The Soviets considered ICBMs to be artillery not airpower and that is not without reason.

= = =

Back to Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark and NATO ran a joint airpower, diplomatic campaign against Slobo. If that is an example of what you advocate for "airpower only" perhaps we can reach agreement on these topics, rand.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2007 05:11 AM

"Perhaps we need to defeat Syria and Iran but we will need INFANTRY to do that and after those regimes fall we will need to occupy and re-build."

We don't need to "defeat" Syria and Iran we simply need to remove their ability to interfere in Iraq (or at least make it so costly as to be against their best interests) and destroy their ability to build WMD.

And if that means destroying much of their infrastructure and leads to the fall of their ruling regimes why do we need to occupy and re-build? Let them rebuild themselves, and if that rebuilding includes more of the "same ole same ole" (IE nuclear facilities etc) we'll take those out again. And that CAN be done by airpower alone.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at January 7, 2007 07:49 AM

Cecil, if there are any Iranians or Syrians left with money, they can support the insurgents simply by hiking across the border and money can buy weapons made by Russia and China.

Also, Saudi money is funding the Sunni insurgents as well. Do we remove the Saudi royal family?

Doing an Osirak to remove Iranian nuclear weapons production? I've already stated I support that provided we prepare ourselves for insurgent retalitation. Recall that we are not now fighting the Mahdi Army in Iraq.

If we bomb Iran we will be fighting the Mahdi Army. Big time. Our infantry is currently the best in the world and I believe we would do just fine but if we fight the Mahdi Army in Baghdad it will be an infantry battle (albeit supported by some superb air weaponry).

As for Syria, Israel has long had the capability to decapitate that government. They have not, and I believe its a "devil we know" kind of situation.

25 years ago, in college, I had lunch with two Jewish classmates. One began raging about the latest Arafat atrocity. The other said calmly, "If it were in Israel's interest to kill Arafat, he would be dead. But I predict he will die an old man, in bed."

The other student was miffed. "How can you say that"

"Because what will come after Arafat will be worse."

Same with Syria, today.

Iran? Maybe not. But there will no regime change without combat troops to occupy and we ain't got them available to deploy.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2007 08:30 AM

You can still leave them eating dirt in the dark Bill. Without their infrasturcture, their economies collpase and this will greatly hinder their abilities to interfere in external matters. It will also do wonders for the values of their currencies.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 7, 2007 10:47 AM

Mike, so long as "they" are pumping oil they will have money. So long as there is oil to pump there will be others willing to help them fight us.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2007 11:00 AM

You can still leave them eating dirt in the dark Bill.

It is remarkable how little sense of proportion there is in this discussion. Iran pumps 4 million barrels of oil a day, which is twice Iraq's output and half of Saudi Arabia. It has 2.5 times the population of Iraq, and its GDP per capita is much higher than that of Iraq. Iran also has 7.5 million Internet users, according to the CIA factbook. Despite all that, the suggestion is to "leave them eating dirt in the dark."

Yeah, right, and why not also bomb China back to the stone age while we're at it?

Posted by at January 7, 2007 03:04 PM

If I were an Iranian reading this thread I would want nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

Posted by Bill White at January 7, 2007 03:35 PM

If I were an Iranian reading this thread I would want nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

Are you so delusional as to think they don't already? What is your point? Do you actually have one?

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 7, 2007 04:35 PM

Hey Rand, it's your blog and all, but do you have to trash Bill like that? He writes good stuff with a good attitude, argues a point without name-calling and makes your blog interesting. Having not even met him I would venture to say the guy is a gentleman.

You should take it easy on him, eh?

And he's right about an Iraninan who might read some of the stuff in this thread. The anger is pretty vicious, not quite what one wants to hear from those who want Iran to be a secular democracy. Seems like what some of us frustrated ones want right now is some place to unload a lot of bombs just to get this Iraq thing off our chests.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at January 7, 2007 06:43 PM

So it is blogs such as this one and the western world as a whole that has pushed Iran into wanting nuclear weapons? I guess it's also our fault that Amhadeenafool thinks the holocaust never happened and we're the ones pushing him to "wipe Israel off the map"? If only WE would be nice the whole world would be a nice place, huh Bill?

Posted by Cecil Trotter at January 8, 2007 08:02 AM

I will make this point:

George Bush should not have "called out' Iran in that Axis of Evil speech unless he was ready to take concrete steps against Iran. Rand's adjacent blog entry argues and I quote:

Melanie Phillips, like me, doesn't understand why the administration doesn't see the obvious--that we are at war with Iran, but not fighting back in any discernible way.

If we are at war with Iran (setting aside the role of Congress for now) then we should be at war with Iran. If we are not at war with Iran, giving a speech that lumos them into the Axis of Evil is simply bad strategy and tells them we will be seeking a future war.

By "calling out" Iran, we give them tremendous additional incentive to crave nuclear weapons.

Talk nice, talk diplomatically, so if you gotta hit them with a really big stick they are not expecting it.

Posted by Bill White at January 8, 2007 08:53 AM

Actually Bill I agree with your above post, but now is not too late to correct Bushs' mistake. It doesn't matter if Iran is expecting it or not, we should use a big stick soon. Today would be good.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at January 8, 2007 09:11 AM

The thought that war can be won by airpower alone is irrelevant. Military policy centers around a Total Force agenda and that means using all facets of the military. Airpower alone would be unable to 'sustain' a win of the war. The same goes for naval power, alone or infantry, alone.

Airpower certainly makes it easier to win however, you will REQUIRE infantry to take and hold objectives. Winning a war no longer means obliterating every facet of the enemy and hasn't for quite some time. Winning means nothing more than forcing the opponent into doing your will...ergo, it is the ultimate instrument of foreign policy.

And BTW a lot of people here keep citing 9/11 and WMD as reasons why we invaded Iraq. It's convenient to forget that we TOLD THEM if they didn't behave, we'd be back after the '91 circus.

CJ - USAF retired

Posted by CJ at January 8, 2007 10:51 AM

To the extent my comments above differ from "CJ - USAF retired" I retract and amend. ;-)

He is spot on.

But a question remains. Do we have sufficient infantry (today) to sustain a win over Iran?

Posted by Bill White at January 8, 2007 12:03 PM

Do we have sufficient infantry (today) to sustain a win over Iran?

We don't need any infantry to "sustain a win over Iran" for certain values of "win." No one is proposing conquering them, or even necessarily regime change. If the goals are to a) prevent them from getting nukes, b) discourage them from continuing to arm people killing us in Iraq and c) prevent them from disrupting Gulf shipping, that can all be done with airpower (and seapower) alone.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 8, 2007 12:09 PM

As I see it, it is beyond dispute that the West could "win" the GWOT - and do it in an hour or two, with approximately zero allied casualties.

But what would that do to the West? I submit that a year, or ten, after such a Gotterdammerung, America at the very least, and possibly every other Western country, would be unrecognisable - and not in a good way.

When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you.

How could there be such a thing as a democratic State, priding itself on its freedoms, that has killed a sixth of the world's population? I submit that there could not.

That's the true threat of Islam.

One possible way out is to attack at the very centre. Mecca, Medina and Qom. High-yield dirty groundbursts, to leave nothing recognisable behind and make it impossible to worship there for millennia. If they persist in worshipping there anyway - well, Darwin always wins.

Posted by Fletcher Christian at January 8, 2007 12:28 PM

I guess I should follow the thread more closely.

I do have to take exception to the "Kosovo was an air war only" comment. I was in Kosovo for six months as a volunteer with Médecins Sans Frontières and there were a lot of boots on the ground in a great variety of different uniforms. Though the use of air power made it possible to set up the conditions for soldiers to intervene locally, it didn't, in my view, do the entire job alone.

A friend in the air force said something along the lines of "you can turn the board over and clear every piece with air power, but you can't get a checkmate."

Posted by Jane Bernstein at January 8, 2007 12:39 PM

Jane:

Point taken. But what if you burn the board?

Posted by Fletcher Christian at January 10, 2007 04:01 AM

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