Please explain Cut and Run criteria in light of Afghanistan

A quick comment here.Ever since the end of Desert Storm, some people (most particularly the neocons) have been complaining that Bush Sr. made a collosal mistake by not marching into Bagdad. Personally, I thought at the time that it was a brilliant move by Bush Sr., Powell et al. The alternative, I thought, would likely bog us down in an unwinnable vietnam-style war. Bush Jr's folly has since demonstrated that my assessment was correct.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

You do not have to predict. What they will do in these circumstance is known. And the basis for them acting so is a paradigm long held in military thinking: ensure your technology is a generation ahead of your enemy. So long as Israel has nuclear and their enemies do not the balance of power lies with Israel. Someones got to have the balance of power.Folk may send suicide bombers but they are not able to attack in conventional fashion - Israel would have them for breakfast. But if an enemy got their hands on nuclear weapons then Israel is completely exposed. They cannot afford to let this occur and are in the same position as the US was during the Cuban missile crisis. This presumes inside awareness of the threat. There may be many things going on to which we are not privy. The unknown notwithstanding, Israels reaction to Irans current course is a clear and present danger. History proves there is a danger and their current reality wrt to their neighbours proves so - wishful thinking about 'getting on' with enemies who have previously attempted your destruction is just that. Iran can learn something from Iraq. The West will not tolerate any threat to oil - for it cannot afford to tolerate it no more than Israel can tolerate Irans development of nuclear weapons

Okay, So we need to secure Canada, Alaska, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Kuwait, Sadui Arabia, Indonesia, and every other country that has oil. Well, Canada and Alaska are done. Up next, Iraq and Kuwait (may as well get them, seeing as how they're on Iraq's border).That's such bull Iano and you know it. If the west was so concerned about the oil supply, then why haven't we all banded together (after all, even the french, germans, swedes, norwegians, danish, spanish, italians, et al are part of the west) to go on a massive oil crusade? You surely don't think that the west wants all the oil in the hands of the US?And one tiny nitpick. The balance of power is where both sides are relatively equal. What Isreal wants, and has for the moment, is an unbalance in their favor. And I'm not being literal with the term "balance". I'm using it the way the realists do--you only have a balance of power when the sides are equal (or close to). You have an unbalance when one side gets too powerful.

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Read around the last few points I made. I don't see Saddam as having been a threat. Its threat in the region that counts. My last post to NWR lays one clear threat out. Its not just Iraqi oil - its middle east oil. Saudi, Kuwait etc. The worlds policeman is policing an area bigger than Iraq. I suppose they could. My NASA/Defence uncle was telling me some of what is involved when dealing with nuclear material and its not simply a matter of dropping in the former soviet-union nuclear supermarket, making your purchase and pressing "Explode". Not by any means impossible to do but you need a bit more sophistication that the Taliban have. And the more sophistication required the easier to track the the activity

I think you are dealing with a caricature here. Bush seniors team did make the right move I think. Pull Saddams regionally-directed teeth out and leave his internally-directed teeth in. Given he had no constraints operating on him (such a Nietzsches "usless compassion) there was going to little by way of instability in Iraq (oil-supply wise).Oil stability in the face of threat makes Iraq this time not at all a bad move. Sure it is more costly but the conditions are not the same as during Desert Storm. You need to meet the threat as it is for least cost. To expect it for free is the only folly hereYou are commenting without any reference to what is going on in a geopolitical/economic sense. Of course you arrive at the conclusion of moron.As that uncle of mine told me: "I watch CNN in order to find out what is NOT the case"Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Haven't you noticed? The calvary have already arrived. A year before Iraq my uncle visited a USAAF airbase which had bombs stockpiled all over the place with B52 bombers circuiting doing practice touch landing/takeoff all day long. It wasn't if but when...You can be sure measures are in place to ward any other threat. All the moves that might be made by any major player in the region are under constant assessment and prep meausures are put in place for the most dangerous. That is the think tank he was involved with in any case. Threat scenarios and the responses to them.With 9/11 came the necessity to crank things up a little. 9/11 symbolised what the more recent soft-drink bottle bomb plan almost demonstrated: one doesn't have to have armies to cause serious damage to a delicate system. The shocks will reverberate all the way down the lineFor instance.Lets say you figured that simultaneously knocking out 40 main oil refineries would be enough to send the worlds economic system into a nuclear winter. What would be required? Would smuggling in small quantities of explosives over a period of time and then setting them off in mission critical places that are time consuming to repair do the job? You betcha.I'm the engineering manager in a fairly complex plant and if you gave me a day I could, without a gramme of explosive, render the plant inoperable for a month. You do it in tiers - a sort of cascade. When folk get to figuring a way around the first problem the solve it and press the go button. Only to find there is another problem. And so on....Having the ability to secure refineries quickly in the face of non-full-frontal terrorist threat (Holmes "declaring oil an international owned commodity" ie: no longer the possession of sovereign states) is achieved by having forces on the ground. Oil is global and being prepared to declare a global state of emergency became necessary from the lessons one could learn from 9/11Who bar for the sovereign states are going to complain? And what would the sovereigh states (or even the terrorists) do that could be worse than global economic and industrial meltdown?Put it this way. If I was the brilliant (if fiendish) thinker that concieved of 9/11 then oil would be were I would be looking right now. I don't for a moment suppose Bush & Co to be as thick as many consider them to be. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

No, that's a misreading of 9/11. The events of 9/11 were because there are some people who are very angry at us. The "war against terrorism" should have been a battle to win the hearts and minds of well meaning people everywhere.Causing the deaths of maybe 100,000 innocent Iraqis isn't going to win many hearts and minds.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

I'm sorry but I am reading your posts and they aren't making sense to me. You have asserted a concern about oil, which while possible you have not explained why it was imminent. More importantly you have not explained why invading the whole of Iraq was necessary to secure such aims. How do you know how much sophistication supporters of the Taliban have? And if they don't why am I to suppose any other group in the region does have the sophistication?

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

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It was not a response to the US, and was in large part empowered by the US.

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Yes, so this is essentially the same thing. The US is responsible for the Taliban in some form or manner.

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empower a moderate gov't by protecting it from attacks as well as eliminating aggressive military forces

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Wrong - this is essentially the same thing (at least for current administration) as # 1 . The US calling all the shots..
What I was trying to say is that the people in that region hate the US as long as US is the occupying force and they don't see the moderate government as nothing more than a puppet government. The US media of course tries to portray some in the ME as welcoming the US. Not so, they want it to end right now.

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What is the constitual difference between a peacekeeping force and our current military personnel

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The difference is that this will not be a occupying force..This force will just provide food distribution etc and be ready to leaveas soon as they are forced out.

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we have a responsibility to minimize their casualties

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hell no! we dont.. When the Bizzaros in the white house say they hate us - they are right. But not because of our freedom but because we dare to occupy their land and then try to dictate their governement for them.Your argument is essentially the weak (somewhat) antiwar Democrat response that makes no sense and will guarantee another republican victory, (which is exactly why the democrats are beating the war drums for iran) .What we need is not just 'cut and run' but a radical change in American foreign policy in ME. I know it won't happen though...

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Only with security will they be able to choose their destiny in a way that has a hope of lasting more than one military dictator at a time.

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Essentially, you are restating what the overall objective of the war against Iraq and Agf was about.
As stated in the orignal plan by the Bush Gov. I think Bush even mentioned it in one of his silly speeeches:A transformation of the regionWhat the people there want does not factor in at all, and never will regardless of who is in power (Democ or Repub).

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The West will not tolerate any threat to oil - for it cannot afford to tolerate it no more than Israel can tolerate Irans development of nuclear weapons

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Explain to me why Iran should tolerate Israel in possession of fully developed nuclear weapons.And why should any country in the midde east feel safe
from Israel?
As for the alleged 'nazi' statements made by some of the ME leaders that israel should be wiped off the map:
Where was Israel 70 years ago?The hypocrisy here is so astounding..

you know, Holmes makes a good point. If this was all about the oil, then why invade whole countries? You need only conquer the oil rich areas of the country and secure those borders. You don't have to worry about civilian deaths, no green zone is necessary, no new government, just the land with the oil being fiercly protected. Where is this protection? Better yet, where is the exploitation of the oil lands we have control of in Iraq? (you know, Iraq is producing less crude oil than before we started this war. If it was all about securing the oil for the benefit of our economy, then we should at least try to rebuild it. For being a fundamentalist christian, you sure are a funny kind of radicalist)

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I remember well the conversation my dad and a friend of mine had when my friend was about 20. The craze of 'joyriding' (robbing cars and driving around looking for a chase from the cops) was in full swing and mothers with prams were getting run down on the streets of Dublin. Barry was saying that the problem needed to be solved at root level: poverty and hopelessness drove kids to seek excitment and this was the way they did it "you must tackle the root causes or else there is no point.." was Barry's approach"That's all very well and good" replied my old man "but people are getting run down today. The solution, today, is to ram them when you get a chance and lock them up when you catch them. Make it an unattractive way to get kicks. That solves the problem of today and that is the problem we need to address today"Winning the hearts and minds of people might reduce recruitment levels at some point but this is a problem of now. And what we have seen is that you only need a relatively insignificant number of people who are bent on your destruction NOW to inflict serious damage. Sowing seeds for the future impinges not at all on the problem now.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I take it I do not have to explain to you the criticality of oil to the worlds economic system. Its not even that supply has to be cut for long - its not tremors that bring a building down in an earthquake but the buildings weight itself. You only have to get it moving in the right way.What risk to oil supply is an acceptable one - given the consequences of a tremor? I have given Israel/Iran as a risk. Israel is not going to permit nuclear weapons on its doorstep. They have shown themselves in no uncertain terms to be unwilling to accept that already in 1981. According to the long standing military paradigm they could not be expected to do anything else anyway. Are you overlooking that Iran, currently, is bent on moving in that direction and that, in a conventional terms sense (ie: without nuclear weapons) they are no match for Israel (a Irish army officer I know, who has served on numerous UN peacekeeping missions in the region, was of the opinion that the speed at which Israel could march on Damascus (not that they ever would do such a thing) is limited only by how fast their vehicles can travel - such is the military state of the surrounding nations in conventional terms)Given that risk alone (what do you think might happen in the current climate if Israel struck (pre-emptively) Irans nuclear facilities?) and the total unacceptability of risk to oil supply - do you not see it as wise to have a large military presence on the ground. All systems ready: support systems, war footing, combat readiness. The US is geared up for that particular risk should it manifest itself in reality> it is not the only one even if it would rank high on the war games currently being played out in Washington think-tanksWe can disappear up our own arseholes trying to play amateur wargames with these facts ("why would Israel attacking Iran result in threat to oilfields?) One only has to look at Sarajevo and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the resulting war to see that tinderboxes, when they go off, go off in unexpected fashion. And the Middle East is one giant tinderbox.And this doesn't even begin to look at the other threat: a terrorist strike against the biggest addiction of all time: the worlds reliance on oil. Talk of hydrogen economies is somewhat premature if one is to presume a world economy to speak of post a lack-of-oil meltdown.

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Winning the hearts and minds of people might reduce recruitment levels at some point but this is a problem of now. And what we have seen is that you only need a relatively insignificant number of people who are bent on your destruction NOW to inflict serious damage.

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the 'root' cause for a terrorist and a criminal are very different, so I don't see how you can equate a terrorist to a criminal..A terrorist is essentially a person willing to murder innocent people to draw attention to what he sees as an injustice. Normally the issue is a legitmate grevience but the means to bring it to light is questionable.
911 is a terrorist response to quite a lot of problems which the US government was directly responsible for..this should be quite easy to see, but the mainstream media likes fairly tale story instead..and most people are buying..What really gets me angry is the hypocrisy of the whole thing.
If you really want to subscribe to might is right why not nuke em all? We've killed thousands of them already and they'll never forget that..
We've got to accept we are the powerful and the oppressors not the oppressed
(we meaning US /world government)

Of course Iran shouldn't tolerate Israel being the only nuclear power in the region. Of course they should attempt to access these weapons. Any old fool can see that the current imbalance puts Iran at the mercy of Israel. And it is not unexpected that Iran would like to be at least on equal footing. Even plain old national pride insists that Iran attempt what they are attempting.And any old fool can see that Israel would not permit this to happen (as they didn't permit it to happen in Iraq in 1981). And if they decide not to permit it then what is Iran to do (besides set of the tinderbox that is the Middle East)?Can you see the surrounding Arab nations twiddling their thumbs in the face of Irans shame. Can you see Iran sitting around twiddling their thumbs in the face of Irans shame. I think not. Not that Israel could loose - ultimately they have the nukes and one of the finest conventional military systems in the world. They have the support of America but they don't need it as such. They can manage quite well - as they have been doing since the war against them started in 1948. 60 years under threat of extinction is not a task anyone else in the region has ever faced afterall.But this isn't about Israel losing. It is about oil.Edited by iano, : No reason given.