"Bang $100,000 goes up in smoke..."

[Bigduke6]

It may come as no suprise to you to learn I think you're wrong.

There is no comparison between Iran's religious police, and the Savak. The religious police are as a general thing easily avoided, the rules they impose are easily bent, and for practical purposes they don't kick peoples' doors in. Enforcement of the tough rules is spotty: Tehran woman are winnning the war with the religious conservatives, they have raised dressing provocatively and stylishly, while keeping to the letter of shariah-based rules, to an art form.

At the end of the day Iran's religious police aren't even an organ of the state, they're more like conservative morality activists running around looking for liberals to rat on to the authorities. Every once in a while the religious police manage to get some one an outrageous sentence for adultery or drinking in public, and certainly they're not benign, but to call that something similar to a police state, is a huge distortion. Iran's main human rights problems are fixed elections and lots of state control of the media. Not people getting arrested in the middle of the night.

Savak, by comparison, was one of the most efficient secret police services the world has ever seen, it rivaled the NKVD and the Gestapo. It used a nationwide net of informers, terror, torture, forced confessionas, assassinations including assassination abroad, and prison camps. It was a state organization answerable to no one but the Shah, and aside from the Shah's family it could arrest any one in the country, without pretext, and hold them as long as it pleased. The Savak's vicious behavior was second only to the corruption of the Shah itself, for making Iran's 1979 Revolution wildly popular.

For the great majority of Iranians at the time, the Savak was feared, detested, and loathed. For present-day Iranians, the religious police are an annoyance that usually can be avoided.

As to the degree of US support to Iraq, here's a generic Wiki piece

I think actually the US was really good friends with Saddam

outlining what the US did. The Reader's Digest list might be:

1. Dual-use technologies including "computers, communications equipment, and aircraft navigation and radar equipment."

2. Tatcial battle advice to Iraqi command, to include specifically sattelite intelligence.

3. Sale of something like 200 helicopters, some of which, quite possibly, were used in delivering poison gas strikes on Iranian troops, and later on Iraqi Kurds.

4. Coordination with the Saudis so Saddam had money to get weapons elsewhere

5. Doing everything possible to keep the Iranians from buying weapons abroad themselves (except for Iran-Contra, natch.)

5. Conducted active naval operations to probe Iranian naval defenses, which resulted in the shootdown of an Iranian airliner and the death of 290 passengers and crew on board, by the USS Vincennes. The US eventually paid 131 million dollars in compensation.

6. Attacked Iranian naval forces and shore installations, directly, in 1988.

7. Provided Iraq "Billions of dollars of credits" so Iraq had more money to buy weapons.

8. Exported not only toxigens (the raw materials for poison gas) but pathogens to Iraq, giving Iraq the capacity to make biological WMD, specifically weaponized anthrax. This was, ironically enough, one of the Iranian WMD discoered and recovered by UN inspectors during the 1990s.

Certainly US diplomats can pretend none of this never happened, but the foregoing remains very important to the Iranians. The fact remains that even after Saddam started using poison gas - a WMD by every definition - against Iran the US did nothing but cheer.

This in Iranian eyes undermines the US arguement that the US opposes WMD, and that the US supports peace in the region. As far as Iran is concerned, the US support the military use of WMD, and agressors in the region.

Given this background, I think it is only logical that Iran right now would do everything possible to keep a US-supported Iraq weak. I certainly would. The only possible rational Iranian policy, as long as the US remains antagonistic, is not to trust the US as far as they can throw it, and get nukes. The last time a US-supported Iraq was strong, that Iraq attacked Iran and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, using poison gas in the process.

The US is in bed with the Iraqi government right now and doing everything it can to make that Iraqi government strong, to include arming and training the Iraqi army. Indeed, right now the US-financed Iraqi army, an Sunni organization, is fighting Shia milita - and Iran is the most powerful Shia nation in the world.

You can't wish away history. I'm not saying the US should just surrender to Iran and give Iran everything they want, but a US policy that they can dictate terms to Iran, because Iran is some kind of rogue state that badly needs US approval, is dumb and unworkable.

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Kinda tricky, the Iranians for sure are going to want an apology for all that American metal and money that Iraq fired at Iran during the 1980s. By body count the Iranians are way ahead in the "you're the bad guy" argument. And with veterans from that war now pretty much running Iran, I doubt they would back down.

BigDuke, while I've generally found you to be one of the most intelligent, reasonable and interesting posters on this board, you've clearly spent too much time overseas drinking with Eurolectuals for whom smug America-bashing is the number one pastime whenever the World Cup isn't on. (and I've drunk with a few in my time)

Your last few posts have strayed from cogent results-based criticism of specific American policy into the delusional Looking Glass world of "there is no evil that has arisen in the world since 1781 that cannot somehow be laid at the door of Uncle Sam, either by doing, allowing to arise, or failing to prevent" and therefore they're just as bad or worse than their enemies cuz, like, they once gave smallpox blankets to Indians or something. Or you know, like IBM provided punch cards that the Nazis used to automate railway timetables to ship Jews to the extermination camps, so their shareholders might just as well have been personally cracking open the Zyklon B cannisters themselves.

There is no world in which the gerontocracy of paranoid, constipated mullahs now running Iran somehow become rational people with cogent points of view with whom the West can craft some kind of compromise other than to contain them and await their own Saffron Revolution. And no, I'm afraid overthrowing Mossadegh, training SAVAK thugs and mistakenly shooting down an airliner in 1987 don't even start to approach the crimes these jerks have inflicted on their own people. They have systematically wiped out the Baha'i and other minorities, and stifled their secular and professional classes as well as the entire female population (who are far worse off than in most other Muslim societies). They are as criminally culpable as the generals of 1914-17 for their senseless waste of troops on the Basra front. Their ignorant misapplication of Islamic law has largely cut off one of the world's most ancient, energetic, splendid and learned civilizations from the world since 1980, leaving their people unable to participate in 27 years of rising global living standards, education and opportunities enjoyed by once far poorer neighbours in India, Turkey and the Arabian peninsula.

That doesn't mean -- as you pointed out earlier -- that it is wise for the US military to eject hostile regimes by invasion and then to install Paul Bremer and a gaggle of Young Republicans, ROTC MBA wannabees and rapacious contractors as the new governing class. The fruitless results of that "strategy" speak for themselves.

I think you have also pointed out in the past that the Russians "solved" the Chechen question by hand-picking whichever local thugs were going to be able to run the place regardless of whether they were nice or democratic or honest or likely to become Nobel laureates.

That in the end is the West's only way to "peace with honour" in Iraq or Afghanistan... to pick the winners and let them do what they have to, brutal or otherwise, to bring order (Freedom From, not Freedom To). No Mesopotamian god king and no Mahdi, but an oligarchy of hard men (sorry women, gotta wait a while). Insist all members of the Parliament spend a week a month in their home districts. If they come back alive, you'll know they represent the people who matter there. Withdraw US forces to where people like them (Kurdistan) or to rural airbases with good surrounding fields of fire; only intervene to keep the mullahs or AQ from overthrowing the regime. Keep the money flowing to the strongmen, who will pocket some of it, but use the rest to rebuild a Mukhabarat as fast as possible and make the people more afraid of the government than they are of the insurgents. Don't worry too much if they denounce you or are connected to the "honourable resistance"; if that's what they need to do to consolidate power, so be it. Once the bomb-makers and the AQ adventurers (as well as some nosy Al Jazeera people) are dead or in a dank prison (where the electric wires they're made to hold are live and attached to their balls) THEN the US-funded contractors who can now walk the streets safely can turn the lights back on and get the oil flowing.

There is ample precedent for this approach. Brutal and corrupt US-backed military regimes in miserably poor and war-ravaged South Korea and Taiwan evolved over time into stable, functional societies where a decent share of wealth and power flows to a growing middle class, not just a tiny elite. Chile, Greece and Portugal also made this transition. Other former US client thugocracies like Thailand, Turkey, El Salvador, Indonesia and the Philippines are still en route but have come a long way overall. Plenty of coffeehouse intellectuals and idealistic rural schoolteachers ended up in unmarked graves, while some very selfish, wicked people got very rich indeed. But the children of today's robber barons are tomorrow's liberal democrats.

OK, well enough ranting here.

[abneo3sierra]

BigDuke,

I think there is no doubt that you put a great deal of thought into your position. That said, however, I believe you are so much anti-American that you refuse to accept that they are right more often than not, or, even for the sake of argument, ever right.

The US tries harder than any nation in history who has had this amount of power, to "get it right"

I myself, do not agree with everything the US has done, either..I believe the US fought on the wrong side in WW1, and should not have fought in WW2(which I believe would not have happened if my first point hadn't) .. My ancestors very firmly endowed me with the German perspective on that issue, despite the uniform I wear now. That said, however, I do also know that, whilst not always necessarily from top down, still American policy is a policy of aid to free countries, in general. I am deeply sorry for whatever it was that happened to you to turn you into such an "anti" , most especially if you really ever were wearing this uniform.

And for what it's worth, I was not referring to the religious police, but to the state agency that arrested 4800 Iranians, mostly students, in 2007, of which nearly half were not seen again. as of, now March 2008.

[ March 28, 2008, 11:41 PM: Message edited by: abneo3sierra ]

[Dean F.]

Wow. I go away for a week and THIS happens... Nine pages?!?

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

As to the degree of US support to Iraq, here's a generic Wiki piece

I think actually the US was really good friends with Saddam

...Certainly US diplomats can pretend none of this never happened,...

I don't think anyone denies that the US supported the Baath government against Iraq. Everyone always comments upon it as a classic example of unforeseen consequences. Thus, I'm not sure what your intent was in mentioning it. It's almost like you try to hide your contentious statements within a fog of obviously true ones.

The fact remains that even after Saddam started using poison gas - a WMD by every definition - against Iran the US did nothing but cheer.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Cheer?!? Where did you get that one? The chemical weapon use was pretty much condemned by everyone in the international community, including the US (even if not so loudly). Maybe you can produce a comment from some extremist official, but the US government and certainly the US media were critical of Iraq's chemical weapons use. I'd really like to see a source on that one- one that isn't just someone's opinion, please.

You can't wish away history.

No you can't. Heartfelt concurrence on my part. Iran is a complex issue. And truth be told, many of the problems in the Middle East can be laid squarely at the feet of the British, much more so than the Americans, though they have some blame too. But...

I'm not saying the US should just surrender to Iran and give Iran everything they want, but a US policy that they can dictate terms to Iran, because Iran is some kind of rogue state that badly needs US approval, is dumb and unworkable.

Unworkable... probably. Dumb? I don't think so, unless you mean "dumb" in that it is probably unworkable. If you mean it is "dumb" in concept to try to influence Iran to change it's policies (even if that requires force or threats of force) I disagree. The truth is that there are many bad people in the world who do not play well with others, and most of them only respond to threats of one kind or another. (Recall the recent discussion on appeasement.) And if I may (mis)quote Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

[Bigduke6]

You misunderstand me, I am a really rabid US patriot. Just ask me about the Founding Fathers, or Lincoln, or FDR, or MLK, or heck, Muhammed Ali or Albert Einstein or the Wright Brothers or Mark Twain or Thomas Edison or Michael Jordan. No country in the world has contributed to human genius, the way the US has.

So I get irate when I see the successors of those great Americans, screwing things up, and forgetting what it was that made the country great.

Maybe the US tried to "get it right" in the past, but aside from window-dressing there is little evidence of it in the present.

Criticism of the government and those who support its policies, if those policies are bad for the national interest, is not the same thing as betraying the nation.

Indeed, it is arguable that one who really loved his nation, would be among the first to sound off if something was wrong.

If the criticism doesn't make sense, if it is pulled out of thin air and there aren't facts and logic to back it up, hey, then the criticism isn't very valid, is it?

But if you can't refute it...well, you know where I'm going with that.

As to the degree of basic freedoms allowed in Shah-era eran vs. modern Iran, I think modern Iran for all its problems is more free. There is an opposition, it is vocal, and the conservatives in power can't dictate anything they want. Again, I'm not trying to make Iran into Iceland, but by Middle Eastern standards Saudia Arabia is much nastier than Iran, and the US is friends with Saudi Arabia. So I don't get demonizing Iran, and giving the House of Saud a free pass - or more exactly I understand full well, but it makes no sense to me to pretend Iran is some kind of pit of vipers, when in fact it's one of the more solid nations in the region and by most accounts properly a US ally.

But you are never going to get an ally, if you ignore the past and distort the present, and present it to the country you want as your ally, as The Truth .

P.S. Yes I wore the uniform, and what's more I did it at a time when it wasn't very popular. What changed my military mindset was, I became a civilian, and I grew up. YMMV.

Originally posted by abneo3sierra:

BigDuke,

I think there is no doubt that you put a great deal of thought into your position. That said, however, I believe you are so much anti-American that you refuse to accept that they are right more often than not, or, even for the sake of argument, ever right.

The US tries harder than any nation in history who has had this amount of power, to "get it right"

I myself, do not agree with everything the US has done, either..I believe the US fought on the wrong side in WW1, and should not have fought in WW2(which I believe would not have happened if my first point hadn't) .. My ancestors very firmly endowed me with the German perspective on that issue, despite the uniform I wear now. That said, however, I do also know that, whilst not always necessarily from top down, still American policy is a policy of aid to free countries, in general. I am deeply sorry for whatever it was that happened to you to turn you into such an "anti" , most especially if you really ever were wearing this uniform.

And for what it's worth, I was not referring to the religious police, but to the state agency that arrested 4800 Iranians, mostly students, in 2007, of which nearly half were not seen again. as of, now March 2008.

[Bigduke6]

Dean,

I pointed out details about US support to Iraq, because I was trying to refute abneo3sierra's claim, well it seemed to that he was claiming it, that US support to Iraq was limited, and that Iraq's main supporter was the Soviet Union.

On "cheering", well, in one sense, you got me. I think you're right, the US State Department went on record alot that they really were very, very upset the Iraqis were spraying the Iranians with nerve agent and mustard gas.

But in another sense, the State Department lies as do all Foreign Ministries. It states the official line, which may or may not have something to do with the actual attitude of the government.

In the link I gave, that you quoted back to me, there is this photograph caption:

Donald Rumsfeld meets Saddam Hussein on 19 December - 20 December 1983. Rumsfeld visited again on 24 March 1984, the day the UN reported that Iraq had used mustard gas and tabun nerve agent against Iranian troops.

I would say that if a top US Defense Department official visits Iraq, the very day a UN report condemning Iraq for using WMD against Iran, that is a serious and very public vote of support to Iraq.

To be fair, I was wrong to write "cheer", I should have written "did nothing about the mass Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran except order the State to bleat about it periodically, while continuing wholehearted US support Iraq in its war against Iran."

What the US media said is unimportant. They, supposedly, are neutral. What was important was, what was the response of the US government? The response was, accept the use of WMD, and aside from pro forma complaints, do nothing.

On "dumb" you got me right the first try, I mean "dumb" as in "unworkable, based on false assumptions, riddled with rhetoric, divorced from reality, and arguably grounds for criminal prosecution considering US government employees are supposed to support, not work against, the interests of the country that pays their salaries."

The point of course is to get the Iranians to change their behavior.

Whew.

[abneo3sierra]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

You misunderstand me, I am a really rabid US patriot. Just ask me about the Founding Fathers, or Lincoln, or FDR, or MLK, or heck, Muhammed Ali or Albert Einstein or the Wright Brothers or Mark Twain or Thomas Edison or Michael Jordan. No country in the world has contributed to human genius, the way the US has.

So I get irate when I see the successors of those great Americans, screwing things up, and forgetting what it was that made the country great.

Maybe the US tried to "get it right" in the past, but aside from window-dressing there is little evidence of it in the present.

Criticism of the government and those who support its policies, if those policies are bad for the national interest, is not the same thing as betraying the nation.

Indeed, it is arguable that one who really loved his nation, would be among the first to sound off if something was wrong.

If the criticism doesn't make sense, if it is pulled out of thin air and there aren't facts and logic to back it up, hey, then the criticism isn't very valid, is it?

But if you can't refute it...well, you know where I'm going with that.

As to the degree of basic freedoms allowed in Shah-era eran vs. modern Iran, I think modern Iran for all its problems is more free. There is an opposition, it is vocal, and the conservatives in power can't dictate anything they want. Again, I'm not trying to make Iran into Iceland, but by Middle Eastern standards Saudia Arabia is much nastier than Iran, and the US is friends with Saudi Arabia. So I don't get demonizing Iran, and giving the House of Saud a free pass - or more exactly I understand full well, but it makes no sense to me to pretend Iran is some kind of pit of vipers, when in fact it's one of the more solid nations in the region and by most accounts properly a US ally.

But you are never going to get an ally, if you ignore the past and distort the present, and present it to the country you want as your ally, as The Truth .

P.S. Yes I wore the uniform, and what's more I did it at a time when it wasn't very popular. What changed my military mindset was, I became a civilian, and I grew up. YMMV.

[/QB]

[Dean F.]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Criticism of the government and those who support its policies, if those policies are bad for the national interest, is not the same thing as betraying the nation.

Brother, if there is one thing we agree on, it is this. There is a reason, in my opinion, that the First Amendment is the FIRST Amendment. If you closely examine almost any repressive cesspool on this planet you will almost invariably find a constrained press. We need a free press to keep the government accountable. If forced I would give up any other Amendment before the First.

Originally posted by BigDuke6:

Indeed, it is arguable that one who really loved his nation, would be among the first to sound off if something was wrong.

Again, concurrence, but with a mitigator... I find that many of the Americans nowadays who are so critical of the US are not doing so out of love of country. For the past few decades, at least among liberal academia including journalists, it has become fashionable to bash the US at every opportunity. I'm not sure why, but it does seem to be the knee-jerk response to anything.

I really don't have a problem with this. I say, keep the politicians on their toes. I haven't met an honest one yet. If they were honest they'd have real jobs. But I don't kid myself about the motives of these critics, either. Are there patriots among them? Sure! But I would go far enough to say that the majority (i.e. somewhere >50.1%) are just selling newspapers...

And, of course, as a soldier I have a healthy dislike of having the little buggers in my immediate vicinity. You can't trust them- they make stuff up and twist words or broadcast them out of context, and they do it ON PURPOSE. (Nothing personal...) Of course, making things sound contentious or asinine, again, sells more papers. But the whole "if it bleeds it leads" mindset is a side-effect of a free commercialized press, and I'll take that over a government-controlled press any day. Nonetheless, I try to fight this "the US is always wrong" attitude wherever I can. Valid criticisms I will accept.

Still, I thought it was HILARIOUS when CNN stepped over the line and got cut off during Desert Storm, but then I have a vindictive streak like that.

This is why I haven't (I think) jumped all over you on this issue. I just said that I understood what a prior poster meant when he said "winning militarily." Does this mean "victory"? No, of course not. The US "won militarily" in Vietnam, too, but lost the war. Witness the Tet Offensive, which even Walter Kronkite cited as a military disaster for the US: The Viet Cong had exactly one significant though temporary victory, Hue City, and then was essentially combat ineffective on anything but small scales for the rest of the war. The NVA took over the struggle.

Yet we lost. In a big way.

Vietnam War history isn't my strong point, though, so if I've got this wrong, lemme know. I'd like an expert opinion.

originally written by BigDuke6

As to the degree of basic freedoms allowed in Shah-era eran vs. modern Iran

I will not defend the Shah, as he was yet another tin-pot dictator with a hideous human-rights record who was propped up by the US during the cold war because the alternative was thought to be worse, at the time. But again I think you're bringing up things that no-one will argue with. I'm not sure how they support your position on how the US is losing militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it does look pretty on the screen, doesn't it?

( I know, I know, you were reacting to other posts. HUMOR. Poor humor, maybe, but humor...)

Seriously, though, you come across as if you just want to use this forum to post all the things you want to criticize the US about. In fact, you seem to like to post lists of them...

Anyway, I'll still stand behind the US making extreme efforts to limit civilian casualties and, in fact, taking casualties themselves because of it. I patch those guys up every day.

Originally posted by BigDuke6:

I became a civilian, and I grew up.

Funny how all cynics claim they "grew up." All of them. That's rather like saying "Come on, think about it!" over and over during a debate. It impugns everyone else by implying that they haven't "grown up" or aren't "thinking." I've been a civilian, then military, then civilian, then military again, and I'm probably in the top 1% of educated people on this planet. Please don't say that to me. Even if you are one of that 1%, too.

It is very difficult to know who you are talking with on the internet, and I've gotten more and more careful about things like this as time goes on. I was once expounding upon the carbon cycle in opposition, it turns out, to a ecologist. I still say he was wrong, for several reasons, not least of which he obviously had an agenda long before going to school.

By the way, what are you doing in Kiev? I've always wanted to take a tour of St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev. I may get to do a Baltic Sea cruise next year that stops in St. Petersburg, at least.

[ March 30, 2008, 04:55 AM: Message edited by: Dean F. ]

[Bigduke6]

Dean,

I work in Kiev, in media. My e-mail is in my login info. If you show up in Kiev with a moderate amount of warning the first beer is on me, and you'll drink it where the tourists don't.

The "growing up" line wasn't directed at you or any one else, I was just trying to explain how it was that I changed from a rah rah military person to a person rather suspicious of pretty much any human organization. I just stopped being naive, I grew up. As I said, YMMV.

[Dean F.]

Ok, maybe I'm showing my age, but I don't get the "YMMV" thing. All the rest (ROFL, ROFLMAO, IIRC, IMHO, OTOH, etc.) I've pretty much picked up on, though I don't use them, but YMMV stumps me. I find emoticons useful, though, since humor is so hard to pick up on in text.

I work in Kiev, in media.

Yeah, I saw Kiev in your profile, but why Kiev? If you were an intelligence officer did you go to DLI or something, learn Russian or Ukrainian, and then that led you to Kiev?

Speaking of problems with a free press, are things in the Ukraine as bad as in Russia?

Увидимся

[Bigduke6]

YMMV = Your milage may vary. One man's subjective opinion, and so impression, in other words.

No, the press in Ukraine actually is fairly free. Not perfect - big business pressures it sometimes and alot of it is quite yellow, but if you want to criticize the government, or big business even, and have the facts to back it up, go for it.

In Russia that sort of behavior is pretty much illegal.

I spoke Russian (and German) going into the service, so no I didn't go to DLI. I am living proof that sometimes the Army assigns people correctly: I signed up and they made me an S-2 in the Fulda Gap. In the Mech Infantry no less. Once I got out and after some more education I got hired by a company working in the FSU, which after some time and travel led to my present gig in Kiev.

I had no problem reading your Cyrillic.

Дай Бог. Как сказал: Первое пиво - за мой счет.

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

As to the degree of basic freedoms allowed in Shah-era eran vs. modern Iran, I think modern Iran for all its problems is more free. There is an opposition, it is vocal, and the conservatives in power can't dictate anything they want.

I find this statement HIGHLY dubious (my Persian friends -- largely non-Muslim exiles of course, so not a random cross-section of the Iranian populace -- would find it outright offensive).

And a lot of what people think they know about the Shah's Iran is actually left wing propaganda that has calcified into received wisdom -- more on this below.

In fact, by the standards of the 1950s-1970s developing world, the Shah's Iran was a relatively prosperous and cosmopolitan society with a great deal going for it. Like all the Third World it was/is divided between a dirt poor and traditional rural populace and a secularized urban commercial/professional class. In Iran's case, the latter included substantial and prosperous minorities of Jews, Zoroastrians and others who had lived there for thousands of years, predating Islam.

And whatever else the Shah might have been, he was NOT a "tinpot" ruler. While fond of golden palaces and F14s, his government largely invested their oil revenues prudently and hardly behaved as a pliable US puppet. They were an original member of OPEC and a leading holder of "petrodollars". As early as the 1930s the country made large investments in non-oil industries (e.g. textiles, pharma) and infrastructure (utilities and roads). While much of the country remained in near medieval conditions, with enough ambition and luck rural Muslim boys could and did move to the cities and advance themselves.

Such a diverse, educated society with an authoritarian ruler did of course have a large, sophisticated and active left wing (Tudeh, et al) with vocal support from aligned parties in Europe (not to mention the USSR which would naturally love to have had Iran in its own orbit). SAVAK spent a great deal more time repressing these folks than it did on the rural mullahs. And I suspect SAVAK's brutality was about par for the course for other moukhabarats and secret policemen of the time (Syria, Korea, Argentina, et al.); it and the Shah just got more publicity. But so long as you weren't one of those people, Iran had a great deal to offer in the way of material and social mobility.

Fast-forward to today. Unless you selectively compare it to the equally bizarre outlier theocracy of Saudi Arabia, there is no way to seriously contend that Revolutionary Iran is in any way a normal society or economy by current developing world standards (and that is NOT largely due to sanctions).

First, the minorities who once (in part) made Persian civilization so rich, global and vigorous are GONE. Ethnically cleansed and proscribed with only a few closely watched puppet representatives remaining. The Tudeh and secular left are also crushed -- thousands of "Peoples Mujahedin" were killed by the Rev Guards in the 1980s -- or driven underground. The economy has become largely state-owned and bureaucratized. Under the distorted "Sharia law" finance (you know, as in capital formation, as in what you need to build stuff) has become ridiculously hard to raise outside the bureaucratic net. And you can't even bribe a minister (OK, maybe you can, I don't know) to move things along.

Multiple political factions indeed remain within Iran (Persians being Persians) but their degrees of freedom of thought are very limited and their policies are subject to the irrational and arbitrary brute force veto of a number of organizations whose decisions are impossible to predict. So from a business perspective, long range planning basically goes out the window along with finance.

Sure, life goes on in Iran. People still laugh, love, have kids, go to university, celebrate weddings and funerals, fine. Sure, the morality police are USUALLY a joke (although some unfortunates still end up getting stoned to death, as do gays, but oh that's right there's no such thing in Iran according to their President). But all this was also true under Hitler, Stalin and Mao after the "terror" eased off a bit. The basic normality of life for those who DIDN'T fall foul of the authorities didn't and doesn't redeem these abominable regimes.

Social mobility in today's Iran is limited and economic opportunity is a shadow of what it was. This great nation is just marking time and it's the rulers -- not sanctions -- that are to blame.

[Dean F.]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I signed up and they made me an S-2 in the Fulda Gap.

Holy crap! Were you in the Blackhorse? I note that you said "mech infantry" and not "cavalry..."

I ask because I was, from 1991-1993. 511th MI Co.

Я изучил в военным институте иностранных языков, но это много лет тому назад.

We called our instructors мучитель instead of учитель, as did Russian students everywhere. Haven't really used it since, though. As an example, though I understand every word of your cyrillic I don't really understand the reference... It seems like it must be a joke, and I laughed just because it involved God and beer.

I'd send my joke about the Kamchatka boy in spelling class, but I'd REALLY have to look up the correct spelling on a lot of the words, myself...

[ March 30, 2008, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Dean F. ]

[Bigduke6]

No, I was in 5/8 Infantry, 1st Bde, 8th ID. Our go-to-war mission was to be the second speed bump behind 11ACR. Once upon a time I knew the terrain around the Wasserkuppe extremely well. I was in from 1985 to 1989.

A translation of my note in Russian might be:

God willing. Like I said: the first beer is on me.

[Omenowl]

Lets face it the stuff our founding fathers did to the natives were pretty atrocious by 20th century standards.

We tortured germans POWs in WW2. It was kept very secret, but we did do it and with tacit approval from the top.

We infected black men with syphilis. Forced sterilizations for a large group of people who we didn't want to breed.

We firebombed civilian populations and by any standard our leaders (FDR, Truman, and several others) were responsible for war crimes.

We were illegally involved in supplying weapons to Bosnian muslims fighters who later ended up in Chechyna and Afghanistan.

We illegally bombed Serbia and split off Kosovo despite the UN charter specifically stating that internal affairs will be handled the

We have run out an elected president in Guatemala to protect a food producer.

It also didn't help that we agreed to protect Hungary from the USSR if they decided to break free. They broke free and we did nothing. Same thing could be said for South Vietnam.

The real difference between many of our failed wars and efforts and our successful ones was our long term commitment. If they aren't white and European we don't care. We should get involved if it involves a dictator, but not if it involves a dictator and oil. Ok to invade Haiti and Kosovo, but god forbid we actually enforce UN sanctions.

The real question has always been where do we go from here? I know where we have been and it is easier to be objective 20-50 years later, but pointing fingers does nothing about moving forward. Bush will be gone next year and the question remains do we abandon Iraq like we did Afghanistan in the 1990s? Do we stay there hoping it will improve like Korea? No good options, but finger pointing and yelling is pointless.

[abneo3sierra]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

No, I was in 5/8 Infantry, 1st Bde, 8th ID. Our go-to-war mission was to be the second speed bump behind 11ACR. Once upon a time I knew the terrain around the Wasserkuppe extremely well. I was in from 1985 to 1989.

A translation of my note in Russian might be:

God willing. Like I said: the first beer is on me.

The funny/sad thing is, during those years I was in school, and reading about "what if.." and most reading, that was the term used to describe yours and the Blackhorse...'speed bump'

[Bigduke6]

LLF,

Sorry for not responding earlier, missed your previous post. I suspect you and I have been talking to different Iranians, and that you and I agree that in general they're great people to hang around with.

Basically, the essence of my arguement is not that the Islamic Republic is beacon of liberal democracy, but that the Shah's regime was so bad that almost anything would have been better, including the present theocracy.

I think your strongest point is that economic opportunity was greater during the Shah regime, than the present regime. However, I think you will agree at least part of that was due to integration of Iran into the world economy. Saying the "Shah was great for business" is not exactly accurate. It would be better to say, "Bazillions of Petrodollars are great for business."

Here's my thumbnail break-down of the rest:

Shah regime -

* No votes, the Shah rules as a hereditary monarch, there is not even the pretense government answers to the people.

* Anti-government protests banned

* Anti-government media reports banned

* Government is corrupt from bottom to top. Government officials take bribes with impunity.

* Political discourse is dangerous, the SAVAK might get you.

* If you're a woman you can wear pretty much whatever you want, unless you go in the provinces in which case the villagers might harass you for being a shameless city woman.

Present regime -

* Voting possible but often corrupt, still, politicians must curry popularity

* Anti-government protests possible, but do it too often and you can get in trouble.

* Anti-government media reports possible and do take place, but sometimes at risk to the reporters

* Government is fairly corrupt but the religious authorities are anti-corruption, therefore, bribe-takers are punished every once in a while.

* Political discourse is safe, as long as it stays in the cafe you can complain all you want about how the government is being run.

* If you're a woman there is a dress code, although if the city-bred woman is of a mind she can get around most of it. As to the country women, the way they have always dressed is the official standard, the dress code doesn't affect them.

My case as to American policy is, it would be better to promote a liberisation of the present regime, than to paint it into a corner so that the conservatives can jump up and down and play the "Great Satan is out to get us!" card. Much better to get the Iranians involved in the world economy. Cash needs to be in the pockets of the middle class, so that if the mullahs get their way with their business laws, the Iranian middle class is poorer, it can't cosume cars and movies like it wants to, the women have to give up their tight jeans and make up, etc. The moment the Iranian middle class faces the choice between religious and secular government in those material terms, that will kill off mullah government quite efficiently.

Huffing and puffing about how Iran's present government is the next incarnation of the Nazis, which it is not, is not the way to go about that.

I keep pointing out Saudi Arabia not to make Iran look great, but simply to argue that the US position "we can't negotiate with Iran, we can't even talk to Iran, they're too evil" is a load of hogwash. The Saudi government is worse by almost any standard. If we can be friends with the House of Saud for the sake of political expediency, we certainly can be friends with the Iranian nation.

A final observation about the present regime's judicial murders, FWIW. Very roughly about half, from what I can tell, were Savak operatives. This to my mind is not the act of a repressive state, but rather something very close to justice. The secret police tortured and repressed, and got their just desserts. This is not to say that the present Iranian regime doesn't kill people for silly reasons, it most certainly does. But it is to say that at least some of the people it killed, to be honest, deserved what was coming to them in the eyese of most Iranians - and that something that like it or not helps give the present regime legitimacy.

[Clavicula_Nox]

Oh jeez..all the 11th ACR love in here. Here is a picture of me in front of the 155th Brigade Combat Team mural, a good portion of the Brigade was the 2/11th..and I have never seen another combat arms unit that was so screwed up. Maybe it was all their years at NTC?

My case as to American policy is, it would be better to promote a liberisation of the present regime, than to paint it into a corner so that the conservatives can jump up and down and play the "Great Satan is out to get us!" card. Much better to get the Iranians involved in the world economy. Cash needs to be in the pockets of the middle class, so that if the mullahs get their way with their business laws, the Iranian middle class is poorer, it can't cosume cars and movies like it wants to, the women have to give up their tight jeans and make up, etc. The moment the Iranian middle class faces the choice between religious and secular government in those material terms, that will kill off mullah government quite efficiently.

Yeah, I don't think war with Iran is necessary, or even best. I think there are much better ways of handling them, and the best is probably what you say about giving them a role in the World Economy.

[ March 31, 2008, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: Clavicula_Nox ]

[Other Means]

"Kein Mensch - Kein Tier - Panzergrenadier!"

[MD82]

Hey Omenowl, if you're done flagelating yourself now they need some martyrs in Iraq.

[tarball]

Good discussions in this thread. I'd like to contribute, if I may:

SOME THOUGHTS ON WINNING ASYMMETRICAL WARS

I agree with the comments in this thread regarding winning battles and losing wars. Consistently, in recent US history, a powerful military force has bogged itself in low-intensity asymmetrical warfare (the NVA, China, USSR and Iran not-with-standing) and, for various reasons, failed to lower the hammer.

What hammer?

Study empires and you'll see that imperium was maintained through the use of carrots and sticks. The Romans, Ottoman turks, Mongols, etc.; each ruled with varying degress of tryanny and humanity, but each certainly did not maintain full troop occupation in every corner of their domain - they had to coerce with carrot and stick. While I get the impression, as a bystander, that some of these carrot-and-stick measures are used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the punctuation of the stick might be more of a series of commas rather than an exclamation point. From what I gather, the approach is to deliver a series of studied, measured and nuanced licks wtih the stick rather than a lowering of the boom. Maybe we are working towards a world where, by our example, we do not wish to condone barbarism. However, the great imperia of the past, those on which we reflect on fondly as precursors to contemporary civilization, saw the necessity and economy of total violence in the face of protracted intransigence. Actually, within the last 70 years, the U.S. has used this same playbook (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course there are differences between concluding a 4-year all-out war with cataclysim and bringing about peace in maelstrom such as Iraq. In any case, history teaches us that, sometimes, extreme violence is needed to achieve an objective. Are we willing to go the distance? Should we?

LET THAT BE A LESSON

Looking at history, in the case of the Ottomans and Romans, subject lands and people usually enjoyed many of the benefits of the occupying civilization so long as they were compliant. However, in order to maintain control, "lessons" where meted to remind the subjected where power lies. These lessons amounted to collective punishment. According to the these examples, you must be willing to use collective punishment, regardless of the facts (i.e. catching dolphins in the tuna net). It seems that the modern approach taken by the west is a continuous experiment to perfect an ethical, moral and humane counter-insurgency approach. Perhaps this experimentation will bear fruit, but whither the costs? As with any type of research, funding is not bottomless; when too much treasure is spent without conclusive results, the experimentation and research ends inconclusively (in failure perhaps?).

In these matters, modern civilizations pride themselves in taking moral high-ground. Well, at least this is our espoused theory. By taking moral high ground while your enemy invokes the low-grounds of terror and the like, you end up playing to the enemy's initiative and playbook. Whether benign or not, order in imperia of antiquity always came at the cost of innocents. Some might say that plenty of innocents have paid dearly in Iraq and Afghanistan - but to what conclusion? Where does the boundary of innocence lie? Were the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki innocents? These are certainly matters open to discussion. The history of humanity shows that brute force, regardless of innocense, has produced desired effects. The corporal discipline which is waning in child rearing was always intended to have the same effect - "let this terrible whuppin' remind you to NEVER do this again." In my own experience, I recall that in nearly all cases, this approach is usually effective.

EXTREMITY AS ECONOMY

So, back to winning asymmetrical wars: When resistance gives way to rooted intransigence, the imperia of antiquity would scortch the earth so as to cut losses and prevail their will. On the methods employed by the Roman Empire, Publius Tacitus said the following:

Latin: "Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."

English: "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace"

While the history of Vietnam and Iraq (perhaps less so Afghanistan) arguably resemble the first portion of Tacitus' remarks, we see a marked failure in these cases to follow through with the subsequent portion of his quip. If war is the business of "...violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will," (Clausewitz) then the compulsion does not seem to be complete in the case of contemporary dontrine and approaches to asymmetrical warfare. We often hear how things are being done "for the people" of an occupied country. However, what the Romans, the Ottomans and Napoleon each did to engender cohesion among "the people" was to hold an entire people accountable regardless of their culpability.

Thus, heavy whacks with a big stick are usually seen, in the long view, as cost effective. The common sentiment in the Truman administration, in justifying the use of atomic weapons, was cost-saving. The idea was the countless lives and treasure would be lost in a methodic and convential taming of the Japanese mainland in 1945. THus, The two atomic bombs were big sticks which quelled the fires of that war with two huge puncuations.

In the case where "...All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it," (Clausewitz) The might of western military prowess holds, as a weakness, the extention of ideals of morality and civility which to enemies and conquered/occupied people. The official story in Iraq is that the asymmetrical war there is a war of liberation and freedom, However, a liberator isn't if nagging insurgency continues to rage like a california brush fire. Again, you can take the moral high ground, win all the firefights and still lose.

$100,000 FLYSWATTER?

My long-winded rant above serves as a backdrop and context to the original poster's question/observation about the cost of high-tech and life preservation. Precision pin-pricks and the minimization of "collateral" damage are a testament to our advance in technology and civility. However, the "at all costs" menatality (which was not shared among the greatest of empires of the past) towards saving the lives of the soldiery and innocents dictates that costly flyswatters represent the only way forward in achieving our goals through the violence of warfare. Rather than spraying the entire neighborhood with DDT to kill all of the mosquitoes, the humane and considerate way is to invest in high-tech bug zappers.

Clearly our politcal agenda includes preserving our ethics and morality even if it confounds or increases the cost of victory in asymmetrical war. Costly solutions are rarely sustainable for the sort of long-haul most experts predict will be required in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. We have one recent historical example of cutting bait and losses when these costs become too much to bear - will we have a few more in the near future?

I don't know.

CAVEAT

I do not intend to be callous or bloodtthirsty, nor am I cheerleading for pogroms in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am simply pointing out that the experimentations in gentler or reasoned counter-insurgency we are witnessing today will continue to exact greater cost than the "economical" solutions. I'd even go so far as to say I am not a warmonger, but who would I be kidding? I play this wargame simulation, as do you, where death and distruction are the objects of my enjoyment. I suppose I assuage my conscience by assuring myself that it is better to kill pixels than people.

Thanks for the discussion, it's an important topic.

[tarball]

Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

Syria could probably be flipped by simply giving them back the Golan. Doesn't look likely to happen, but there it is.

You might be oversimplifying this particular issue.

[abneo3sierra]

Tarball,

Agree with you on both points. For sure as mentioned above, the 100,000 cost of the missile in the original post, while seeming high, is the only real trade off possible for a culture such as ours that increasingly , and rightly imho, values life. It would be very cheap, very effective,(and cause a much higher magnitude of losses to our enemies), to just destroy entire cities. Indeed it came close to that in WW2. I for one am glad we have 'evolved' above that, and the higher price of the gadgets, also in general I believe has something to do with the fact that there are not as many wars as there have been in history, and the wars that are fought, while seemingly more violent and with much heavier weaponry, actually end with far fewer casualties than ever before on the planets history.

I think the poster was correct about Syria, but, after what Syria did in that war, if I was Israel, no way I would give it back anyway, so it is not a workable solution.