astralis

amled,

you will have to show me where i said that. "had faith" in ahmadinejad? hardly. i think he's a tin-pot, socialist demagogue, and i have very little use for that ilk. i completely agree with you that his rhetoric, and his support for the crackdowns, make him untrustworthy.

having said that, however, actions speak louder than words. when push comes to shove, either in the form of foreign pressure, or domestic pressure from either above or below, a-jad folds. from his actions, we see that he follows by domestic political rules. while his talk on foreign policy is big and bad, i have heard this type of rhetoric before, both from past iranian leaders and countless other anti-US (and occasionally "pro-US", see the little thread where musharraf spoke in urdu in favor of the taliban after 9-11) tyrants.

in the end, though, these tyrants and tinpot dictators are interested in two things only: power, and saving their own skin. doesn't matter if they're theocratic or not...it's widely acknowledged in iran that the clerics and mullahs up top have been guilty of such a variety of sins that their religion would have them condemned to hell-fire eons ago.

but with that comes their own vulnerability: being rational makes them predictable. and being predictable means we can find a variety of solutions to minimize or getting rid of the problem altogether. writing off an enemy as simply "irrational" based upon his words alone, strikes me as being a tad intellectually lazy and indeed counterproductive in finding the best methods of counteracting the threat. the most convenient method is not always the best!

of course this is not to argue that we will find NO irrational leaders on the world stage. but those are few and far in-between, which of course makes it all the more important, when making the claim of irrationality, to examine this more closely.

astralis

this is why i'm quite interested in what bluesman, and all of you, have to say on the subject. ironically, it turns out that irrationality is quite a difficult thing to prove...

Anon

Only if you insist on shades of grey.

I see the good old military blue(friend), green(nuetral), and red(threat).

When i watch Aberimanutjob jabbering away about 'death to the US and Israel' on CNN i do not see Blue.

And i do not see green.

I see red.

It's very easy to see if you are not distracted by the greys.

TopHatter

Astralis,
My comment about him being blind was directly linked to Parihaka's comment about Iran's president screaming for the immolation of the State of Israel.

This in turn is a refutation of the author claiming no link between Iran and Nazi Germany.

The Soviet Union can and did commit mass murder on a large scale. Particularly due to the irrationality of one man; Iosef Stalin.

See the similarity there?

Irrationality can, in fact, be quite easy to prove.

Parihaka

Dick Cheney, yes I know. It was however, never presented as an administration argument, never repeated, and i think withdrawn by Cheney himself. One 'swallow' does not an autumn make and one off the cuff remark by an opportunist idiot does not equal "Saddam, we were assured in 2003, had nuclear weapons". We were assured of no such thing, and you know it.

Oh, and this oft repeated argument that if you attack one genocidal regime you must therefore simultaneously attack all genocidal regimes or be held a hippocrite. Because Kim Jong Il still exists is not a reason to not attack Iran.

__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

BIKEMAN

Very close but that is a little different than a nuke on Washighton DC

BIKEMAN

The difference is that the people I wrote about as being demonized in times of war (Jews, gypsies etc.) had little real power. The people that I condemn (in your list above, besides hillbillies ) are some of the most powerful forces in the world today.

Bluesman

So you see, gunnut, you big ole rube, demonizing is okay in some carefully chosen circumstances. BIKEMAN will do the choosing for the rest of us. Don't be so dam' insolent.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

BIKEMAN

You made two very sensible posts. I like you and the author was pro_Iraq invasion originally. I thought that Saddam was dangerous ; I believed the WMD lies; and I thought that there was a chance for Democracy there. I never liked Bush but did not realize how we were lied to on the WMD issue or how incompetently they would manage Iraq. The Iranians are both happy that Saddam is gone and unhappy that America stands, armed, to the East and the West. They also have a right to be fearful of the US based on their unhappy history in 1953 and the Shah that we foisted on them.

But I do not believe that it is possible for the US to invade Iran or even do a major air campaign against Iran (perhaps a bombing of nuclear facilities might be possible). The Iraqi and Afghani wars have been disasters and are more and more unpopular in the US.

Bluesman

Well, if an action is difficult and becomes unpopular, we should quit.

Problem solved; QED. We need not worry about any repercussions from quitting. It'll all somehow just get better on its own.

gunnut

So demonizing powerful entities is OK while demonizing entities with little or no clout is bad?

Are there any powerful entities that are good? And you won't demonize?

What about entities that lost power? Will you still demonize them?

Germans considered Jews to be powerful forces in Germany during the depression era. Some still consider Jews in America to be powerful forces today.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

gunnut

Indeed.

So if he's fit to choose the target of condemnation, does that mean he's more powerful than the rest of us? In that case, it would be OK for me to demonize him.

Bluesman

No, no...this isn't a principle, silly; it's by fiat. He says who gets demonized because he can type and he called it first, not because he has any inherant right to do so, because that implies that you and he are somehow equal.

So NO, you do NOT get to demonize him, or anything else. Now, go back to your corner, put your head down on your desk, and think about why it's wrong to question your betters.

Parihaka

No no Gentlemen, you've got it wrong, he's the loner defending the little guy against the big bad baddies. Everyone knows only the big guys can be bad, and only the little guys can be good. Don't you watch the movies?

BIKEMAN

No, if an action is wrong in the first place and we compound are errors by making it a disaster; then we should quit.

It is certainly getting worse under our tutelage. Ditto for Afghanistan.