to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West.”

Nobody can be that fucking naive. Oops! Yes, they can.

Left by Anonymous on February 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am

Nobody can be that fucking naive.

Because the current strategy is working so well?

Left by Preston on February 1st, 2008 at 11:16 am

Because the current strategy is working so well?

yes, and because roasting marshmallows with people who want to kill you is just, well, pretty “fucking naive”!

Left by adam on February 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am

yes, and because roasting marshmallows with people who want to kill you is just, well, pretty “fucking naive”!

God, only in the Bush Administration is everything short of sending Americans into war defined as “roasting marshmallows”…

Guess what, we don’t have more soldiers to invade Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. I think it’s time to use another tool from the tool box.

Can I assume you believe that Reagan was naive to talk to the Soviets?

Left by Preston on February 1st, 2008 at 11:38 am

Henh…the Soviets didn’t want either a caliphate or 72 goats, they wanted to live.
And what heads of state is B-HO talking about? In Saudi Arabia, would he talk to the Saud family, or the Wahabi Clerics? In Egypt, would he talk to their President or the Muslim Brotherhood? In Iran, would he talk to the perverted Mad Mullahs or President Ahmadamdingdong? That’s the problem with an unreformed Islam, they are trying to establish one voice to speak for them all, a Caliphate. Which is the real rub, isn’t it? Well, for reasonable people anyway, which doesn’t include B-HO, unless he thinks he is the next coming of the Caliphate.

Left by no2liberals on February 1st, 2008 at 11:51 am

So you’re more afraid of Iran- with it’s economy the size of Alabama- than a nation with 20,000 nuclear warheads pointed at our country?

For a party that wants to emulate Ronald Reagan I can only assume he’d want modern day Republicans to grow a pair.

Left by Preston on February 1st, 2008 at 11:57 am

I’d like to know what the Muslim countries are thinking about Obama. Do they see him as their pathway into the United States? Do they see him as someone with Muslim roots? Will the US become a welcoming country for them, as Europe has done to their regret?

Left by Dianne on February 1st, 2008 at 12:01 pm

For myself, I’m not interested in what Muslim countries think of our President- I want him or her to pursue the policies that that protect us and further our own values.

Just as worldwide hatred of George Bush didn’t indicate that he was helping the United States the opinions of other nations are not necessarily an accurate barometer of what our country must do.

Left by Preston on February 1st, 2008 at 12:06 pm

For the record, it’s entirely reasonable to be more scared of Iran than the USSR (except when it was under Stalin). The Soviets thought like we did, they were interested in self-preservation, so they could have thousands of nukes pointed at us, but they wouldn’t fire them unless we did something really stupid.

For the mullahs it’s a whole different ballgame, and based on their rhetoric and the actions of their co-religionists, I wouldn’t trust their rationality on the sunniest day.

Somehow I can’t recall any communist suicide bombers.

Also, don’t let the Iranians economic weakness fool you, Preston. If we were to ever get in a shooting war with Iran, our Navy in the Persian Gulf would be completely destroyed. It would be just a massacre. With that kind of loss, we can forget about projecting power abroad any time soon.

It is refreshing to see you disregard the opinions of other countries on our actions. It seems like most liberals want the US to be loved above all else, which is a dangerous and irresponsible course to take.

Left by Nazar on February 1st, 2008 at 12:26 pm

So you’re more afraid of Iran

There he goes again…swoosh…off on another tangent of spinning and stretching. Get a clue-bat, the Mad Mullahs and the Communist have a completely different mindset. The Commies don’t believe in God, they believe their reward is here on Earth, not the perverted Mad Mullahs, they believe their reward is in a Paradise of milk and honey, with dark-eyed virgins in attendance. That’s for most of the Mad Mullahs, there is Ahmadamdingdong’s spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Yazdi, as they are both Hojatieh sect followers, you know, the “twelvers,” the one’s that believe in the “hidden Imam” and his return. They are just nucking futts! And they are irreconcilable.
I’m more afraid of clueless liberals that think you can actually sit down and talk with people that practice taqqiya in their dealings with other muslims, but most particularly with infidels. You can’t have good faith discussions with those people, it just isn’t possible, and when you try and play nice and negotiate, they view it as weakness, and exploit the vulnerability of their opponent. They understand force and power as strength.

Dianne, don’t know what the word on the Arab street is about Obambi, but this summit report was approved for publication in the official Iran Press TV. They reported it a day before Al Reuters did.

Nazar, I disagree that our Navy would be destroyed by Iran. They are still pooping their pants about the crappy radar system they got from Russia which couldn’t see the Israeli jets coming into Syria to blow up their reactor. I’m not saying they couldn’t do some damage by hurling all of their missiles into the Gulf at our Navy, but for a coordinated attack, with boats, jets, and missiles, Iran would only have a chance to do harm with the missiles, and that’s just with the Navy flying Super Hornets. If the new F-35 is in the mix, their Air Force would never see it coming. They don’t have the assets or the training to wreak havoc.

Left by no2liberals on February 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Your historical revisionism is astounding.

In fact, Reagan was savaged by the right-wing More War crowd such as yourselves.

As Reagan talked to the Soviets, this was the reaction from the right:

Led by Senator Jesse Helms and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, two dozen leading conservatives present the White House with a petition signed by two million citizens who object to ”trusting faithless enemies who never keep their word.”
…
The ”Stronger America” lobby, initiated and largely funded by military contractors, launches a public-relations blitz in the national media based on the slogan, ”We never lost a war because we were too strong.” Nuclear hawks Richard Perle and Edward Rowney resign from the Administration, reportedly over disagreements about how accommodating to be to the Soviet Union.

I could go on with examples of Republican ‘leaders’ who were plenty afraid of negotiating with the Soviets and disagree mightily with your description of their “completely different mindset”.

I for one won’t be voting for a President who has so little faith in the f-ing strongest country in the world that he pisses his pants thinking about being in a room with Muslim heads of state.

Left by Preston on February 1st, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Hey N2l, I think you’re basing your logic on us hitting them first. Which won’t happen after the NIE. The fact is our Navy is big, expensive and useless against the Iranians. They would just overwhelm us with small boats, civilian airplanes, and missiles. Think about it, it’s a lot harder to intercept a missile than it is to shoot one on target. And even if we get 90% of whatever comes in (which we won’t), all it takes is one missile to render an aircraft useless. It won’t sink, but it can’t use its best weapons, the airplanes, which makes it just another battleship.

In 2002, the Navy even did a simulation of such an event. A Marine, Col Van Ripken, played the part of the Iranians. Using just civilian airplanes and small missile boats, he was able to sink two-thirds of our fleet in the Pacific. And you can bet the Iranians were paying attention.

Think of it as a bunch of bees swarming an elephant. Eventually, the bees win.

Left by Nazar on February 1st, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Preston, you really do have a comprehension problem.

Nazar, I still disagree as to what the outcome would be.

Phalanx Close-In Weapon System
The Close-In Weapon System, or Phalanx, is the Navy’s most populous ship self-defense weapon against anti-ship cruise missiles. This system has been given a significant block upgrade to provide capability against small, fast, surface targets and increased effectiveness against new generation, anti-ship cruise missiles.

Source.

A.T.C. LRAD.

Norris prods his assistant to locate the baby noise on a laptop, then aims the device at me. At first, the noise is dreadful — just primally wrong — but not unbearable. I repeatedly tell Norris to crank it up (trying to approximate battle-strength volume, without the nausea), until the noise isn’t so much a noise as an assault on my nervous system. I nearly fall down and, for some reason, my eyes hurt. When I bravely ask how high they’d turned the dial, Norris laughs uproariously. “That was nothing!” he bellows.

“That was about 1 percent of what an enemy would get. One percent!” Two hours later, I can still feel the ache in the back of my head.

Sound as a weapon.
These systems are in use, as we were paying attention too.

Left by no2liberals on February 1st, 2008 at 10:01 pm

not to pile on but: “For myself, I’m not interested in what Muslim countries think of our President- I want him or her to pursue the policies that that protect us and further our own values.” ….well that sure aint going to be a democrat. they are for driver’s license for illegal’s, open borders, amnesty, and all other forms of insanity.

Obama is just another in a long line of sweet talking political empty suits. this problem has always existed and always will. as long as there is one Muslim and one infidel they will want to kill or convert them. when is the west going to get it straight, we either pull a Dresden and carpet bomb every city, hilltop, cave, and leave nothing over 2″ tall or this is just all academic jaw flapping and we will do it all over again and again. They will NEVER stop, it is their religion and culture. They are NOT like us and NEVER will be. They hate our ways and culture.

Man how stupid are we to beleive obama can do anything about a problem that is thousands of years old? The west never stops amazing me how weak we have become. 50 years ago we would have loaded up the b-52’s and not stopped until all bombs were gone.

Obama is a complete joke, he is the most liberal guy in the senate by FAR. If the dems are so stupid as to elect him, wow stunning.!!! He voted for bill to prevent emergency care to infants who survived an abortion attempt while in the state senate of Illinois…that is not wacko left wing ideology, that is evil.! This guy is FAR worse than Hillary. In fact I can hardly think of a worse person to be president, and there are a lot of sorry empty suits up in Washington. That is impressive even for the left.

Left by marc on February 1st, 2008 at 10:21 pm

N2l, there are still major flaws with the gun system.

See, the Navy brass always plans for a neat, clean hi-tech war. Their real investment isn’t the Phalanx or Aegis but the operations rooms deep in the hulls where flabby desk jockeys sit at little screens. Those screens are supposed to show a few dots, nice fair-fighting Soviet surface ships and subs. That’s how the Navy wants to play the game. Seeing their beautiful screens clogged up by a bunch of goddamn cheap speedboats full of Revolutionary Guards, not to mention hundreds of “boxes” that might turn out to be mines, ruins everything.

If they had any sense they’d realize that the way to deal with big overloaded targets is to saturate their defenses with a swarm of low-cost attackers. If you’ve got lives to spend, and the Iranians sure do, you spend lives to sink hardware. It’s a good trade, when you consider what a carrier costs, and how little the average Iranian life is worth. They’re Shia! These guys can’t wait to give their lives away. The Kamikazes were squeamish moderates compared to the Revolutionary Guard. And thanks to Silicon Valley and its Chinese knockoffs, you can fire swarms of unmanned rockets instead of Shia martyrs, so you don’t even need to spend one life per blip on the US fleet’s little screens. You can even send empty rocket tubes as part of the swarm, because in the few seconds the surface vessel has to react, it can’t determine which threats are nuke, which are conventional HE and which are decoys.

But the Phalanx was never meant to handle swarms of low-tech attackers. That’s not the clean, temperate-zone war the computer dweebs in the Pentagon planned for. See, the original Phalanx only had 1000 rounds in its magazine. The newer models have 1.550, meaning even the USN realized that it was too easy to saturate the target with decoy attacks and deplete the magazine. But 1550 rounds isn’t much at that rate of fire–and the Achilles heel of the system is reloading. It’s not that easy to hoist 1550 20mm rounds into position, and I don’t think either van Riper or the Iranians would be likely to agree to a 15-minute reloading break.

If it was me, and maybe I’m too “cynical” or something, I’d send all my empty missile tubes and expendable suicide squads in the first wave, all at once like van Riper did. I’d count to 90, because 90 seconds would be enough to empty every Phalanx magazine–and you can bet that those scared Navy computer nerds down in the Operations Room would be holding the red buttons down till the barrels were melting when they realized they were under a real attack. Then, while the grunts below deck were hauling the ammo into position, I’d send the second wave with the real stuff. And that, as they say, would be that. A trillion dollars of US Navy hardware becomes an artificial reef.

Believe me, the War Nerd knows his stuff.

Left by Nazar on February 1st, 2008 at 11:40 pm

I disagree, Nazar.
You actually think that all those ideologues are going to continue an attack, when they see what is happening?
Like this? The ranges that are called out are in the 6500yd category, but some are clearly closer. Also, notice the new KE 5 inch rounds, which are also air bursting. The boat doesn’t need to be sunk for all hands on board to be dead, or scared shiiteless.
The instant a mass attack is observed, there will be more Hell On Earth than the enemy could ever imagine, from the air, as well as from the fleet weapons systems. In addition, the bases that they come from will be destroyed before any additional waves could be launched, as well as their missile launchers and runways, which are already known. In addition to that, any attack on our fleet would result in attacks on other aspects of Iran’s infrastructure which they cannot afford to lose. Like their one big gas refinery on the southern coastal area.
I have more respect for the training and the systems in use, than the War Nerd does, they have much more discipline than he gives them credit for.
The Iranians will never attack our fleet, they may want those 72 goats, but most will be glad to wait.

Left by no2liberals on February 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 am

Another good one from my favorite Iranian Expat writer.

As a group, Muslims are paranoid and suffer chronically from the disease of victimization. That is, they either victimize the helpless whenever and wherever they can, or scream murder against the strong. This mentality is one of the many bequests that Muhammad left for his Ummah.

Amil Amani—Muslims Victim Mentality
Maybe that’s why liberals have such difficulty grasping the clash with Islam, it’s the shared victim mentality.

Left by no2liberals on February 2nd, 2008 at 1:04 am

N2l, the Iranians are a lot smarter than you think. Plus, they’re suicidal. They could easily use hundreds of decoy unarmed civilian airplanes so they could scream bloody murder when we shoot them down, and then get us with the real missiles. Also, I’m pretty sure that rockets have a greater range than a few thousand yards. We wouldn’t know what hits us.

Just imagine, a hundred missiles coming at one ship. There’s no way you could get them all. With that being said, I’ll let you have the last word on this one.

Left by Nazar on February 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 am

I think they could do some damage, but not a massacre. OTH, they would be without fuel, power, bridges, air space, you name it. Hell, the city of Qom might disappear.
They have serious problems over there, and I think most of what they say and do is bluff and bluster out of insecurity. While I view them as a threat, with serious designs on acquiring territory throughout the region, I don’t view them as a serious military power. If they try a swarm method, we will just break out the bug spray. We would know before they did, though, as there are covert elements working in Iran with the dissident movements.

Left by no2liberals on February 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm

What are you people TALKING ABOUT??? What do you guys even know about Islam? Do you assume every one over there is a gun toting religious fanatic that hates peace and just wants every one who doesn’t agree with them to die? That is not the truth!!! You are too scared and chauvinistic to even admit that there are millions good people that just don’t get heard over the crazy few. And just like you, they are controlled by generalizations and scare tactics.

Left by Mer on June 4th, 2008 at 3:38 am