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Friday, December 12, 2008 - 3:10pmSanction this postReply
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Could you add another option?  Let Israel do it, whenever they think the time is right.

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Friday, December 12, 2008 - 3:24pmSanction this postReply
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Would you be satisfied with the option "Let the Israelis appear to do it, without our explicit consent and backing or use of US-occupied Iraqi airspace"?

Obama has offered to "shield" Israel from Iranian nuclear missles and to retaliate against Iran when Iran destroys Israel. The unstated premise is that Obama will allow Iran to develop nuclear missles.

No, I will not add the "let Israel do it" option. You have adequate choices with "immediately" (which implies that either the US or Israel can go ahead, whenever they like) as well as after attacks on us or our allies, or never.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/12, 3:45pm)


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Friday, December 12, 2008 - 5:23pmSanction this postReply
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I voted for "Violence solves nothing" because, like Laure, I think selecting any of these choices is equally pointless.

Regards,
--
Jeff

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Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 3:46pmSanction this postReply
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Jeff -- So you think if Iran nukes a U.S. city, the appropriate response is to do nothing?

You have adequate choices with "immediately" (which implies that either the US or Israel can go ahead, whenever they like)

Ted -- that's not my definition of "immediately", nor the one in any dictionary I've ever seen. Immediately means right now, as in December 13th 2008.

I went with the NIOF response -- "only if they attack us."

Commentary on the other responses:

"Carter should've done it." If you mean warning them to release the hostages, or else a limited number of conventional bombs would be dropped as a preliminary warning strike, followed by a much more massive attack if the hostages were killed or still not released -- I'm OK with such a measured escalation. The threat of Reagan doing something along those lines got results.

If you mean nuking Iran without giving them a chance to back down and release the hostages -- not so much so.

"Immediately." Today? What exactly have they done to harm us in the last week that makes it so urgent to start a war? And which of the two current wars in the Mideast are you proposing to end to free up soldiers for this new war?

"After their first test." Would this be before or after Israel bombs them?

"After they bomb Israel." See above.

"Violence solves nothing." See comment above to Jeff's response.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 6:26pmSanction this postReply
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Jim, don't be both naive and demanding at the same time. Immediate means without some further circumstance being the case. In-mediate - nothing in between. If we are immediately justified in bombing them, this means no further action on their part is necessary to justify our response. This does not mean that if we do not bomb them now we cannot bomb them tomorrow. This is a poll, with a limited amount of space, not an essay. One depends upon people to use their wits when answering it.

As for Jeff's response, he has proven here many times that he sees morality as a game of self-justification, as a rationalist system that one uses to prove moral superiority - not to act to obtain a real achievable goal. His views on the election show this and his statement here shows it.

In reality, the pacifist's supposed principles are entirely divorced from his actual values. He is comfortable playing the protester and the anarchist because he knows that someone else will defend what he values. He won't get his hands dirty. Just like every other effete rich liberal of convenience he would rather the daddy he despises do it for him.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 6:47pmSanction this postReply
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Ted writes:
    As for Jeff's response, he has proven here many times that he sees morality as a game of self-justification, as a rationalist system that one uses to prove moral superiority - not to act to obtain a real achievable goal. His views on the election show this and his statement here shows it.
Ted, you have shown time and time again that you don't know anything at all about me. You repeat the same old crap over and over as if stating it is going to somehow change reality. Despite my attempts to clarify things for you, you have a blind spot that I am no longer interested in attempting to correct. Hold whatever view of me you like. You are welcome to your myopic viewpoint.

Jim, regarding this poll, I think attempting to provide an answer to this question without first being given some sort of concrete context is simply foolish, and I therefore selected the most foolish of all answers just so I could see what the poll results were. In answering the question, each person is going to have to impose their own context in order to select an answer, and this makes comparing answers pretty much meaningless. You can accept this explanation and have a better understanding of where I am coming from, or you can simply dismiss me as a crank as Ted does.

Regards,
--
Jeff


(Edited by C. Jeffery Small on 12/13, 6:49pm)


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Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 11:22pmSanction this postReply
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Ted -- OK, I'll bite. If in your opinion we should bomb Iran immediately, roughly how much time could elapse before you would no longer consider it "immediate" action?

****

The President: Prepare to launch the ICBMs immediately! The Russians have launched a first strike!

Aide: Yes, sir, Mr. President!

(Sound of Jeopardy music, followed by a blinding flash and then lots o' flying debris)

The President: (choking and sputtering with rage amidst the rubble) Where the hell were those launch codes, Mr. Kerr?

Aide: You said "immediately", sir, so I figured any time in the next couple years would suffice. It's not like you implied any urgency, sir.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 11:01amSanction this postReply
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Jim, the word immediate (Latin, in-mediatus) has a definition (in fact, its original definition) - "with no intermediate step" - which does not necessarily mean "to be done right now." All it means in this case is that no further action by Iran is necessary for us to bomb them. They don't have to go so far as to test a nuclear device. We are justified in attacking them without any further precondition.

You mentioned before that you had not ever seen that definition. I suggest you get a good etymological dictionary. Skeats' is recommended. Or you could study Latin. In any case, it is useful to know where words come from, and what their ingredients are, rather than simply accepting whatever comes out of the fastfood Newspeak drivethru window.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 4:59pmSanction this postReply
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From "Through the Looking Glass", Chapter 6

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'


From dictionary.com

im⋅me⋅di⋅ate⋅ly
   /ɪˈmidiɪtli/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [i-mee-dee-it-lee] Show IPA Pronunciation
–adverb
1. without lapse of time; without delay; instantly; at once: Please telephone him immediately.
2. with no object or space intervening.
3. closely: immediately in the vicinity.
4. without intervening medium or agent; concerning or affecting directly.
–conjunction
5. Chiefly British. the moment that; as soon as.

Synonyms
forthwith, instant, instantly, now, right away, directly, instantaneous, promptly, rapidly, shortly, tout de suite, anon
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 12/14, 5:12pm)


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Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 9:05pmSanction this postReply
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Mr. Keer is lapsing into ridiculous pedantry. The connotative and denotative definitions of immediate is "without delay".

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Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 9:37pmSanction this postReply
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Another wonderful example of arguing over semantics to avoid the issue in question. The process of communicating with another human being often (probably should always) involve "what do you mean by this (or that)? When they explain what they mean, that's what the **** they mean.

My vote is "Immediately", meaning whenever preparations are complete. All the reasons cannot be made more clear.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 10:30pmSanction this postReply
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Steven, are you so blind as not to see that Henshaw's definition number four is mine exactly? "Without intervening medium or agent" - i.e., without a Colin-Powell-goes-to-the-UN dog and pony show. You very poorly educated children sound like that Spanish-instruction-opposing governor of Texas who said if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for him. Ignorance is one thing, but repeated, perverse, arrogant, willful ignorance is another.

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Post 12

Monday, December 15, 2008 - 1:10amSanction this postReply
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You have to pick your battles. It is not feasible or wise to go to war with every country or group that poses some degree of threat to you, especially if they haven't actually attacked you.

And, if you look at the actual threat to our citizens, the biggest threat by far is posed by Pakistan. They actually have nukes, and there is a serious threat of their government being taken over by extreme Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to the Taliban. Iran, OTOH, while it has a fundamentalist leadership that oftentimes talks crazy, is governing a citizenry that for the most part adores Western culture and despises the theocrats ruling them. The Iranian government has to try and keep a lid on the possibility of the citizens rising up in revolt, which a pre-emptive war upon us without provocation would likely precipitate.

Given this much graver threat from Pakistan, one of the least wise things we can do is to have our troops stretched to the breaking point fighting three wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. The smart thing would be to pull the troops out of Iraq, bring most of them home to rest up, repair their equipment, and prepare for the worst (whether the worst might break out in Pakistan, North Korea, or Iran), and send a few more troops over to Afghanistan to fight the Al-Qaeda rebels holed up along the Pakistan border, keep them busy so they are less able to try and destabilize Pakistan.

That is, we should stick to the NIOF principle -- fight the organization responsible for 9/11, and have well-rested and trained troops stationed on U.S. soil conspicuously prepared to defend ourselves against the many governments and terrorist organizations who want our citizens dead, but not engage any of them unless or until they pick a fight with us.

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Monday, December 15, 2008 - 9:04pmSanction this postReply
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"...not engage any of them unless or until they pick a fight with us."

Jim, could you elucidate?

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Monday, December 15, 2008 - 10:11pmSanction this postReply
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I am strongly opposed to engaging Iran in military force until such time as that nation manifests a grave and imminent threat to this nation.



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Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 4:52amSanction this postReply
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"...not engage any of them unless or until they pick a fight with us."

Jim, could you elucidate?


Basically, a major premeditated, unprovoked attack by a foreign country or terrorist organization that kills a large number of Americans is what I'm getting at. Since that is a necessarily fuzzy definition, some concrete examples:

An attack like Pearl Harbor would be picking a fight with us.

An attack like the hijacked airplanes flying into buildings on 9/11 would be picking a fight with us.

Allegedly possessing WMDs, and allegedly having the intent to use those WMDs on somebody, allegedly the U.S., despite far more bitter rivals in several neighboring countries, and despite a team of international inspectors not turning up said alleged WMDs ... not so much the fight picking thing.

A Mideastern country developing a nuclear capability, with a radical fundamentalist Islamic theocracy ruling a country with a large number of young, moderate pro-Western kids who hate said theocracy and would love to see it overthrown ... bears watching, but not yet at the stage where they have picked a fight with us.

A Mideastern country that has actual nukes, with a military dictatorship with a very shaky hold on power and a distinct possibility of being overthrown in the near future by a bunch of radical Islamic theocrats, including possibly a terrorist organization that has launched a major attack on the U.S. fairly recently ... clearly a far more imminent and dangerous threat than the * hypothetical * country above, but still no cassus belli yet for a military attack, but also clearly a reason to have fresh, rested, and well-armed troops ready to react on a moment's notice should the worst occur. Oh, and this situation is arguably a good reason to not have much of your military deployed in and getting worn down fighting an insurgency in a sovereign nation whose democratically elected leadership is giving stronger and increasingly impatient hints that we should get our troops the hell out of their country and let them deal with the insurgency themselves.


(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 12/17, 5:01am)


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Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 6:55amSanction this postReply
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I don't have time to cover this in detail, though I can say this much:

First, I don't give a rats ass about a democratically elected government and what they desire when the only reason this democratically elected government exist is because of what my country did. Like the wrestler say's, know your role.

Second, what the hell does a 'large number of American's' mean? Is that one hundred? One thousand? What's the number?

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 2:37pmSanction this postReply
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After reading the whole thread (I wasn't entirely satisfied with any of the options either), I voted for immediately.

Following is my reasoning on each option:

"Carter should've done it." This is a false option since it moves a policy decision into the past, making Carter's weakness our de facto policy. Quite an easy out.

"Immediately." Semantics notwithstanding, I took this for its most common meaning in the U.S., as "at this point in time." Reading the discussion of varying definitions allowed me to accept this with the caveat that we need not launch the nukes today, but that we need no intervening action either by other countries or by Iran itself.

"After their first test." This is intriguing. Does anyone believe that their first test will not be against either the United States or our only real ally in that part of the world? Waiting for them to test a bomb is morally equivalent to waiting for them to use a bomb.

"After they bomb Israel." Waiting for a bully to swing at me before I put him in the hospital is far different from waiting for an attack on us or an ally. Morally, waiting for a personal attack is right, but waiting for a national attack is wrong. Innocent American lives are in the balance.

"Only if they attack us." See above. And yet it seems that even that provocation is not enough for our leadership to do what must be done. Instead we invade another country that had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, and hold hands with Saudi princes.

"Violence solves nothing." This is a very interesting option. For the pacifists who read here, I would suggest they look up the founding fathers of Carthage and ask THEM if violence ever solved anything. Also the thousands who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania.

Because we are human, if we value our lives and liberty, we must be prepared to do what is necessary to defend ourselves. If that means turning a major city in Iran into glass, I am ready for that.

There is, however, a glaring problem: we have to have pretty good, unbiased intelligence that has not been manipulated for political reasons.



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Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 4:04pmSanction this postReply
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Okay. I chose "Carter should've done it." Not that I believe Carter should've done it, only because that response implies no immediate action - just a general whining about what we 'coulda' done, with the subsequent 'do nothing' meanderings usually accompanying such thoughts.

Why? Nowhere in the poll does it say what type of bomb. Nuke 'em? Just drop a blockbuster on their nuclear facility? Slip a grenade down Ahmadinejad's pants?

Certainly, we will have to take some action to prevent a nuclear Iran. Children (especially bad children) shouldn't be allowed to play with guns. On the other hand, I at least wonder that even the dumbest Iranian knows that if they used a nuclear device on Israel or the US, there would - probably very literally - be no Iran the next day. That understanding was a major factor in the detent (cold war) between the USSR and the US. In this regard, I'm a more fearful of Pakistan's political instability, and the implied risks on non-government/terrorist access to nuclear weapons.

The current Western policy on Iran is to continue economic sanctions, and these are beginning, I think, to bear some small fruit. Economic unrest in Iran appears to be increasing, and there is open criticism there of Ahmadinejad. Should Iraq manage to maintain a modicum of political stability, and exhibit economic growth, this will add to the pressure on Iran's government by its citizens.

Bomb them? How about dropping not leaflets, but copies of every Thursday's advertising supplements from all the US newspapers - a good and appropriate reminder to them that stupidity hurts.

jt

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Post 19

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 4:28pmSanction this postReply
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Economic sanctions violate the right of Americans to trade with peaceful Iranians; they basically punish both productive American businesspeople and the peaceful traders of Iran for the actions of the Iranian government. Rights should not be held hostage because of the Iranian government. Economic sanctions against Iraq only served as a rallying point for Saddam Hussein; ditto with Cuba, where the sanctions have probably reinforced rather than undermined the Castros.

Does anyone believe that their first test will not be against either the United States or our only real ally in that part of the world? Waiting for them to test a bomb is morally equivalent to waiting for them to use a bomb.

A potential is not an actuality. Just because Iran could potentially use nuclear weapons does not mean that we should stop them from acquiring them. However, solid intelligence that suggests that a strike against the United States or Israel should be acted upon prior to that strike. We do not have to wait for the bully to punch us in the face, but we have to establish that Iran is, in fact, a bully first.

Do I like their government and its fundie, saber-rattling ways? Of course not. However, there are disgusting dictatorships all over the world; that does not mean action against them is in the best interests of the United States nor will they in any facilitate peace.

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