Stalin, Mao, and … Ahmadinejad? - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Diesel911 · #16 10-28-2007, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

By Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
Oct 20, 2007

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

If I had to choose whom to describe as a madman, North Korea's Kim Jong Il or Ahmadinejad, I do not think there is really any contest. A decade ago Kim Jong Il allowed a famine to kill 2 million of his own people, forcing the others to survive by eating grass, while he imported gallons of expensive French wine. He has sold nuclear technology to other rogue states and threatened his neighbors with test-firings of rockets and missiles. Yet the United States will be participating in international relief efforts to Pyongyang worth billions of dollars.

We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us—just as Iraq had become in 2003.

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush's representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that "the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for." Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, "looked down and rustled his papers." No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, "is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world" (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

The few people that read Mein Kemf (Hitlers book) also thought it was bunk. Foolish ideas backed by alot of fanitical foolish people can cause a lot of damage; and how much more so if you have "The Bomb".

Next the US tries to depend too much on wealth and strength and not enough on its brains. When you try to drive a small nail with a sledge hammer you make a mess of yourself and what you are working on.

If the GOV wants no nukes in Iran we will have to act. I don't believe sanctions are going to work. I don't think that right or wrong will matter.
In order to pull it of we need a European consensus that we are not likely to get as they are more often the victims of terrorism than we have been.

LaRondo · #17 10-28-2007, 03:40 AM

Here it goes again. It would be interesting to know the average %tage of Hitler being mentioned in posts.

BTW, he called his book "Mein Kampf", whatever the heck it says in it, I don't know, I don't read garbage.

But I sure hope Europe stays out of it, it had its share of wars and they are definitely fed up with it.

BENZ-LGB · #18 10-28-2007, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diesel911

The few people that read Mein Kemf (Hitlers book) also thought it was bunk. Foolish ideas backed by alot of fanitical foolish people can cause a lot of damage; and how much more so if you have "The Bomb".

Next the US tries to depend too much on wealth and strength and not enough on its brains. When you try to drive a small nail with a sledge hammer you make a mess of yourself and what you are working on.

If the GOV wants no nukes in Iran we will have to act. I don't believe sanctions are going to work. I don't think that right or wrong will matter.
In order to pull it of we need a European consensus that we are not likely to get as they are more often the victims of terrorism than we have been.

I agree with you 100% on all your points.

I have noticed a certain reticence, in some quarters, to draw parallels between Hitler's writings (as well as the writings of other similar individuals) and situations currently confronting society.

We can bury our collective heads in the sands of history or we can use the lessons of the past to provide us with a road map, albeit an incomplete one, on how to navigate the challenges of the future.

Yes, Hitler is often a convenient boogeyman, but he has earned that right by the sheer magnitude of the horros he visited upon the people of the world, Germans included.

Of course, some of us who drive Benzes, or Porsches (and let's not forget BMW and VW) or who tool along the German autobahns can assuage our consciences by arguing that Hitler was not "all that bad" or that the Holocaust was just one big old misunderstanding.

LaRondo · #19 10-28-2007, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BENZ-LGB

Of course, some of us who drive Benzes, or Porsches (and let's not forget BMW and VW) or who tool along the German autobahns can assuage our consciences by arguing that Hitler was not "all that bad" or that the Holocaust was just one big old misunderstanding.

Interesting presumption. Does that include yourself? Or is it a mere smear of people who are driving the German Autobahn.
As far as I know, they are the last ones who would suggest a repeat and rather the first ones to avoid it, on an international level.

Your comparison for that matter is ethnically abraisive.

I forgot to say:
This is also a fine example of someone whose adopted knowledge about Germans does evidently not exceed the names of the usual export car makes, the autobahn and ofcourse "Hitler & The Holocaust".

LaRondo · #20 10-28-2007, 05:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BENZ-LGB

I agree with you 100% on all your points.

I have noticed a certain reticence, in some quarters, to draw parallels between Hitler's writings (as well as the writings of other similar individuals) and situations currently confronting society.

You seem to have an uncanny admiration for that kind of writing.

LaRondo · #21 10-28-2007, 07:02 AM

We must bomb Iran, says US Republican guru

By Toby Harnden in New York
Last Updated: 2:14am BST 27/10/2007

A senior foreign policy adviser to the Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has urged that Iran be bombed using cruise missiles and "bunker busters" to set back Teheran’s nuclear programme by at least five years.
The tough message at a time of crisis between the United States and Iraq was delivered by Norman Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, who has also imparted his stark advice personally to a receptive President George W. Bush.
"None of the alternatives to military action - negotiations, sanctions, provoking an internal insurrection - can possibly work," said Mr Podhoretz.

"They’re all ways of evading the terrible choice we have to make which is to either let them get the bomb or to bomb them."

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Podhoretz said he was certain that bombing raids could be successful.

"People I’ve talked to have no doubt we could set it back five or 10 years. There are those who believe we can get the underground facilities as well with these highly sophisticated bunker-busting munitions."
Although Mr Podhoretz said he did not speak for Mr Giuliani, the former New York mayor whom he briefs daily appears to have embraced at least the logic of his hard-line views.
During a visit to London last month, Mr Giuliani said Iran should be given "an absolute assurance that, if they get to the point that they are going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them or we will set them back five or 10 years".
Mr Podhoretz said: "I was very pleased to see him say that. I was even surprised he went that far. I’m sure some of his political people were telling him to go slow ... I wouldn’t advise any candidate to come out and say we have to bomb - it’s not a prudent thing to say at this stage of the campaign."

But Mr Podhoretz’s 77 years and his position as a pre-eminent conservative foreign policy intellectual means he can not only think the unthinkable but say the unsayable.
"My role has simply been to say what I think," he said, explaining that he takes part in weekly conference calls and is in daily email contact with the Giuliani campaign.
He is the most eminent of a clutch of uncompromisingly hawkish aides assembled by Mr Giuliani. They include Daniel Pipes, who opposes a Palestinian state and believes America should "inspire fear, not affection", and Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who has argued that Condoleezza Rice’s diplomacy is "dangerous" and signals American "weakness" to Teheran.
"Does Rudy agree with me?" Mr Podhoretz asked rhetorically. "I don’t know and I don’t wish to know." But he added that "Rudy’s view of the war is very similar to mine."
Mr Podhoretz’s thesis is that the war on terror is in fact World War Four and that the 42-year-long Cold War should be more properly described as World War Three.
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honour, by President George W. Bush in 2004, Mr Podhoretz later sought a rare one-on-on audience with the US commander-in-chief. They met in New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel in the spring.
The author of the recent World War IV: the Long Struggle Against Islamofacsism spent about 35 minutes outlining his case for air strikes against Iran as Mr Bush’s then chief adviser Karl Rove took notes.
"Whether I had any effect on him I truly don’t know but I sure tried my best to persuade him," he said.
"He was very cordial. He was warm. He listened. He occasionally asked a question as I made the case but he was truly poker faced."
Mr Podhoretz left the meeting unshaken in his belief that Mr Bush would attack Iran before he leaves office.
"The spirit of the questions was not to try to refute or contradict what I was saying. I didn’t get any negative vibes."
He said that now "the debate [over Iran] is secretly over and the people who are against military action are now preparing to make the case that we can live with an Iranian bomb".
Neither Mr Bush nor Mr Giuliani, however, would countenance Teheran acquiring a nuclear weapon and either one would authorise military action once they were convinced Iran had passed the point of no return with its uranium enrichment programme.
"Unlike a ground invasion where you’ve got to mass hundreds of thousands of troops, it takes six months and everybody knows you’re mobilising, with air strikes, we’ve got three carriers in the region and a lot of submarines," Mr Podhoretz said.
"I would say it would take five minutes. You’d wake up one morning and the strikes would have been ordered and carried out during the night. All the president has to do is say go."

dynalow · #22 10-28-2007, 08:17 AM

S'pose she has knowledge of Germay and Hitler comparisons??

From The Sunday TimesFebruary 5, 2006

Iran as bad as Nazis: Merkel
Peter Conradi
THE German chancellor, Angela Merkel, compared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Adolf Hitler yesterday as Tehran vowed to resume the enrichment of uranium which could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Amid growing fears that the Iranians are intent on acquiring an “Islamic bomb”, Merkel warned that the world must not repeat the mistakes it made in appeasing the Nazis.

“Looking back to German history in the early 1930s when National Socialism was on the rise, there were many outside Germany who said, ‘It’s only rhetoric — don’t get excited’,” Merkel told an international security conference in Munich.

“There were times when people could have reacted differently and, in my view, Germany is obliged to do something at the early stages,” she added. “We want to, we must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear programme.”

Merkel issued a blunt warning to Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

“Iran has blatantly crossed the red line,” she said. “I say it as a German chancellor. A president who questions Israel’s right to exist, a president who denies the Holocaust cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany.”

The statement came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, voted overwhelmingly in Vienna to report Iran to the UN Security Council, expressing doubts that the country’s nuclear programme “is exclusively for peaceful purposes”.

Iran responded by announcing that it would resume “commercial-scale” enrichment of uranium, the fuel for power plants or bombs, which was suspended in 2004. Ahmadinejad later ordered an end to spot checks by IAEA inspectors from today.

Tehran described as “dead” a compromise brokered by the Kremlin under which Russia would enrich uranium for Iran to the purity required for nuclear power but not weapons. Moscow insisted the deal was still on the table.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA described the vote — carried by 27 to three, with five abstentions — as a “historic mistake” and insisted his country would press on with its nuclear programme.

“We don’t want confrontation but we can tolerate some problems for the sake of principles that we are committed to,” he told The Sunday Times.

Soltanieh said it was not clear when enrichment would begin. In an apparent sign of confusion in Tehran an Iranian news agency which had said Ahmadinejad had given the order to start, immediately withdrew its report last night.

The escalation in the stand-off with Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, seemed certain to drive energy prices higher on the markets tomorrow.

It will also raise fears that Tehran might respond by increasing support for militant Islamic groups in the Middle East, of which it is already a major financial backer.

Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, backed the German leader’s call for tougher action and accused Iran of being “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism”.

Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, his Iranian counterpart, rejected the charges as “ridiculous”.

It nevertheless postponed discussion of the issue at the Security Council until next month to give Iran a last chance to climb down. But the vehemence of Tehran’s initial reaction made this look unlikely.

It will now be up to the Security Council to decide what further action to take. It is expected to start by making a so-called “presidential statement” reinforcing the IAEA’s demands.

Diplomats said any tougher action, such as sanctions, were further down the line and would depend on Iran’s behaviour. China, a permanent member of the Security Council, opposes sanctions.

Calls for stronger measures were growing last night, however. At the Munich conference, the influential American senator John McCain said the military option could not be ruled out if diplomatic efforts failed to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Every option must remain on the table,” he said. “There’s only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran.”

Oct 15, 2007 11:47 | Updated Oct 15, 2007 15:13
Iran poses a danger to Israel's security
By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF
WIESBADEN, Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the possibility of stronger sanctions against Iran before she met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who planned to travel on to Teheran from Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lothar de Maiziere, last prime minister of former communist East Germany, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, from left, stand in front of the Kurhaus resort in Wiesbaden, Germany, on Monday.

The German leader said her talks with Putin would focus on the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program and the resolution of Kosovo's status.

"We know that we can only solve major, global problems together," Merkel said. "We also know that we need to try to find a common path ... even if it is not always easy."

The US push for stronger sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program has emerged as the theme likely to dominate the talks, with Putin set to visit Teheran after Monday's meeting.

In an interview published earlier Monday, Merkel stressed that diplomacy is the way to solve the standoff with Teheran, but also stressed that further action would need to be taken if Iran refuses to budge.

"We cannot close our eyes to the dangers," Merkel was quoted as telling the German daily Die Welt.

"I believe that we need to solve the problem through diplomacy, but at the same time we must be prepared to enact further sanctions if Iran does not come around."

Putin arrived late on Sunday, delayed by wet, snowy weather in Moscow.

Before the meeting, Merkel stressed in her weekly video message "the necessity of new sanctions" against Iran - a source of potential friction with Russia, which is skeptical about efforts in the UN Security Council to impose a third set of sanctions against Teheran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Any Russian show of support for Iran, such as a pledge by Putin to quickly complete the power plant, could embolden Iran and further cloud Moscow's relations with the West.

Putin bluntly spelled out his disagreements with Washington, saying last week that he saw no "objective data" to prove Western claims that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. And at talks Friday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he ridiculed US plans for a missile defense system in eastern Europe, supposedly to stop an Iranian attack.

Putin's visit to Teheran will be scrutinized for clues to Russia's future course. Moscow has helped Iran avoid tougher sanctions and is building the country's first nuclear reactor. But Russia has hedged its position by delaying completion of the plant, and urging Iran to comply with international controls on its nuclear program.

In Moscow, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Putin had been told of a plot to assassinate him during his visit to Iran this week. The spokeswoman, who spoke Sunday on customary condition of anonymity, refused further comment.

Interfax news agency, citing a source in Russia's security services, said suicide terrorists had been trained to carry out the assassination. A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, denied any such plot had been uncovered, and he characterized the news as disinformation spread by adversaries hoping to spoil Russian-Iranian relations.

POS · #23 10-28-2007, 08:55 AM

When the Iraq war was getting "sold" to the public, we heard the same arguments about Saddam. Once bitten...

Botnst · #24 10-28-2007, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by POS

When the Iraq war was getting "sold" to the public, we heard the same arguments about Saddam. Once bitten...

Before the war in Iraq everybody (this includes Germany, Russia, France, and the French wing of American politics--the Democrats) was certain that Iraq possessed WMD and was reconstituting the nuke program. Various nations even provided varying estimates on when Saddam would deploy a workin device. The differences came with respect to how folks should respond to the "threat".

Now the international community is certain that Iran is on the path to nukes. Is the evidence more damning than for Iraq? I'm unconvinced of that. Seems like the same entities citing reports and analysis that cannot be substantiated.

Iran is a threat of a sort -- funding terrorists for example. But nuke thing? The interventionists better do a more convincing job than they did with Saddam.

B

tankdriver · #25 10-28-2007, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst

Different problems require different solutions.

B

Too bad no one in the White House is that discerning.

TwitchKitty · #26 10-28-2007, 11:01 AM

Shortly after Saddam sold oil for petroeuros his country was attacked. Word is that Iran has now done the same thing. The economic news would seem to indicate that this may be true.

Carleton Hughes · #27 10-28-2007, 11:07 AM

Bush is an idiotic,moronic figurehead for the M.I.complex,Giuliani is a very ethically flawed egomaniac.
You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

BENZ-LGB · #28 10-28-2007, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tankdriver

Too bad no one in the White House is that discerning.

Too bad you are not running for President...

BENZ-LGB · #29 10-28-2007, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaRondo

You seem to have an uncanny admiration for that kind of writing.

OMFG...you have outed me. Whatever will I do.

A man of such perspicacity is obviously wasting his God-given talents spending time with us mere mortals.

BENZ-LGB · #30 10-28-2007, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaRondo

Interesting presumption. Does that include yourself? Or is it a mere smear of people who are driving the German Autobahn.
As far as I know, they are the last ones who would suggest a repeat and rather the first ones to avoid it, on an international level.

Your comparison for that matter is ethnically abraisive.

I forgot to say:
This is also a fine example of someone whose adopted knowledge about Germans does evidently not exceed the names of the usual export car makes, the autobahn and ofcourse "Hitler & The Holocaust".

Methinks I have touched a raw nerve. Thou protests way too much.

"Ethnically abraisive (sic)." Interesting turn of phrase. You must enjoy torturing the Queen's English.

BTW, since you think it fit to correct others' spelling foibles, let me point out to you that the correct spelling is: "abrasive" and not "abraise."

Consider it a small gift from someone who learned English as a second language.

As for my knowledge of Germany and modern-day Germans I am the first one to admit that it is limited. The fact that one of our family's friend is married to a German man who travels back to the homeland on a regular basis, the fact that I personally know many German-Americans, the fact that I dated a girl whose parents were German immigrants (who spent time trying to teach my Latin ears to learn Teutonic words) does not qualify me as an expert on German matters.

However limited my knowledge is, I bet you that it exceeds your own myopic knowledge of Cuba and Cubans.