[Plantagenet]

The US just killed the Iranian general who leads the Revolutionary Guards (al Quds) forces and manages Iran's overseas interventions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. On Trump's orders a Reaper Drone fired 4 missiles into a group of vehicles carrying the general. Iran is now threatening revenge. Also killed was the leader of an iraqi militia force allied with Iran----the same Iraqi group that attacked the US embassy earlier this week.

baghdad-airport-iraq-attack-deaths-iran-us-tensions

Iran is now threatening revenge.



The Ds are also upset because Trump didn't ask them first. Perhaps the Ds will now vote another article of impeachment against Trump to punish him for killing this man who all agree was involved in the deaths of hundreds of US soldiers of Iraq in the 1990s.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

FWIW, my take on this is two fold.

On the one hand it may be an at home political maneuver to put the Democrats on the hot seat. With things heating up overseas it’s harder for Pelosi to sit in the impeachment articles. If he is so bad why is she sitting on the articles.

OR it may be a maneuver to put additional pressure in the existing Iranian rulers. They are already facing fairly widespread protests that have killed quite a few. The economy is having trouble. Now it may start to look, to the rabble, that there is no end to their troubles, that the rulers can not push Trump around, and the only solution is a regime change. A popular uprising that results in a revolution that unseats the current rulers. I don’t know but Trump has been masterful at manipulating the masses here, maybe he can do it there?

Anyway just some thoughts for conversation.

[Plantagenet]

FWIW, my take on this is two fold.

On the one hand it may be an at home political maneuver to put the Democrats on the hot seat. With things heating up overseas it’s harder for Pelosi to sit in the impeachment articles. If he is so bad why is she sitting on the articles.

I was wondering about that too. When Clinton was being impeached he started up a little war against Serbia. Some said Clinton started bombing Serbia to distract attention from his impeachment. It was called the "wag the dog" strategy. But I think this is different. Gen Suleimanni was the leader of Iran's state sponsored terrorism program, and he had just masterminded the attack on the US embassy in Iraq.....the latest in a long string of attacks on US soldiers and facilities. There is a real reason for him to be taken out.

OR it may be a maneuver to put additional pressure in the existing Iranian rulers. They are already facing fairly widespread protests that have killed quite a few. The economy is having trouble. Now it may start to look, to the rabble, that there is no end to their troubles, that the rulers can not push Trump around, and the only solution is a regime change. A popular uprising that results in a revolution that unseats the current rulers. I don’t know but Trump has been masterful at manipulating the masses here, maybe he can do it there?

Anyway just some thoughts for conversation.

I doubt this will help the Iranian resistance. The regime has already authorized a "shoot to kill" response to Iranian street demos, and they've killed about 1000 street protestors so far.... and I think they've pretty much been stomped out. I think this is about Trump versus Iran. For months now Iran has been attacking oil tankers, shooting down a US intelligence drone, then there was the rocket attack on Suadi oil facilities. Trump held back from responding. But I think the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad was the last straw for Trump, and he finally struck back.

But there will be more blood. The Iranians will get revenge somehow---we'll just have to see what they do next in response.

Cheers!

[FLAMEOUT]

[Plantagenet]

The US just launched a second round of drone missile attacks on Pro-Iran Shia militia commanders in Iraq

round-two-us-drone-airstrikes-kill-six-pro-iran-militia-commanders

Reports say six more pro-Iran militia commanders were killed in today's round of drone attacks.


The first drone missile attacks were done 8 years ago under Obama when he destroyed the Khadafi regime in Libya, resulting in 8 years of chaos. Then Obama used drone missile attacks extensively in Yemen, again resulting in the overthrow of the existing Yemeni regime followed by years of war and chaos.....

Trump has been more successful---he used drone missile attacks to destroy the ISiS Caliphate in Syria. Now Trump has got something in mind in Iraq.......

Cheers!

[Cog]

LOL I think I'll have a Coke.

[jedrider]

So, we're back in Iraq. I wonder how that will go?

[asg70]

It's hard for this not to be taken as an attempt on Trump's part to distract from his impeachment. That's not to say that the guys he's targeting don't deserve what's coming to them, but they've deserved it for a looong time. Pulling the trigger now seems a little too suspicious.

I will be really curious to see how the resident pacifists on this board spin this after having bent over backwards to portray Trump and an isolationist dove and the Democrats as hawks. This doesn't exactly fit that narrative.

My feeling is that whether or not the US has a pressing need to flex its muscle, Trump lacks the strategic skill to be a functional commander in chief. Up until this point he has done nothing but execute limited pinprick strikes (like that one in Syria some time back) and merely saber-rattling. If he actually has to manage an escalating military conflict I think he'll make things a lot worse than it would have been had he done nothing. Again, not that there wouldn't be a motivation to do something, but that he is simply incompetent at executing.

[ralfy]

That's the same Trump who criticized Obama for using war on Iran as part of re-election campaigning.

[Cog]

Too bad Obama isn't around to shower Iran with more pallets of cash. It worked so well the first time.

[Newfie]

ASG,

I rather doubt Trump is trying to deflect from the impeachment process. Up to this point he has been working to keep it in the news and on peoples minds. I believe he thinks it’s working FOR him.

I don’t recall anyone he calling Trump a pacifist, please try to not invent things. What has been noted, and if you read the news i you ou will see reported, is that Trump has been slow to order retaliations for Iran’s aggressive acts. That he has finally acted is hardly surprising.

We shall see what we shall see in the future. But I suspect Trump is trying to send the message to Iran that he won’t dilly dally around. When he hits it will be hard.

Who knows if this will work or how Iran will react.

Come back in 15-20 years and see what the historians are saying about it.

[Plantagenet]

So, we're back in Iraq.

Yes, about six years ago some of the anti-Assad jihadi forces the US CIA had been secretly arming and training in Syria morphed into ISIS and then invaded Iraq. Obama then decided to send US army forces back into Iraq to protect it from ISIS.


Lets give credit where credit is due!

Cheers!

[asg70]

I rather doubt Trump is trying to deflect from the impeachment process.

Read some of these threads, like Mueller investigation threads. People were predicting Trump would start a war. I mean, if there's anything I expect from peakoil.com it's a very fatalistic brand of cynicism that leads slippery-slope style to violent mega-death.



You'd think this turn of events would be chum in the water but now people are sort of shrugging it off, not even drawing the usual Glenn Beck connections on the blackboard?

I just find the psychology here baffling.

[asg70]

Lets give credit where credit is due!

Indeed. Here ya go:







Keep voting R folks!!!!

[Plantagenet]

Keep voting R folks!!!!

Yes, Bush Sr. (R) pushed Iraq out of Kuwait

And then Bush Jr. (R) invaded Iraq.

However, after all US troops were withdrawn it was Obama (D) who sent US troops back into Iraq to fight the ISIS jihadi forces the US had helped foster in Syria.

And now Trump (R) has executed the Iranian al Quds leader after pro-Iranian Iraqi forces invaded the US embassy in Iraq.

No doubt Iraq is a mess.

But IMHO its silly to blame it all on the Rs and not assign an appropriate amount of responsibility to the Ds for the role they played in creating this mess.

------------------------------

My hope in creating this thread was that we would discuss the current crisis caused by the escalating violence between the US and Iran.

There is a political aspect to this, if people want to discuss politics.

The Ds have gone hysterical over Trump's killing of al Suleimani. Personally, I don't get it. Suleimanni was a terrorist. He specialized in state sponsored terrorism rather then heading up an independent jihadi group like ISIS or Al Quaeda, but he was a terrrorist nonetheless.

Why are the Ds so wee-wee'd about the killing of a terrorist? Shouldn't we all be thanking Trump for killing this terror slime ball, just as the US unified behind Obama when he killed bin Ladin (well, most of the US....Biden opposed doing it). But instead of unifying behind Trump, the Ds are attacking Trump for killing the most dangerous terrorist in the world today. Why are the Ds so wrongheaded about this?


The terrorist is dead! Hoo-Ray! (unless you're a D---then you are angry at Trump).

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Plant,

Have you ever read Danny Khanerman’s “Thinking: Fast and Slow”. IMHO it’s an excellent book that goes a long way to describe in simple proven terms the limits of our cognitive thought. If you haven’t read it I recommend it.

In short we get caught up in our bias’, then all of our thinking becomes shaded by those bias’s. It takes work to actually consider a point and our brains are generally pretty lazy. They take the first simple answer that comes to mind.

Once you have programmed folks into a particular bias then getting them to see something anew from a objective perspective is damned difficult.

[Newfie]

SUSAN Rice trying to have it both ways:

The Obama administration wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night.

“Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards,” Rice told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

You need to consider these options prior to them coming up, then wait for the opportunity, do a quick last check and then act.

To do what Rice says, wait for the opportunity and then consider is bass skewers. It squeezes the time you have so that deliberative thought is not possible, you are rushed to make the decision. That’s the kind of silliness that Obama, Clinton, Rice exhibited in Lybia which made that mess. By Obama’s own story it was a forced decision, and turned out very badly.

I’ve no idea what Trump did. Hopefully they had thought it through before hand.

[Cog]

Trump as a nationalist operates in that mind set. He did not respond to the tanker attacks or the missile strikes by Iran on the Saudi oil infrastructure. Those events affect other countries but not the USA. But he does respond when American lives are at stake. Exactly what I would expect a nationalist to do.

Trump does not seek military engagements for the benefit of others. Only if those engagements benefit the USA, does Trump act.

[evilgenius]

I think, by the heuristics, Trump probably did the right thing. It makes you wonder, or it should, why this guy got into a two car motorcade after deplaning?

He's a terrorist, right? Yet, he got into a readily identifiable situation, where his routine could betray him. He was also the second in charge in Iran. The political leanings in Iraq toward Iran are fairly strong these days. Iran has a lot of influence simply because of the religious situation in the region.

But he was a secular leader, not a religious one. I guess he was there to act in Iran's political interests? I don't know anything about any plans for imminent attacks. The same people who were only just saying how unreliable and politically aligned the intelligence agencies are, have started saying how reliable and professional the intelligence agencies are.

Food for the future. It's a good thing random people aren't capable of flying killer drones. A random person could probably justify the use of one as well as this has been justified. Future tech could make this sort of action available to more rather than fewer people, as the ability to retaliate against anonymized AI powered killer drones puts a pretty big wedge between what the world can afford to investigate and what it can't. Maybe this is the future for all no account labor organizers who trust those immediately around them, but fail to keep a look out for those who have the power to reach out from beyond their immediate surroundings?

I want to believe Trump didn't just flail about when he ordered this strike. Just because it was easy for him to do it doesn't mean he didn't consider the seriousness of it before he acted. Nor does it mean that it wasn't placed within a strategic plan of action for the region. It can't be that this guy alive would have been better for the US than this guy dead, could it? Iran is a young nation. He was a leader they tended to embrace, when they didn't so much embrace the ayatollahs. We'll see. He may not have flailed, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

[shortonoil]

So, we're back in Iraq. I wonder how that will go?

When did we leave?

The Middle East is about one thing: OIL!

That hasn't changed for the last century. This is merely a century old continuation of the same war for the same reason.