The Iran Thread (Now with everything!)

[Paolo]

Not everyone knew about it before the New Yorker broke the story.

More to the point, even with the story few people know anything beyond the mostly anonymously sourced, vague, broad swaths of the plan, let alone its execution. Can say the same thing about US and Coalition ops in Pakistan.

[American Infidel]

Pre WW1 standards of dealing with insurgents. (OR German or Soviet methods).
If you get IED strikes nea r avillage, and it continues without the culprits being handed over, levelling the village and killing the men. make an example of it and keep on going.
Crack down, terrify, use fear and ruthless crackdowns.

Not supporting it, but it would probably work damn well. (If targetted to induce fear and to "break" the target population, it ha s along history. Medieval kings could deal with insurgents after all, without modern propaganda and the type of force multipliers modern western states have)
[quote]
Well you could round up the civilian population and put them in camps to live in. Like the British in the Boer War. They didn't have to slaughter them off and the guerillas were defeated.

[Darth Wong]

If brutality works so well to suppress insurgencies, then why did virtually unlimited brutality not work for the Russians in Afghanistan?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Or the Nazis in occupied Europe?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Our standards of brutality are however different from the Romans though. The Romans used extreme brutality compared to what we have done.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Pre WW1 standards of dealing with insurgents. (OR German or Soviet methods).
If you get IED strikes nea r avillage, and it continues without the culprits being handed over, levelling the village and killing the men. make an example of it and keep on going.
Crack down, terrify, use fear and ruthless crackdowns.

Not supporting it, but it would probably work damn well. (If targetted to induce fear and to "break" the target population, it ha s along history. Medieval kings could deal with insurgents after all, without modern propaganda and the type of force multipliers modern western states have)

It worked because they stayed where they were and had overwhelming force, not because they were brutal. And because their enemies were less sophisticated and organized. And because they defined "worked" differently than we do; they didn't care if the entire population wanted them dead. Brutality on our part will probably just make the overthrow and slaughter of whomever we leave in place when we leave all the faster and more extreme. And medieval kings didn't stay in power by conquering people, brutalizing them, and leaving them, expecting them to stay loyal.

What WOULD work would be to simply leave a permanent occupying force there. It would be pointless and expensive, but it would work. We leave, and brutal or not whatever regime we leave in place dies.

Look at how things were a longer time ago, when one nation could not act as a "global police" to restrain others, the weaker areas of the world got bully-rapped repeatedly and horrifically to the point that the effects still shape them.

In other words, what WE are doing NOW. We aren't global policeman; we're the global thug, or global mob boss at best. "Nice country you have there. Shame if anything happened to it."

See Coyote's comment on China.

You mean the same China that we are copying the torture techniques of ? I doubt that China would be much worse than we are. And at any rate, saying that we are better than China is like saying that you are better than the Zodiac Killer; completely unimpressive.

[K. A. Pital]

Holy fuck, once again this "unlimited brutality" bullshit. There was a nation that was willing to go up to complete physical extermination of the enemy population, and still it went to a Europe-wide partisanship against such a strategy.

If you get IED strikes nea r avillage, and it continues without the culprits being handed over, levelling the village and killing the men. make an example of it and keep on going.

I think you could make a worthwhile addition to Goering, Himmler and other people with a similar train of thought. They used that exact tactic. Even more harsh, actually. Sometimes they just killed people to take their posessions. In mere three years, they destroyed a quarter of the population - but the remaning ones were now almost universally aiding a rebellion against them.

Kill the entire village as an example, and the entire region would become a hotbed of partisan recruitment. In short, you are an idiot and support crimes against humanity.

[Vaporous]

It turns out that when Tacitus said Rome made a desert and called it peace, he wasn't being complimentary.

[Adrian Laguna]

Killing the population doesn't work unless you intend to kill them all, and it still doesn't work until such a time as you actually do so. In between starting of the genocide campaign and its end, you get to experience the mother of all insurgencies. Every single able bodied person, and a good chunk of the old, crippled, and infirm, will take-up whatever arms they have available, even sharpened sticks, and resist most vigorously. Thus, you want the whole thing to be over as fast as possible, which means nukes. If you're not willing to do that, then find some other strategy. Exterminating one village and expecting the rest to fall in line has only ever succeeded in breeding more insurgents.

There is, however, a way to use brutality to deal with insurgents that is potentially effective. What you do is burn villages, and farms, but not the villagers. Let them disperse into the countryside, or round them up and put them in camps. It worked for Kirchner in the Second Boer War, it could work in other situations.

[Adrian Laguna]

Lord Kitchener was, btw, a really wonderful bastard about the whole thing. It was thought, back home in Britain, that letting the Boer women and children disperse into the countryside was more humane than putting them in camps. The Earl was quite willing to act according to this belief, and indeed shortly before the Liberals seized Parliament he gave orders to the effect that no new people would be brought to the camps. Way he saw it, less people in the camps meant less people he had to feed, and more people the guerrillas had to feed, which they difficulty with because the farms had been burned down by the British...

[The Grim Squeaker]

Holy fuck, once again this "unlimited brutality" bullshit. There was a nation that was willing to go up to complete physical extermination of the enemy population, and still it went to a Europe-wide partisanship against such a strategy.

And as was pointed out then, it worked just fine for the Soviets in Eastern Europe, and didn't work for the Nazis due to the sheer over-the top brutality. In the beggining, people thought they could struggle along, (And look at France), but once people were going "Shit, they're going to burn all of us alive, even if we work for them" then the remaining two thirds of the population left alive fought back.
Targetting.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Lord Kitchener was, btw, a really wonderful bastard about the whole thing. It was thought, back home in Britain, that letting the Boer women and children disperse into the countryside was more humane than putting them in camps. The Earl was quite willing to act according to this belief, and indeed shortly before the Liberals seized Parliament he gave orders to the effect that no new people would be brought to the camps. Way he saw it, less people in the camps meant less people he had to feed, and more people the guerrillas had to feed, which they difficulty with because the farms had been burned down by the British...

Isn't there a story about a warlord who captured 15,000 enemy soldiers then cut off their index finger and thumbs, leaving them useless and sending them back to be fed and cared for by his enemy? Or am I imagining this

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

[quote="DEATH"Isn't there a story about a warlord who captured 15,000 enemy soldiers then cut off their index finger and thumbs, leaving them useless and sending them back to be fed and cared for by his enemy? Or am I imagining this [/quote]

There's a tale of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II Bulgar Slayer who had the eyes of 99 in 100 persons of the Bulgarian army gorged out and had the 10th fella lead his compatriots back to Bulgaria. The figure was supposedly 15000, which meant that 150 were left to lead the army back.

I'm not sure if you mixed it up with him, but The Byzantine Emperor was certainly no "mere warlord".

[Thanas]

It turns out that when Tacitus said Rome made a desert and called it peace, he wasn't being complimentary.

Tacitus was using rhetoric hyperbole.

[K. A. Pital]

And as was pointed out then, it worked just fine for the Soviets in Eastern Europe, and didn't work for the Nazis due to the sheer over-the top brutality.

What part of "unlimited brutality" do you not understand? The USSR succeeded exactly because it's brutality was targeted and limited. And the guy was advocating unlimited brutality - WHOLESALE CITY HOSTAGE MURDER. How fucking dense are you? "Over the top"? That's exactly what he was advocating.

In the beggining, people thought they could struggle along, (And look at France)

What the FUCK does fucking France have to do with Nazi genocide? It never experienced the kind of "unlimited brutality" that Poland, Yugoslavia and USSR were subject to. You once again prove you have no clue what you are talking about?

but once people were going "Shit, they're going to burn all of us alive, even if we work for them" then the remaining two thirds of the population left alive fought back.

Of course, because that's what "unlimited brutality" means, when entire villages get summary executed.

[The Grim Squeaker]

And as was pointed out then, it worked just fine for the Soviets in Eastern Europe, and didn't work for the Nazis due to the sheer over-the top brutality.

What part of "unlimited brutality" do you not understand? The USSR succeeded exactly because it's brutality was targeted and limited. And the guy was advocating unlimited brutality - WHOLESALE CITY HOSTAGE MURDER. How fucking dense are you? "Over the top"? That's exactly what he was advocating.

In the beggining, people thought they could struggle along, (And look at France)

What the FUCK does fucking France have to do with Nazi genocide? It never experienced the kind of "unlimited brutality" that Poland, Yugoslavia and USSR were subject to. You once again prove you have no clue what you are talking about?

but once people were going "Shit, they're going to burn all of us alive, even if we work for them" then the remaining two thirds of the population left alive fought back.

Of course, because that's what "unlimited brutality" means, when entire villages get summary executed.

I am NOT talking about unlimited bruality, I pointed out that that doesn't work and will only make the rest of the population fight. I was talking about targeted and limited brutality.
Who's he, then? . Methinks my statements have been turned into something simplistic, especially when i'm basing this mainly off your past statements regarding the success/failure of Soviet/Nazi methods . (Stop seeing enemies around every URK,.)

[K. A. Pital]

Okay, moron, did you write that?

If you get IED strikes nea r avillage, and it continues without the culprits being handed over, levelling the village and killing the men. make an example of it and keep on going.

Not supporting it, but it would probably work damn well.

Which "German methods" helped them? Answer: none, you idiot.

Methinks my statements have been turned into something simplistic

You said about wholesale murder of inhabited urban centers as a tactic taht you "don't support", but "it would probably work well". In short, you made a bullshit claim.

You also made a claim about "German or Soviet methods", without noticing that German methods utterly failed, while Soviet methods succeeded.

Medieval kings could deal with insurgents after all

Another bullshit claim. Not a few medieval kings had their heads cut off by "insurgents" whom they brutally fought with.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If brutality works so well to suppress insurgencies, then why did virtually unlimited brutality not work for the Russians in Afghanistan?

Kill people, you make them angry and ready to fight back in an endless cycle of revenge.

What you do is render the men helpless to stop you as you destroy their property. What broke the Confederacy was Sherman burning down the houses of all the families of the soldiers in Georgia and the Carolinas--the men in the ranks of the Confederate Army were shamed and humiliated that their families were homeless and they were pinned down, unable to do anything about it. And then, why were they fighting if they couldn't stop Sherman from destroying their homes and livelihoods and leaving their families homeless? So they started to give up and lost the will to fight.

Similarly, the British in the Northwest Frontier of what is today Pakistan would launch retaliatory raids against villages for attacks on their troops. But they wouldn't kill anyone--they'd just drive the people out of the village and destroy the homes, burn their possessions, slaughter their livestock, and so on. So the male warriors, who weren't strong enough to attack a huge infantry column of thousands of troops, could just watch as those thousands of troops destroyed their village and they were helpless to stop it.

If their families were being butchered, they would have attacked anyway and been joined by every single other village in the area that they had marriage ties with, as a matter of a blood feud. But nobody was dying; they were just seeing their worldly possessions destroyed. Instead of trying to trap the insurgents in Fallujah--forcing them to fight as hard as they could to survive--the US military should have let them flee, too, and then destroyed the entire city.

Of course, that is how you rule a Colonial Empire effectively, NOT build a democratic state. There is no way to build a democratic state using external violence if the population opposes you.

[Adrian Laguna]

Instead of trying to trap the insurgents in Fallujah--forcing them to fight as hard as they could to survive--the US military should have let them flee, too, and then destroyed the entire city.

Ironically, if military had done that, there would have been world wide outcry against the percieved brutality and callousness of the Americans, despite the fact that doing as you say would have preserved life in both the short and long term.

Of course, that is how you rule a Colonial Empire effectively, NOT build a democratic state. There is no way to build a democratic state using external violence if the population opposes you.

By definition, you can't build a democratic state if the population opposes you, period. The foundation of every democracy is the will of the people, no will, no democracy.

[NeoGoomba]

Isn't there a story about a warlord who captured 15,000 enemy soldiers then cut off their index finger and thumbs, leaving them useless and sending them back to be fed and cared for by his enemy? Or am I imagining this

I believe that in his Gallic War commentaries, Caesar mentions doing something similar to a Germanic tribe who betrayed him.

[Ender]

Iran getting ready

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran.

He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. Video Watch Hersh discuss what he says are the administration's plans for Iran »

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we'll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.

"The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," Crocker said.

Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.

He said the program resulted in "a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos" inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country's north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.

The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said "all options" are open in dealing with the issue.

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at providing civilian electric power, and refuses to comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it halt uranium enrichment work.

U.N. nuclear inspectors say Tehran held back critical information that could determine whether it is trying to make nuclear weapons.

Israel, which is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal, conducted a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean in early June involving dozens of warplanes and aerial tankers.

The distance involved in the exercise was roughly the same as would be involved in a possible strike on the Iranian nuclear fuel plant at Natanz, Iran, a U.S. military official said.

In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor.
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Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned other countries against moves that would "cost them heavily." In comments that appeared in the semi-official Mehr news agency Sunday, an Iranian general said his troops were digging more than 320,000 graves to bury troops from any invading force with "the respect they deserve."

"Under the law of war and armed conflict, necessary preparations must be made for the burial of soldiers of aggressor nations," said Maj. Gen. Mirfaisal Baqerzadeh, an Iranian officer in charge of identifying soldiers missing in action

Iran test fires missiles over Persian Gulf

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran test-fired nine long- and medium-range missiles Wednesday during war games that officials said aimed to show the country can retaliate against any U.S. or Israeli attack, state television reported.

Oil prices jumped on news of the missile tests, rising US$1.44 to US$137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The military exercise was being conducted at the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world's oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked. It was not clear, however, whether the missile test also took place near the strait.

Gen. Hossein Salami, the air force commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, said the exercise would "demonstrate our resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language," the TV report said.

Footage showed at least six missiles firing simultaneously, and said the barrage included a new version of the Shahab-3 missile, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead. The television report did not specify where the launch took place.

That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan within striking distance.

"Our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch," the official IRNA news agency quoted Salami as saying Wednesday.

The report comes less than a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed fears that Israel and the United States could be preparing to attack his country, calling the possibility a "funny joke."

"I assure you that there won't be any war in the future," Ahmadinejad told a news conference Tuesday during a visit to Malaysia for a summit of developing Muslim nations.

But even as Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have dismissed the possibility of attack, Tehran has stepped up its warnings of retaliation if the Americans - or Israelis - do launch military action, including threats to hit Israel and U.S. Gulf bases with missiles and stop oil traffic from the Gulf.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Wednesday's tests "evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one."

"Those who say that there is no Iranian missile threat against which we should build a missile defense system perhaps ought to talk to the Iranians about their claims," Rice said while traveling in Sofia, Bulgaria.

On Tuesday, Rice and Czech counterpart Karel Schwarzenberg signed a deal allowing the U.S. to base a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic.

A White House spokesman called the tests "completely inconsistent with Iran's obligations to the world."

"The Iranian regime only furthers the isolation of the Iranian people from the international community when it engages in this sort of activity," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council.

"They should also refrain from further missile tests if they truly seek to gain the trust of the world," he added, speaking from Japan where President Bush is attending the Group of Eight summit.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that Iran's missile tests highlight the need for direct diplomacy as well as tougher threats of economic sanctions and strong incentives to persuade Tehran to change its behavior.

John McCain, the Republican seeking the presidency, said the tests demonstrate a need for effective missile defense, including missile defense in Europe and the defense system the U.S. plans with the Czech Republic and Poland.

In late June, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, who was then the commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said any attempt by Iran to seal off the Strait of Hormuz would be viewed as an act of war. The U.S. 5th Fleet is based in Bahrain, across the Gulf from Iran.

Israel's military sent warplanes over the eastern Mediterranean for a large military exercise in June that U.S. officials described as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, which the West fears are aimed at producing atomic weapons.

Iran says its nuclear program is geared only toward generating electricity, not weapons.

The Israeli exercise was widely interpreted as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission.

Shaul Mofaz, an Israeli Cabinet minister, set off an international uproar last month by saying in a published interview that Israel would have "no choice" but to attack Iran if it doesn't halt its nuclear program. Mofaz is a former military chief and defense minister, and has been Israel's representative in a strategic dialogue on Iran with U.S. officials.

On Wednesday, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel "does not desire hostility and conflict with Iran."

"But it is clear that the Iranian nuclear program and the Iranian ballistic missile program is a matter of grave concern," Regev said.

The Guards and Iran's regular army routinely hold exercises two or three times a year.

Oh yeah, this is gonna go real well.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What the fuck is this? Does Bush/Cheney think they are the equivalent of General Sherman, going on a campaign of political Scorched Earth because their party is going to lose the upcoming election? Sending us into a third war, and saddling the democrats with the fallout?

[Edi]

Already posted. This thread is a good candidate for merging into the other one.

[Admiral Valdemar]

And lo, it was done.

[Starglider]

I have been intermittently working with an Iranian programmer who emigrated to the UK just a few months ago. He believes that a large minority of the Iranian religious government is ready and willing to play the escalation game with the US and Israel, because they genuinely believe that Allah will only intervene on their behalf when the situation gets desperate enough to necessitate it. I don't completely understand it, but it seems to be similar to the end-times bring-on-revelations thinking in the American far right, only even worse.