Sunday, January 16, 2005

Second Verse, Same As The First

According to Seymour Hersh, the US has been launching reconnaisance missions in to Iran since last summer, with the possibility of an attempt at disarming Iran's nuclear program sometime this summer.

It's impossible to overstate how stupid this is. Steve Gilliard is already comparing this to MacArthur's crossing of the Yalu river during the Korean war - which prompted a Chinese attack and pushed the US forces south of the border. The Chinese lost more than a million men during the war, but they totally reversed the US's objectives. Similarly, the Iranians (who have thus far been relatively restful, despite being surrounded by US forces) can turn Iraq from a disaster to... well, something worse than a disaster, without too much trouble. God, by August we might be reading about the US army's forced retreat to Turkey.

The stupidest thing here is that any possible attack is unlikely to set back Iranian nuclear ambitions for long, and is meanwhile going to reinforce domestic Iranian opinion behind the mullahs - further retarding US ambitions. But hey, the US has managed to make Saddam popular again in Iraq, so I guess it's no surprise their next step is to make people nostalgic for Khomeini!

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