hanno wrote:Alright professor, but he ran around like he owned the place - they counted him out and he scared them out of the way.
I suggest that you actually read the
Anabasis of Xenophon before you make **** up about it. Xenophon was not the commander of the mercenary force which marched to Cunaxa in the employ of Cyrus the Younger, who was trying to put the Persian emperor Ataxerxes out of business. The commanders were the leaders of the individual detachments of mercenaries who had signed on. Clearchus from Sparta was recognized as the top commander. The Persian commander, Tissaphernes, lured the commanders to a negotiation, and murdered most of them, including Clearchus. Thereafter, the Greeks elected a group of commanders, of whom Xenophon was only one. Their sole object was to get out alive--which is why they marched north. Neither they, nor Xenophon, "ran around" anywhere. It was certainly true that the Persians were not going to attack them without good reason--they counted on starvation to do their work for them, and they recognized that the Greeks at bay would be a savagely dangerous opponent.
They had no food, except what they could take by force from the population. Tissaphernes gave them some supplies, but the "marching republic" (as it came to be known) discussed it, decided that they were being strung along, and that their best bet was to march and fight their way out. They marched north as the best way to quickly get back to familiar territory (the Black Sea coast was dotted with Greek trading post cities), and to avoid retracing their steps through hostile territory where most of the food and fodder was already used up. Their march was heroic and remains a popular account to this day because of the hardships they endured to accomplish it. When you don't know what the hell you're talking about, maybe you shouldn't talk about it.
Quote:And what can they do - conduct all their business from underground? It was a win when Hitler went in his bunker and now we've got UAV's to make sure. I mean, it would be more of a fight than we're used to but it ain't even like we've got to get in underneath trees with them.
The point, about which you are being willfully obtuse, is that to take out their weapons of mass destruction programs, we would have to go in on the ground. Their population is almost 66,000,000 (source at the CIA Factbook) as compared to the 26,000,000 Iraqis we faced, an increase of 250%. They are not a demoralized nation of an oppressed majority suffering under the rule of a tribal minority government. They are wealthy and have not been subjected to ten years of international embargo. Their leadership is not simply unified, they control almost every aspect of life in Iran, but they don't micromanage, and they don't have to deploy a huge army and police force to protect themselves from their own people.
And their own people are an ancient and proud nation that will fight us as the Iraqis wouldn't. As of 2004, the Iranian army numbered as much as 350,000 men (source at Global Security-dot-org), of which about 200,000 are conscripts, which leaves 150,000 professionals, a force nearly as large as the army we already have in Iraq. Where are you going to come up with the troops to fight this war, Professor?
Quote:I keep hearing wonderful details about gloom and doom if we don't turn ourselves in to Obama. Suddenly everyone's a fan of cold, hard reality - it's fashionable to whine about how screwed and limited we are - but are you starving? My trash got picked up this week. Liberals assessing our military prospects reminds me of those frustrated evangelicals trying to sell 'intelligent design' as science.
Your political predilections and prejudices have absolutely no bearing on the issue of attacking Iran. If you bomb them, you are not going to stop their weapons of mass destruction programs, and you are just going to piss them off, as well as the rest of the Muslim world, without having accomplished any lasting results--and you will have given them incentive to attempt to get us in return. No other nation in the world has more experience (except perhaps Libya) in sponsoring terrorist activities. If you want to completely take out their capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, you'll have to go in on the ground, and it will be a blood bath.
Conservatives rattling their sabers always remind me of bullies on the playground, who'd piss in their pants if they ever got into a real fight. What's sad is that you're willing to spill American blood because you are an unwitting shill for Israeli policy goals.
