oralloy wrote:I think a nuclear strike could destroy their facilities pretty well. It is just the problem with all that fallout.
Somebody give this boy an understatement award . . . oh yeah, fallout, and not just the physical phenomenon.
Quote:As for an invasion, I think our forces have demonstrated an ability to decisively defeat enemies on the battlefield. Even in the wars we've lost, it was not due to us being defeated in combat.
In the first place, as i have pointed out in this thread, and in another thread which i devoted entirely to the subject of the difficulties of an invasion of Iran, Iran would be a particularly hard nut to crack. We have never attempted to fight an enemy on such a battlefield. The nation is completely surrouned by mountain ranges, and Teheran sits on a high plateau. We have no foothold from which to make a simple, fast invasion. We were able to cruise out of Kuwait into wide, flat tracts of the Syrian desert when invading Iraq. In invading Iran, all of the problems of desert warfare which faced us in the invasion of Iraq would be present, and additionally, we'd be fighting in mountainous terraine. The only comparable combat experience in American history was the campaign in Italy in the Second World War--and that was an infantryman's nightmare. The odds are very good that the same would be true in attempting an invasion of Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war, the fighting took place in the relatively low passes in the Zagros Mountains and near Basra, at Abadan and Korramshahr. Those are places the Persians fought over for nearly a decade, they know the terraine well, and they are prepared to fight there again. Even if we were to quickly take those cities, we would still be many difficult miles from Teheran, with moutainous deserts to cross to get there.
But then, it is alway easy for the armchair generals who won't themselves go in harm's way to dismiss the difficulties of campaigns for which they will never be held responsible.
Quote:The fighting might be hard. But I think we could succeed.
I have never claimed we could not succeed. I have consistently pointed out that it would be difficult and costly, and would make the invasion of Iraq look like a cake walk. You don't address in any of your posts the degree of difficulty, nor the likely number of casualties which would be involved in such a campaign.
Quote:If we were going to take military action against Iran, I'd start by firing Rumsfeld,
That ought to have been done in 2002--you'll get no argument from me on that point.
Quote:. . . then let the generals at the Pentagon plan the invasion without interference from the civilian leadership, and give them whatever they said was needed, no matter how much they asked for.
None of which would alter that the operation would entail a high degree of difficulty and very likely entail very high casualty rates. For an example, when Grant drove Lee from the line of the Rappahannock to Richmond in the Spring of 1864, he accomplished in a month and a half what all of his predecessors had failed to do in three preceeding campaigning seasons. In the process he inflicted on Lee's army 25,000 casualties, for which Lee was only able to provide 15,000 casualties. By contrast, his army actually had 10,000 more troops than he had had on April 30, 1864. The only little problem was that he accomplished that end by burning up 105,000 troops and getting 115,000 replacements.
It is not whether or not an operation is "doable" that matters. It is not whether or not it can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time that matters. It is what the cost will be in blood and treasure to accomplish the stated military ends.
Iran is not attacking us. It is not threatening us. It doesn't have a delivery system which can threaten us. Any claims about a terrorist threat are purely speculative, and are not limited to Iran, but to a host of other nations which we know have nuclear weapons. In the final analysis, there is one reason, and one reason only to resent nuclear weapons in Iran, and that is a putative threat to Israel. The Mullahs know as well as anyone else in the world that they're toast if they launch at Israel, and they are no more likely to wish to see their friends and relations incinerated than are any other body of powerful men in the world. There is just no good reason to do such a thing, and the more so as it would likely be the costliest military adventuring we could do since the end of the Vietnam War.
Quote:But my first choice is to simply build up Israel's nuclear deterrent so it won't matter if Iran develops nukes.
On yeah, there's a bunch of reasonable, competent hands in which to place the means for assuring the destruction of the middle east (insert appropriate rolly-eyed emoticon here).
