Your Drones are belong to us!

[peter grimes]

So you are assuming this was 'an effective and comprehensive UN inspection and verification system'.

Well, they did get it right in that nothing was there, but they could have arrived at that conclusion by sitting at home watching South Park and eating cheezy poofs.

But they didn't do that. They went in, the investigated sites, they interviewed people, and so on. Could they have done more? Certainly. But Iraq was in the impossible position of being forced to prove a negative: proving that they had no more proscribed materials.

I'm not really sure why we're still talking about this....

 

[Colonel]

Honestly, I'm tired of Iran being well Iran. I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

 

[Flying Pig]

Honestly, I'm tired of Iran being well Iran. I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

Considering how much they love America, I think the reaction would be to rally the entire populace behind the government before a huge amount of bloodshed. We are, after all, heathen foreigners to them.

 

[red_elk]

Honestly, I'm tired of Iran being well Iran. I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

What you will do if somebody start bombing your country, giving you one month to overthrow your government? They will do the same.

 

[peter grimes]

What you will do if somebody start bombing your country, giving you one month to overthrow your government? They will do the same.

Which is precisely why I'm not sure about intervening in Syria.

 

[Colonel]

What you will do if somebody start bombing your country, giving you one month to overthrow your government? They will do the same.

A. There is no reason any other nation would do such a thing. B. Very few nations have the logistic ability to bomb my country. C. The US has the two largest Air Forces in the world within it's military so I'm not too concerned that this would ever be a problem.

 

[red_elk]

A. There is no reason any other nation would do such a thing. B. Very few nations have the logistic ability to bomb my country. C. The US has the two largest Air Forces in the world within it's military so I'm not too concerned that this would ever be a problem.

It wasn't a question why any other nation would bomb the US.
It was a question what would you do in a situation when someone bombs your country and gives you one month to overthrow your government. I think it was clear enough.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Honestly, I'm tired of Iran being well Iran. I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

The success of such a program is highly unlikely, not to mention the money and materiel necessary to wage such a prolonged military campaign against an entire nation without actual troops on the ground. Oh, and the fact that it would be an international incident of the highest caliber, it would be incredibly unpopular outside and inside of the United States, the Iranian regime is unlikely to concede or be overthrown, and therefore the casualties will be in the hundreds of thousands.

It would be mass murder, no ifs and or buts.

EDIT: Even if the Iranian populace mobilized to overthrow the regime, unless they have access to automatic, military-grade weaponry, and unless the military defected (highly unlikely) they would just be mowed down. Arguably, such an action would be a catalyst for genocide, and the blood would be just as much on our hands as on the Iranians'.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

Dude you need to get out of your head that the population approves of such military measures.
They don't! Afghanistan was ever since a mess. Thus the Afghan people didn't really mind the overthrow of their government by foreign forces. Ever since the Iran-Iraq-war, Iraq was a mess, too and the people didn't mind their government being overthrown by foreign forces (though they did and do mind the negative consequences of it for them, but will forgive you for it as soon as living conditions start to significantly improve).
But Iran is totally different. Living conditions are overall on a continuous rise for the urban class who oppose the government, and the rural folks actually support the government. And most of all the Iranians are proud of their country. They are patriots.
And as a rule - patriots don't like their country to be bombed. Patriots like their country to be sovereign and strong. I am sure you can relate to that.

Which means - bombing Iran would establish one thing - greater support of the government by the population and an actually firmer grip of it over the population (just as the Iran-Iraq-war tightened the grip of the regime rather than loosen it).

So to make it short - what you propose would be an epic disaster and I suggest it is a symptom of an simplified world view centered around the idealized American point of view of foreign policy.

Now if the Iranian themselves would make a significant effort to overthrow its government, that would be different and may allow for some bombing. Likewise is it different if the US supports Iranian oppositions. What is the significant difference here? That you don't impose an agenda brought by physical violence onto the Iranians, but support their own efforts to do so. The difference is in respecting the sovereign desires of the Iranian people. A very democratic approach if you want. Isn't America supposed to be a shining beacon of democracy?

 

[peter grimes]

A. There is no reason any other nation would do such a thing. B. Very few nations have the logistic ability to bomb my country. C. The US has the two largest Air Forces in the world within it's military so I'm not too concerned that this would ever be a problem.

All of which serve as evidence that we need to drastically slash 'defense' spending.

There is no justifiable threat to the defense of the USA. Yet we still spend more than just about the entire world combined on so-called 'defense'.

Makes me glad I use a slick accountant

 

[Flying Pig]

A. There is no reason any other nation would do such a thing. B. Very few nations have the logistic ability to bomb my country. C. The US has the two largest Air Forces in the world within it's military so I'm not too concerned that this would ever be a problem.

Alright, what if al-Queda started setting off their brand of bombs in major cities, one every day in somewhere completely random, and said that the USA had a month to establish Sharia law? I'm willing to bet that the first response wouldn't be 'ok, let's have a read of this book then'

 

[r16]

the day before smugglers were bombed by AirForce jets under the assumption that they were a group of seperatists trying to infiltrate the border when discovered by an UAV . 35 killed , up to 10 missing half of them under 20 , and 28 overall belong to the same extented family / tribe . Unheard in nearly 30 years of fighting . Yay , drone warfare has arrived in Turkey . It comes right on the heels of one particular seperatist bigshot demanding independence again , reports that police is so successful against cigarette smuglers that bandits have started to resort to gunfire , months after a military barracks named after a general - only famous for having 33 villager/smugglers shot on a whim in the forties and he died in jail in the fifties - was renamed , new elites of Turkey were so full of their success now that the fight against the terrorists take the form of soft approach where prisoners are taken and not on a basis of kill 'em all - as if they were not in the past and 'em were all killed - and so on . An average PR disaster when you have allies . This is what happens when you go to war with somebody else's drone . And this naturally leads to one lobby guy demanding an apology from Obama , on the grounds that he "gave" 4 Predators to Turkey . With this high quality of American "assistance" nothing is a surprise . Who knows maybe we should allow American UAVs fly for the separatists again ! Was their damage less then ?

 

[Ajidica]

Honestly, I'm tired of Iran being well Iran. I say we start a full scale bombing campaign. It wouldn't take much, we just broadcast to their population that until the current government is overthrown and the N\B\C programs are shut down we will just keep bombing all government and military targets within the country. I give them a month before the general populace over throws them and we are allowed in to remove the remains of said programs.

This would make Operation Ajax look like a harshly worded diplomatic exchange, backed up by 'forgetting' to invite the Iranian diplomat to a cocktail party.
We all know how well Operation Ajax worked out in the long run.

 

[Colonel]

See I think a great many of you are missing the finer point here. You have all seen small bombing operations like Libya or the UAVs in Pakistan. I'm talking about a full scale bombing campaign the likes of which haven't been seen since Vietnam. The only difference now is that we are much better at bombing. Also if we had this kind of unrestricted bombing campaign (which would make Desert Storm look like a small fireworks display) we could topple governments in little time. There has been a saying since the inception of aircraft as a military object that "You can't win a war without boots on the ground". I think with a campaign like this we could truly change that statement and risk far fewer of our own lives then in any previous conflict.

 

[Ajidica]

Yeah, what you are dreaming of isn't going to happen. Look at what happened after the Iranian Revolution forced the Shah to flee Iran. The Islamic Republic was on very shaky grounds: the communist affiliated Tudeh party still was strong and there was a rather large independence movement with the Kurds and all sorts of other ethnicities and groups.
What happened? Saddam tried to invade Iran and failed miserably, resulting in a wave of patriotic and religious fervor that unified the country (or at least gave the people a large enough distraction while the government persecuted those deemed not sufficiently loyal, resulting in unification) and waged some moderately sucessful campaigns against Iraq. A bombing campaign against Iran, unless we bring it to genocide levels, would not result in an overthrow of the government. Rather, the hard-line conservatives would get more power and Iran would increase their involvement with terrorist groups. Even at genocide levels of bombing, I still don't see the situation turning to our favor. The current government might fall, but the new government enjoying popular support wouldn't be entertaining a western viewpoint. It would be made up of the hard-liner politicians and imams. Shia Islam, especialy among the conservatives, places a very high level of veneration on martyrdom. We saw it in the Iran-Iraq War, and we would see it again here. They couldn't do anything about our bombers, but we certiantly would see an increase in the number of terrorist attacks in America (and likely Israel).
Furthermore, assuming a new government is formed, it would quickly fail. All of the factors in Iran would create a perfect storm for a civil war that would leave us with a post-Soviet Afghanistan v2: something nobody really wants to see.

 

[Leoreth]

So, you live in a country that's controlled by an authoritarian regime. It's likely you have never seen any other form of government in your life. There are things you're not okay with, but overall, it increased your living standard over time, which you consider a good thing. If you're part of the land population, you might even actively support the regime (out of ignorance or not, doesn't matter). Plus, it acts according to your religion, which is likely to be important to you. Plus, it's good at keeping those foreign countries in check that always liked to interfere with you only for their own benefit, and only to your detriment.

Now, the most powerful country of the world comes along. While relations are not good, you haven't actively threatened them. They're issuing an ultimatum: surrender or die. Literally. They talk about democracy, but maybe you know how they treated the last elected leader you had. Anyway, someone pointing their bombs at you while talking about popular self-determination can only be a liar. So you refuse. So they're starting with carpet bombings of your entire civilian population until you give in.

That's exactly the equivalent of the standard plot of an alien invasion story a la Independence Day, you know, those who like to end with these "America saves the day" attitudes. Ever seen any of these movies end in "you know, let's better accept our new alien overlords"?

 

[Colonel]

Wow, your argument is the plot of a scifi movie? Really? If I wanted to see something similar to lets just accept our new overlords I would just watch reality. Apply enough effective force to a country and you will see the change that you wish. It took two atomic bombs to stop Japan but what happened, they accepted our ultimatum "Surrender or die".

 

[Defiant47]

Wow, your argument is the plot of a scifi movie? Really? If I wanted to see something similar to lets just accept our new overlords I would just watch reality. Apply enough effective force to a country and you will see the change that you wish. It took two atomic bombs to stop Japan but what happened, they accepted our ultimatum "Surrender or die".

Ignoring the long-term strategic effect of horrible public opinion...

Are the people killed from all our bombing campaigns worth the social and governmental change?

 

[timtofly]

Wow, your argument is the plot of a scifi movie? Really? If I wanted to see something similar to lets just accept our new overlords I would just watch reality. Apply enough effective force to a country and you will see the change that you wish. It took two atomic bombs to stop Japan but what happened, they accepted our ultimatum "Surrender or die".

I think that would still be defeating our Japanese overlords.

The point is the US is deemed the "big bully" right now even if they are not "overlords". It is in US "genetics" to be imperial, and even more so, if we continually forget how we started in the first place.

 

[Leoreth]

Apply enough effective force to a country and you will see the change that you wish. It took two atomic bombs to stop Japan but what happened, they accepted our ultimatum "Surrender or die".

You conveniently forget that you were at war with Japan at that point, which was caused by their aggression.

What you propose is to waltz into Iran entirely without serious provocation, simply to state "do whatever we say or else".

Also, why stop at carpet bombing anyway? Simply use those nuclear weapons that worked so well against the Japanese. It's not as though there's any moral problem with that, right?