Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Thanks Reuel for the earache and lingering sense of de ja vue. Thanks Flynt for your patience.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Reuel seems to think that guaranteeing the outcome of a hypothetical event in his favor is an argument. He did it a number of times. Argumentum ad promissor?

Covert actions against Iran
 

I was a little surprised that Reuel claimed that US backed operations against Iran where a myth, as Seymour Hersh covered the Bush backed programme in 2008. Of course it's impossible to say what the scope of nature of the programme is, so Reuel may well be right, though it is an issue which scarcely gets mentioned.


source: Reuters

source: Daily Telegraph

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

In addition to being a most rude and unpleasant person, Mr. Gerecht contradicts himself. He says highly inflammatory things about the Iranian regime, then says that we don't demonize them.
A few points need to be made. After a bloody war with Iraq, repeated saber rattling by Israel, and sharing borders with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet Stans ( who might have a few bombs also), can anyone blame Iran for wanting nuclear protection?
Mr. Gerecht says that the Kurds and Shiites of Iraq think the Babylon war has been a cool deal. He might have added that Iran has benefited from this war.
One other thing that few are saying out loud. If Israel is fighting Iran, they can ignore the Palestinians. This may not be the primary reason for their saber rattling, but it is a very convenient side benefit.
In the previous diavlog, Mickey Kaus was discussing whether $750 a day to extend a person's life was worthwhile. Here, Israel is pondering whether a million dead Persian civilians and $300 a barrel oil justifies maintaining the Israeli nuclear monopoly for three years.
chamblee54

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Gerecht puts me in mind of Frank's line in Blue Velvet: "I'll fuck anything that MOOooves!"

I would love to believe....
 

that there are only two people even remotely plugged into US foreign policy as war-crazed as Gerecht and John Bolton (Bolton just warned Israel it had three days in which to attack Iran).

I would also love to believe that the ideology that spawned the Iraq War was dead and buried with a stake through its heart, and that we could never even dream of another debacle as hideous and murderous.

But more realistically one would have to suppose that Reuel's position is, if not in amplified form or amply represented, at least "on the table" at the CIA, the Pentagon, the NSC and throughout the "intelligence community."

Since it's a safe bet that the Gerechts and Boltons have very little juice with Obama, the neo-con wish must be that Netanyahu and his enabler Barak will do something crazy enough to drag our Barack (presumably kicking and screaming) into a war with Iran.

It could happen.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

You gotta love the way these neocons get worked up over Iran. Anyone read Juan Cole's critique of Jeffrey Goldberg's shameless propaganda piece?

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Are you sure Redd Foxx didn't coin that? lol!

Re: I would love to believe....
 

Besides all the boorish over-talking, air-time-and-face-space-hogging, and the routine stepping on lines (eg when Leverett raised that HIS source on the circumstances of the break-off of talks in 2003 between the Bush administration and the Iranian government of that day might be more credible than that of Gerecht, given Leverett‘s wife was actually a member of the U.S. negotiation team), Gerecht repeatedly used the phrase “our former employer“ and also kept providing self-serving references to his CIA past. All that seemed an artifice aimed at securing the two heads to the same block. So, I went looking into their respective biographies on the intertubes.

There is no contest, in several respects:

1. Biographical material on Leverett is readily retrievable and a lot more transparent -- albeit assisted by that of Gerecht being strikingly limited, defensive even (Note how he opened the discussion.).

2. Leverett appears to be a true academic, whose standing in that regard seems to have been what got him into government service. The little bit of background on Gerecht strongly suggests HIS government service was as a member of what is fairly well-known as “Team B“, whose members were embedded, mostly in the State Department, the DoD and the CIA, through the efforts and influence of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and their long connections to such neocon organizations as the PNAC (where Gerecht hung his toque through the Clinton years), with the role of ensuring that the Bush administration had a supply of directed-but-substantially-unverifiable intelligence to fit into policy. This http://tiny.cc/e0pow for example links Gerecht to Michael Ledeen, deeply implicated in the Niger yellowcake con.

3. Paradoxically, that last distinction would suggest Gerecht as maybe more reliable in terms of what we can expect. Both these t-heads are out of current fashion and touch with the Obama administration; the question is which of them is more likely to be enabled into influence in the future. I should think that would pretty obviously be Gerecht. The chances of a Republican administration from 2012 are looking stronger as the economy looks more likely to continue to die; and if not then, then from 2016; and I would like to know of even one viable Republican candidate for the presidency in the next two cycles who would even try to resist the return of the neocons.

Finally, it seems odd that BH.TV would go into the lagoon looking to dredge up this creature, rather than just make a friendly call over to msm-approved Atlantic Monthly to get the obviously better, certainly way hotter, choice du jour to defend Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg. I wonder if Goldberg was in the plan, then bowed out late, and someone somehow ‘arranged‘ for Gerecht as a cut-out (again: that opening to effect of all we viewers need to know; and yes the idea of an oblique still-with-the-CIA swipe occurred to me, but no I would not buy it).

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I am not sure there have ever been a group of ten more more illustrious, illustrative, and/or vlog alluring comments ever posted here.

STOP THIS PROPAGANDA!!!!!
 

It is almost hard to believe that these people - Gerecht and his ilk, the neocons more generally - are so shameless and brazen. They want war with Iran and are determined to push the US into it. They lie, fabricate, deceive - basically throw anything against the wall they think will advance their cause. They did it to launch the Iraq war and are at it again.

And for no good reason. It is clearly on behalf of a part of the Israeli political spectrum. But even why those in Israel want war makes no sense to me. Has Israel become such a militarized and martial society that it knows of no other way to exist?

The get useful dupes like Jeffrey Goldberg to spread their message. Why should Goldberg have any credibility in this country? He does not have dual loyalty - his first and primary loyalty is to Israel. He elected to leave this country and serve in the Israeli military. It did not occur to him to join the US military. He is an Israeli whose US citizenship is there for comfort and a better life.

Diavlogs like this one are not some meaningful discussions on important matters. They are part of a propaganda campaign to push the US into war on behalf of a crazed Israel.

Re: I would love to believe....
 

Bolton's statement strikes me less as the ravings of a hawk, than as a capitulation. He has decided Iran will indeed get the bomb, despite his years of statements that this could never happen. By laying down this three-day deadline (sort of silly, if you think about it) he is trying to protect his legacy. He won't have to be a hawk anymore. He can simply say "we missed our chance. I told you to do it early, when it would have been easy".

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Wow - so much hate for Reuel. Then I listen to the dialogue where he completely schools Flynt on Iran. No wonder.

The money shot(s) was Flynt's cluelessness on Iranian Jewish refugees, implying not only that the shooting down of the Iranian commercial jet by the US Navy was intentional but that the real culpability for the Hobart Towers terrorist attack rests with the US Congress...............how has this guy not been hired by the White House?

Great dialogue as an illusration of willfully blind appeasement v common sense.

Avoiding the issue
 

thprop's criticism of this particular diavlog has some merit, but any criticism of bhTV would be misplaced. This is an important subject worthy of discussion.

No one, no one on either side of the debate, dares to broach the real issue, which is not about Iran or Israel. Unchecked proliferation threatens the existence of liberal democracy.

Re: Avoiding the issue
 

You don't know what you've lost 'til it's gone.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Kagan, Kristol, and now Gerecht. Why are all the people here in favour of bombing Iran also fatheaded bullies? I feel like they're the exact same people I would have hated and mocked in highschool.

Flynt makes the rational case very well and accurately. You get a sense of intellectual honesty from Flynt that you don't from Gerecht (perhaps because, as has been mentioned, Flynt is an academic and Gerecht is rugged freedom warrior).

There's a knowledge problem here, on the matter of "what are the outcomes of an airstrike" wherein the knowledge we have does not merit Gerecht conclusion - and if it does, no where near his level of confidence - such that Gerecht either a) has an ulterior, ideological motive b) knows something we don't c) simply doesn't understand how to evaluate evidence. I believe it's a combination of a) and c).

I oppose an airstrike for two simple reasons: I believe Iran's nuclear program is for energy and defence, not aggression; and supposing we did bomb Iran, the geo-political domino effect that would cause is not just unknown, but unknowable. People who think its a good idea to do a strike are effectively asking us to jump into a dark unknown. That's irresponsible.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I see the censors are hard at work this morning. On BHtv, the sensitivities of thugs who incite mass murder receive protection. Good to know.

Hannah Arendt had a nice phrase for such people.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

The recession must be biting if that qualifies as a money shot.

I thought Reuel's coda, that the Iraq invasion has left the middle east in much better shape, was far more telling. It's largely down to the Iraq war that options regarding Iran are so limited.

The Iraq war has been a success for the neocons in one sense - they are still somehow taken seriously. This is despite, certainly in Reuel's case, becoming lazier with regards to evidence and strategy.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Was your post censored? I read it this morning and now it is gone. I thought it rather amusing, and spot on. If it was in fact censored, bhtv is an even shittier forum than is evident from some of the shitheads who are invited to speak here.

Gerecht ist ungerecht.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

XXXXXXXXXX


Comment self-censored. So the elves can have time to go get a cup of coffee.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Why not just let Gerecht himself destroy his credibility:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20010514.htm

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

What did you say?

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

The corrupt moral culture of this place is creepy. If you bring in a clown like Behe to peddle his nonsense -- nonsense that, last time I checked, hasn't killed anyone -- commenters have the vapors and half of the science heads resign in a hissy fit.

But there you have an ex CIA thug who's been advocating mass murder (successfully) for years and we're all supposed to have a nice, polite conversation. This guy should be emptying bedpans in penance for the rest of his life, not being given yet another forum to spew out bile about the moral necessity of murdering yet another 100,000 Muslims.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I am not sure about bombing Iran, the arguments of imminent danger were never that persuasive to me. They did nothing for me on Iraq, the thing that swayed me on that issue was this airy fairy notion of changing the middle east by changing the regime in Iraq and promoting democratic rule. To me the jury is still out on that project long term, but for the short term only crowd, do you all really think the Iranian leadership has no desire to construct nuclear weapons?


Flynt seems to punt on that issue, his powers of expectation go neutral. I don't understand why, you can think Iran is going full steam towards nuclear weapons and still think bombing them is not the right strategy. This smoke cloud he throws up about Iranian intentions regarding nuclear proliferation suggest a deep insecurity.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I think that most of the moderate-to-liberal commenters here are having the vapors about Gerecht. I, for one, want to know who built a time machine and, more importantly, how they determined that the best use for it was to drop the whole country back in 2002.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Honestly, can people stop throwing out the word murder like candy, all you do is show you have no concept of what it means. We do not call conventional deaths in war murder, murder is a very specific type of killing.

When you conflate all the deaths as a result of a war with the purposeful and deliberate taking of human life, intent to do so in full force, with people who die indirectly as a result of war, you show yourself to be a moral idiot. I get that liberals will typically never call out such things, but it gets tiresome for people like me to have to do it over and over, so could you please just stop being so confused?

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I don't understand how you can feel the reverse. Bombing Iran is both unlikely to do any more than delay Iran's uranium enrichment and sure to provoke an Iranian response. If they do nothing else, I'd rather not deal with the economic fallout of a warzone in the Strait of Hormuz. That seems like an awfully high price to pay, unless you think that Iran is likely to actually use their hypothetical nuclear weapons. Do you?

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

further point here, Flynt and other lefties may take the track that diminishes the Iranian leaderships desire for nuclear weapons as they think that is the primary basis for neocon arguments to bomb and go to war.


So what. So many insecure people and insecure arguments. It is a terribly shaky foundation to build the anti bomb/war case with because it leaves you will little to nothing if they in fact do intend to get weapons. Making the case that even if they intend to get them, we still shouldn't bomb is the stronger and more resilient argument, but not much of that was made here.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

that sentence was phrased wrong, replace the word can with can't


What I meant to say was people should be able to believe BOTH of the following

Iranian leaders are working toward and intend to build nuclear weapons

Accepting the first, bombing them is the wrong strategy


Flynt seems to want hold onto BOTH, even the first which seems the least tenable of all beliefs.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

You mean Bob or Reuel? :)

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I don't think that's what Leverett was saying. It was pretty clear to me that he was making a distinction between seeking an actual nuclear weapon and trying to develop the capacity to build a nuclear weapon on relatively short notice, i.e. a few months rather than several years. I don't see why that's such an absurd hypothesis, and there are some pretty substantial differences in the implications of that and an actual bomb that could be launched in minutes.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

After Iraq can you blame him?

You can't have your yellow cake and eat it too, at least I hope not.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Intentional homicide is limited to four cases, I believe: criminal homicide, war, execution and euthanasia.

We have special "rules" for war which distinguishes "battlefield" deaths from criminal homicide. But don't forget these are conventions. Warlike cultures, like our own, have decided that homicides in battle "don't count" as criminal.

But what if, by our own rules, the war itself is criminal? This is what many have argued is the case with the Iraq War (and other preventive wars; note that Reuel embraced the concept of "preventive" war).

So if the Iraq War is illegal, it qualifies by our own standards as an act of mass murder, just as 9/11 does. (The action doesn't have to deliberately target civilians, as 9/11 did. You probably agree with me that the Ft. Hood attack against military personnel was murder, even though its perpetrator thinks it was justifiable war.)

This doesn't mean that individual soldiers who participate in illegal wars are murderers, although I would encourage them to ask themselves if their behavior can be construed as moral.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I nominate Reuel Gerecht for the Bill O'Reilly Award for Loud, Obnoxious Bullying During a So-Called Conversation. I mean, WOW.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Yep. He was so into firing supposedly discrediting questions at Flynt and shouting down Flynt's attempted answers that he was unable to make a straightforward argument for the position he was presumably on there to promote. I'm not sure how many theoretical listeners are really in the middle on this, but to the extent he cares about convincing people who are, he did a terrible job.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

No, killing soldiers, or even civilians, in war isn't the same as murder and shouldn't be described as such. But that doesn't mean that it's not a terrible thing to wage war against another country, and a terribly immoral thing to wage war unjustly. So until Gerecht and other Iran war boosters can come up an explanation of exactly how war with Iran is the only way to prevent a significantly worse outcome than a war that results in thousands of deaths and how the war will actually prevent that outcome, I think they should get used to the moral condemnations that they still so richly deserve from the last time they ginned up an idiotic and immoral war in the Middle East.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

I don't understand why so many commenters here think that a bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites will result in 1) 100,000 civilian deaths and/or 2) a ground war. It seems to me that both of these outcomes are incredibly remote and, and, well, almost wishful thinking on the part of those espousing them. Like by repeating it often enough, it might change the situation? The 80's Israeli bombing campaign against Iran did not result in a ground war. Our repeated bombing campaigns against Iraq in 1990's did not result in a ground war. (Note: before you try to disagree, let me defeat you ahead of time with this: would there have been a ground war in Iraq, absent the events of 9/11? Exactly.... And Osama bin laden was a byproduct of our interference in Afghanistan... where we never bombed during the 80's and 90's.)

Second point. What exactly does Iran need to do before any of the libs on this board would agree that military action should be taken? Much hot hair was spouted by our esteemed (or not so esteemed) bh hosts about Iranian fissile material. So, if any weaponized nuclear material were found in Iran, would that be enough to warrant a strike? Apparently bomb plans and enrichment plants are not enough.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

There would need to be evidence of an actual imminent Iranian attack. Actually attempting to follow a doctrine of preventative war, in which the capacity to attack us or our allies is grounds for invasion, is ineffective and immoral.

Re: Bomb Iran? (Flynt Leverett & Reuel Gerecht)
 

Don't know if it's true or not, but many have asserted that airstrikes will not stop Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities. If true, and one holds the position that the neo-cons are sincere in that their saber rattling is a result of Iran's attempts to get nuclear strike capabilities, then why even have an airstrike at all if one is not using this as a first step in a ground invasion?