RP - How to End the Palestinian Problem -- For Once and For All!

[jordan179]

This is a repost of one I made back in January 1st, 2007. I don't think that any of the facts on the ground have changed to alter my opinions on the matter. If anything, Obama's election and his pro-Palestinian policies have made matters WORSETwenty years ago, I would have been more optimistic about the possibilities for peace between Isral and

Comments

[lather2002]

I've been saying what you have in your above comment since the end of the "1967 War" I never thought that Israel should have returned the Sinai Peninsula or the Gaza Strip.

But, as far as your item 3# goes, well, when (and I do mean when) Iran finally has nuclear weapons and a delivery system able to strike Israel it will not hesitate to do so. It is only a matter of when. I seriously doubt that Iran will ever have a government that is either benign or friendly to Israel. Of course at one time they did have friendly or at least cordial relations with Israel, but that was when the Shah Of Iran was in power. Jimmy Carter made sure that did not last. And anyone that says that the U S Government under President Carter is not responsible for the Shah's abdication is full of shit and is ignorant of history. Anyway, just saying ...

[jordan179]

Iran isn't Arab, it's Aryan (literally); and I think that if Iran strikes Israel with nuclear weapons her motives will have nothing to do with the Palestinian Arabs, no matter what Iran claims (in the short time that Iran continues to exist after launching such an attack).

And yes, Jimmy Carter bears the primary responsibility for failing to prevent the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, because he failed to support the Shah in his hour of need. I doubt that Carter meant to bring such a malign regime into being, but extreme naivete in a world leader is a failing, not an excuse.

[lather2002]

Iran may not be Arab but it is a Islamic Nation w/a Islamic regime and yes it will use the Palestinian card as one of it's main reasons that it declares to the world at large. And when Iran does strike Israel it will do so with a massive first strike attack. Which of course, no matter what Israel does in response will almost guarantee the end of Israel as a viable Nation State.

And Jimmy Carter I do not think was that naive. I think he along w/others had a sinister reason for doing what he did. Just saying ...

[jordan179]

I would actually not be that surprised if the Iranians jumped the gun and attacked Israel when they had only a few warheads, and those only of the nuclear fission type with yields in the tens of kilotons each. Such a strike would fail to end Israel "as a viable Nation State," though it would kill hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and probably goad the survivors to retaliate with dozens of H-bombs, meaning the end of Iran as a viable nation state.

Sadly, this may represent the best possible outcome for Israel, unless the Israelis strike first and strike soon to knock out the Iranian nuclear weapons production capability.

And Jimmy Carter I do not think was that naive. I think he along w/others had a sinister reason for doing what he did. Just saying ...

You'll have to be more explicit, as the fall of the Shah turned out to be very much not to Jimmy Carter's advantage? What possible "sinister reason" would have been, to Jimmy Carter, worth losing the 1980 election?

[lather2002]

Well, I did fail to mention that I believe Iran will wait until they have the capacity to do what I said they would in the above post. As far as what I said about Carter, well, things do not always go exactly as one wishes. ;)

[jordan179]

Carter's naivete lay in his assumption that the rebels would be better than the Shah simply because the Shah's crimes against his own people were actual, while the Ayatollah's were merely potential. This is a mistake commonly made when regarding rebels, or indeed, legitimate opposition parties. It is easy to see the flaws of those in a position of power who must actually make the tough decisions; harder to see that those out of power are benefitting from being able to argue contradictory policies simultaneously, without having to actually put them into practice.

Which is, incidentally, how Obama got elected in 2008. As many of his supporters are now discovering.

[lather2002]

Any negatives of the Shah and his government was outweighed by the fact he was a strong and stable (as long as he had U S government support) to the our country. At the time he was also a vital firewall in that part of the world against the Soviet Union as well. And do not forget that he was making changes, however slowly, in bringing/making his country more democratic and such. And of course the Shah and his government was not a threat to the existence of Israel, quite the contrary actually. Sorry, unless one considers Carter an ignorant uneducated buffoon, Carter and his lackeys knew more or less exactly what they were doing. I mean, WTF, do you really think our intelligence agencies, even thought they were almost destroyed by the Democrat Congress beginning and right before & after Nixon's removal from the Presidency, did not know what the Ayatollah's goals and motives were for Iran

[jordan179]

Sorry, unless one considers Carter an ignorant uneducated buffoon, Carter and his lackeys knew more or less exactly what they were doing. I mean, WTF, do you really think our intelligence agencies, even thought they were almost destroyed by the Democrat Congress beginning and right before & after Nixon's removal from the Presidency, did not know what the Ayatollah's goals and motives were for Iran?

I consider Carter to be a naive overeducated buffoon, who has internalized ideals of how the rest of the world should be, and believed that the main source of evil in the world stems from America's support of undemocratic allies. He made exactly the same mistake in Iran as he did in Nicaragua, which was to assume that "of course" if a right-wing dictatorship was overthrown, the people would institute an enlightened democracy

[lather2002]

I do not wanna debate or argue at the moment, it is not worth it, haha. But I will say one more thing concerning your statement concerning "bringing in the Ayatollah Khomeini (who, remember, was an exile in France rather than America)". There was a time when the CIA, by it's own measure and/or devices would have made sure that the Ayatollah Khomein would have never made it to Iran. Maybe to Hell, haha. Anyway, take care, later ...

"bringing in the Ayatollah Khomeini (who, remember, was an exile in France rather than America)".

[lather2002]

There was a blog contest months ago that asked "If you could go back in time and change history for the better, what would you do?"

One of the answers was "I'd give the guy who became Pol Pot a scholarship to an American university instead of a French one."

A Sense of Scale

[jordan179]

But you can't argue that murdering an elected and popular leader who (unlike Allende) hadn't done anything except express his political views and replacing him with a murderous torturer was better. Just that it was a necessary evil.

I agree. The Shah was by no means a nice guy. Not the monster that the Ayatollah Khomeini would prove, or that an Iranian version of Stalin would have been. Not even as bad as an Iranian version of Fidel Castro would have been. But yes, he was an absolute monarch, who ruled as an authoritarian dictator and suppressed dissent brutally.

Note however that the Shah is claimed by his enemies to have killed "thousands" and recent research has shown that it was probably more like "dozens" of political prisoners. The Islamic Republic of Iran killed more dissidents in the first few years of its existence than SAVAK did during the whole reign of the Shah. The levels of brutality and oppression are simply not comparable; it's like claiming that Fidel Castro is a mass murderer on the scale of a Pol Pot or a

[lather2002]

Thank God Allende was removed when he was. Too bad the Bush Administration did not let the CIA follow through and assassinate Hugo Chávez in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt which briefly removed him from power.

[mindstalk]

"bringing/making his country more democratic"

Iran had been a democracy for 40 years, before we overthrew it to install the Shah's terror dictatorship. Cf. Mossadegh and Operation Ajax.

[madwriter]

>>Such a strike would fail to end Israel "as a viable Nation State,"<<

Are you sure about that? Israel's not that big a nation geographically. Even just a few well placed strikes in the right conditions might utterly obliterate the country.

[jordan179]

Are you sure about that? Israel's not that big a nation geographically. Even just a few well placed strikes in the right conditions might utterly obliterate the country.Note that I said "only a few warheads, and those only of the nuclear fission type with yields in the tens of kilotons each." Note the radii of total and heavy destruction of such weapons, compared to the size of Israeli cities and the distribution of the Israeli population. Keep in mind that only in the radius of total destruction would fatalities for persons not protected by heavy bunkers approach 100%; in the radius of heavy destruction, as much as half the population might be expected to survive (though many would be badly hurt) even in basement-type shelters, let alone actual military bunkers. In the radius of light destruction, the vast majority would survive, though there would be some dead and severely wounded due to flying glass, etc. Remember that much of the terrain is rugged, so there would be numerous zones where direct thermal and blast effects would