Militant recruiters out in open in Tehran
Washington Times: Militant recruiters out in open in Tehran :
OK, it was already clear that Iran is a covert belligerent in Iraq. This sort of thing has happened before. In the Korean War we were fighting Chinese “volunteers”. China figured that calling her soldiers “volunteers” would protect her from being an official belligerent.
She figured right. We fought a war in Korea with China there was never any consequences for her actions. By consequences, I’m thinking of taking the war into China. Increasing the price would have made an example out of China and set the expectations of what would happen in the future if China were to miscalculate in the future.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make China pay a price for making war with us in Korea. This mistake also set the Chinese expectations that they could get away with the similar antics in Vietnam—and we proved them right.
Between 1965 and 1968, China provided massive support for North Vietnam. Among other things, China sent engineering troops to repair and expand the North Vietnamese railway system so that American bombing would not disable it. The Chinese troops also freed North Vietnamese regulars to journey into Laos and keep supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
The U.S. was aware of the Chinese presence in North Vietnam. Inexplicably, the U.S. didn’t even protest or acknowledge Chinese involvement; we just ignored it.
Our passivity—negligence, actually—to covert war making has established the defacto rules: there will be no consequences for sending forces to fight Americans provided the belligerent merely pretends that its fighters are “volunteers”.
This is the time to change the rules, and George W Bush is just the man to do it.
We will need to remove the criminal regime in Tehran anyway; they will never voluntarily abandon their nuclear arms program. We may as well kill two birds with one stone by using Iran’s covert belligerency as a casus belli. We can both eradicate Iran’s WMD program and establish the precedent that sending “volunteers” to fight our troops is as much an act of war as sending your army to do it.
The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.
OK, it was already clear that Iran is a covert belligerent in Iraq. This sort of thing has happened before. In the Korean War we were fighting Chinese “volunteers”. China figured that calling her soldiers “volunteers” would protect her from being an official belligerent.
She figured right. We fought a war in Korea with China there was never any consequences for her actions. By consequences, I’m thinking of taking the war into China. Increasing the price would have made an example out of China and set the expectations of what would happen in the future if China were to miscalculate in the future.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make China pay a price for making war with us in Korea. This mistake also set the Chinese expectations that they could get away with the similar antics in Vietnam—and we proved them right.
Between 1965 and 1968, China provided massive support for North Vietnam. Among other things, China sent engineering troops to repair and expand the North Vietnamese railway system so that American bombing would not disable it. The Chinese troops also freed North Vietnamese regulars to journey into Laos and keep supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
The U.S. was aware of the Chinese presence in North Vietnam. Inexplicably, the U.S. didn’t even protest or acknowledge Chinese involvement; we just ignored it.
Our passivity—negligence, actually—to covert war making has established the defacto rules: there will be no consequences for sending forces to fight Americans provided the belligerent merely pretends that its fighters are “volunteers”.
This is the time to change the rules, and George W Bush is just the man to do it.
We will need to remove the criminal regime in Tehran anyway; they will never voluntarily abandon their nuclear arms program. We may as well kill two birds with one stone by using Iran’s covert belligerency as a casus belli. We can both eradicate Iran’s WMD program and establish the precedent that sending “volunteers” to fight our troops is as much an act of war as sending your army to do it.
posted by johnh | 9:19 AM
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