The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Gwynne Dyer: There's no way for the U.S. to win a non-nuclear war with Iran
http://www.straight.com/article-336907/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-theres-no-way-us-win-nonnuclear-war-iran
By Gwynne Dyer, August 3, 2010
When Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the highest-ranking American officer, was asked recently on NBC's Meet
The Press whether the United States has a military plan for an attack
on Iran, he replied simply: "We do."
General staffs are supposed to plan for even the most unlikely future
contingencies. Right down to the 1930s, for example, the United States
maintained and annually updated plans for the invasion of Canada—and
the Canadian military made plans to preempt the invasion. But what the
planning process will have revealed, in this case, is that there is no
way for the United States to win a non-nuclear war with Iran.
The U.S. could "win" by dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons on Iran's
military bases, nuclear facilities and industrial centres (i.e.
cities) and killing five to 10 million people, but short of that,
nothing works. On this we have the word of Richard Clarke,
counter-terrorism adviser in the White House under three
administrations.
In the early 1990s, Clarke revealed in an interview with the New York
Times four years ago, the Clinton administration had seriously
considered a bombing campaign against Iran, but the military
professionals told them not to do it.
"After a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not
forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the United
States," he said. The Pentagon's planners have war-gamed an attack on
Iran several times in the past 15 years, and they just can't make it
come out as a U.S. victory.
It's not the fear of Iranian nuclear weapons that makes the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff so reluctant to get involved in a war with Iran. Those
weapons don't exist, and the whole justification for the war would be
to make sure that they never do.
The problem is that there's nothing the U.S. can do to Iran, short of
nuking the place, that would really force Tehran to kneel and beg for
mercy. It can bomb Iran's nuclear sites and military installations to
its heart's content, but everything it destroys can be rebuilt in a
few years. And there is no way that the United States could actually
invade Iran.
There are some 80 million people in Iran, and although many of them
don't like the present regime they are almost all fervent patriots who
would resist a foreign invasion. Iran is a mountainous country, and
very big: four times the size of Iraq. The Iranian army currently
numbers about 450,000 men, slightly smaller than the U.S. Army—but
unlike the U.S. Army, it does not have its troops scattered across
literally dozens of countries.
If the White House were to propose anything larger than minor military
incursions along Iran's south coast, senior American generals would
resign in protest. Without the option of a land war, the only lever
the United States would have on Iranian policy is the threat of yet
more bombs—but if they aren't nuclear, then they aren't very
persuasive. Whereas Iran would have lots of options for bringing
pressure on the United States.
Just stopping Iran's own oil exports would drive the oil price
sky-high in a tight market: Iran accounts for around seven percent of
internationally traded oil. But it could also block another 40 percent
of global oil exports just by sinking tankers coming from Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, and the other Arab Gulf states with its lethal Noor anti-ship
missiles.
The Noor anti-ship missile is a locally built version of the Chinese
YJ-82. It has a 200-km range, enough to cover all the major choke
points in the Gulf. It flies at twice the speed of sound just metres
above the sea's surface, and it has a tiny radar profile. Its
single-shot kill probability has been put as high as 98 percent.
Iran's mountainous coastline extends along the whole northern side of
the Gulf, and these missiles have easily concealed mobile launchers.
They would sink tankers with ease, and in a few days insurance rates
for tankers planning to enter the Gulf would become prohibitive,
effectively shutting down the region's oil exports completely.
Meanwhile Iran would start supplying modern surface-to-air missiles to
the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that would soon shut down the U.S.
military effort there. (It was the arrival of U.S.-supplied Stinger
missiles in Afghanistan in the late 1980s that drove Russian
helicopters from the sky and ultimately doomed the whole Soviet
intervention there.)
Iranian ballistic missiles would strike U.S. bases on the southern
(Arab) side of the Gulf, and Iran's Hezbollah allies in Beirut would
start dropping missiles on Israel. The United States would have no
options for escalation other than the nuclear one, and pressure on it
to stop the war would mount by the day as the world's industries and
transport ground to a halt.
The end would be an embarrassing retreat by the United States, and the
definitive establishment of Iran as the dominant power of the Gulf
region. That was the outcome of every wargame the Pentagon played, and
Mike Mullen knows it. So there is a plan for an attack on Iran, but he
would probably rather resign than put it into action. It is all bluff.
It always was.
The second edition of Gwynne Dyer's latest book, Climate Wars, was
published recently in Canada by Random House.
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WARNING FROM RAEL: For those who don't use their intelligence at its full
capacity, the label "selected by RAEL" on some articles does not mean that I
agree with their content or support it. "Selected by RAEL" means that I believe
it is important for the people of this planet to know about what people think or
do, even when what they think or do is completely stupid and against our
philosophy. When I selected articles in the past about stupid Christian
fundamentalists in America praying for rain, I am sure no Rael-Science reader
was stupid enough to believe that I was supporting praying to change the
weather. So, when I select articles which are in favor of drugs, anti-semitic,
anti-Jewish, racist, revisionist, or inciting hatred against any group or
religion, or any other stupid article, it does not mean that I support them. It
just means that it is important for all human beings to know about them. Common
sense, which is usually very good among our readers, is good enough to
understand that. When, like in the recent articles on drug decriminalization, it
is necessary to make it clearer, I add a comment, which in this case was very
clear: I support decriminalizing all drugs, as it is stupid to throw depressed
and sad people (as only depressed and sad people use drugs) in prison and ruin
their life with a criminal record. That does not mean that there is any change
to the Message which says clearly that we must not use any drug except for
medical purposes. The same applies to the freedom of expression which must be
absolute. That does not mean again of course that I agree with anti-Jews,
antisemites, racists of any kind or anti-Raelians. But by knowing your enemies
or the enemies of your values, you are better equipped to fight them. With love
and respect of course, and with the wonderful sentence of the French philosopher
Voltaire in mind: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it".
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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