Sunday, August 1, 2010

This should be......

a HOLY SH*# moment for every American.

House Resolution 1553 (link and selected text below) states in part (introduced by Louie "Gomer Pyle" Gohmert):

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:hr1553ih.txt.pdf

"Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel."

So, representatives of the United States Government are, in fact advocating a military strike on Iran.

Silly us, we all thought this option was "off the table" with the election of President Obama and the ushering out of President Bush and his crew who were eager to shoot at anything in the middle east that moved.

Of course, some will say, "well, the resolution applies to Israel attacking Iran, not the United States".

Any attack on Iran by Israel will be viewed on as an attack on Iran by the United States. If you don't understand and believe that, you are, essentially, a moron.

On paper, it looks great. Israel sends a few planes in, bombs some stuff, and it's all good - never mind that a one time military strike against multiple targets will not stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon if it wants one. In fact, an attack on Iran will most likely accelerate Iran's development of a nuclear weapon to have the deterrent to stave off future attacks.

Some believe that a military strike on Iran will rally the opposition into action to topple the regime. How likely does that sound? Most likely, an attack on Iran by the hated Israeli's will draw the opposition closer to the regime - maybe not permanently, but for a time. When a country is attacked by outsiders, most of the time, the response is to rally around your country and your sovereignty.

What are some other possible scenarios for Iranian responses? Every one by now knows that you cannot stand toe to toe with the United States. Every one by now KNOWS how to fight a war against the Americans (and, the Israeli's). It's called Asymmetric warfare. Most of these actions would most likely be taken by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

One possible response would be stepped up attacks against US interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are countries where there are currently a lot of US personnel (already facing deadly insurgent campaigns), and these are countries which border Iran. Iran could easily flood these countries with stepped up attacks against US soldiers. Bill Lind (a prolific writer on current warfare issues, especially "fourth generation warfare") has argued that because of fragile supply lines that could be attacked, the Army in Iraq or Aghanistan could be literally cut off and destroyed.

Another possible response would be attacks on naval and oil interests in the Persian Gulf. For a snap shot of how that might look, it would be helpful to look at General Paul Van Riper's low tech asymmetric warfare actions as the "bad guy" in the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame (there is a good chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink on it), where he inflicted DEEP damage on the "good guys".

Attacks on oil interests would have a devastating effect on an already shaky global economy.

It's fairly interesting to me that this House Resolution is not a bigger story.

Have we gotten to the point where we are so ground down from war, and so numb that our leaders are just going to do whatever the hell they want, that we don't want to think through the ramifications of what can actually happen?

At the beginning of our protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of observers predicted bad things were going to happen - worst case scenarios. The worst case scenarios didn't necessarily happen, but 8+ years of continual war (which has severely gutted our military's capability), several thousand dead Americans, an untold number of Americans broken physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially has been bad enough, especially if you look at it in a "big picture" fashion.

The ramifications and fall out of both of these wars are starting to be really felt, and are going to be felt for a long time.

Eventually, our luck is going to run out and the worst case scenario IS going to happen.