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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (149705)	10/28/2004 9:49:58 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We continue to supply Israel with guns. Israel uses those guns to kill them. Therefore we are party to their war. I'm not sure if this came up on this thread in September, but your comment reminded me of a massive arms transfer to Israel which seems to have had little comment from either side of the house. I've assumed this was pushed through in advance of the election precisely because representatives tend to be as mute as possible on the Isreali/Palestinian conflict at election time. --------------- U.S. moves ahead on transfer of 5,000 guided bombs to Israel Thursday, September 23, 2004 David Wood Newhouse News Service Washington - Amid growing concern that Israel might launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's budding nuclear program, the United States is moving ahead with the transfer to Israel of 5,000 heavy precision-guided bombs. The weapons include 500 "earth-penetrating" 2,000-pound bombs designed for use against underground facilities. The $319 million arms transfer, proposed by the Bush administration June 1, went ahead after Congress took no action during its 30-day review period, Jose Ibarra, a spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said Wednesday. The deal is being financed from this year's $2.16 billion military assistance grant to Israel. The transfer also includes 2,500 2,000-pound Mark-84 bombs, 500 1,000-pound Mark- 83 bombs, 1,500 500-pound Mark-82 bombs and live fuses. All the bombs are being fitted with the Joint Direct Air Munitions (JDAM) kit, which uses inertial guidance and beacons from U.S. military Global Positioning Satellites for deadly accuracy. "That's an arsenal for war," said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He said any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, clustered in three major complexes and dozens of other sites, "wouldn't be a pinprick strike; it would have to be a large-scale military airstrike that would result in large-scale casualties." Asked Wednesday about Iran's nuclear program and the potential for an Israeli pre-emptive strike, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters the United States is trying to use "diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward a nuclear weapon." He did not directly address U.S. transfers of advanced munitions to Israel. Some U.S. officials acknowledge privately that the Bush administration is split on how to react to Iran's apparent intention to obtain nuclear weapons, with some advocating forceful military action and others pushing for concerted international diplomatic pressure. Powell said he expects the issue to be referred to the U.N. Security Council if there is no resolution within a month. Economic sanctions against Iran could follow. War games run at the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to examine the repercussions of a military strike against Iran's nu clear facilities have consistently reached a chilling conclusion: Iran would unleash a wave of terrorism against Israeli targets worldwide and against U.S. troops in the Middle East. About 140,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed nearby in Iraq and Kuwait. Iranian missiles have the range to hit U.S. bases in the region. An Israeli strike, and the wider war it might touch off, also could send oil prices skyrocketing and jeopardize the global economy, analysts say. Jay Greer, an official at the State Department's political-military bureau, said giving the weapons to Israel "will in our view enhance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests and help maintain Israel's qualitative military edge in the region." Israeli officials have said allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons would threaten Israel's very existence. Last fall, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was reported as saying that "under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession." Iran this week said it has begun a critical step in processing uranium into nuclear reactor fuel or nuclear bomb material: converting uranium ore, or "yellowcake," into gas.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (149705)	10/29/2004 4:22:56 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

First, if there is a cult out there that believes the earth is flat and this leads them to want to kill you, you'd better spend time trying to understand why they think so and how that makes them want to kill you. I agree its a good idea to understand why someone wants to kill you. I even said that in my message - " I might be interested in their perspective as a matter of academic curiosity or to help understand how to defeat them". But the fact that you might want to understand someone else's delusion doesn't mean you give any credence to the delusion. Second, your statement is not even on the same planet as this book. This is a book written by a senior CIA analyst who has spent his life studying bin Laden and the like. It is far from nonesensical stuff you are equating to. I don't know what the book actually says, nor did I say the book was nonsense. I said the idea that we are waging war against Islam, or that we attacked Al Qaeda first are both nonsense. If the book says either of those things than it at least includes nonsense whether or not that nonsense is mixed in with a lot of sense. * We continue to supply Israel with guns. Israel uses those guns to kill them. Therefore we are party to their war. 1 - Supplying arms to a country isn't waging war against that countries enemies. 2 - Israel has a right to self defense including the right to make or buy weapons for its own defense. Also Israel is not actively waging an aggressive war against the Arabs. It conquered territory from Jordan and Egypt in the course of waging a war to defend itself against Arab attack. Since it took over the territory it had to administer it. By the time relationships with Egypt and Jordan were peaceful enough that Israel might consider giving back the territory neither Egypt or Jordan wanted it. In the meantime some of the occupants of the territory including an armed group loyal to the person most often considered to be the representative of the territory started waging a campaign of terrorism against the Israeli occupiers. A negotiated solution to this problem has been elusive. Neither side trusts the other side and both have done things that the other side considers unacceptable. Being in the middle of this mess is not the same as waging active war against the Arabs. * We support corrupt Arab regimes who would not have a chance to stand on their own feet. They try to overthrow those regimes and we help those regimes capture and torture them. Therefore we are party to the crimes of their regimes. We have the same sort of relations with Arab regimes that we have with other countries. We trade with them, and sometimes sell them weapons. We give Egypt aid partially as a reward for making peace with Israel, but most of the Arab countries don't get American aid, and in any case giving aid doesn't strike me as an act of war, esp. I don't think any of the Arab regimes (except the current regime in Iraq) requires American aid to stay in power. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait required American help to defend them against the threat of foreign invasion but again that can not reasonably be considered an act of war against the people of Saudi, Kuwait, or Arabs in general. * We play with their countries as pawns in a "global chess" game as some have put it, often with dire consequences for them, and they don't like to be the pawns. That's pretty unspecific. I know the book would have more detail, but can you provide a bit more? What countries are our pawns and how are we playing with them. You can't count what is happening in Iraq because I'm talking pre 9/11 or really pre the start of Al Qaeda's terror campaign. The coup in Iran doesn't seem to fit because Iran is not an Arab country. Then of course there is the old colonial occupation of Arab lands but that didn't really involve the US, and in many cases they where just trading a Turkish overlord for a British one or one from another European country. Tim