Stop Me Before I Vote Again

remedy for circulation sag

Bibi wants his shot. He needs a war. Israeli is well nigh fucked, internally. The number of Israelis entered into the rolls of discontent is unseasonably high.

Does Obama allow it? Depends. As I wrote below, there's a window. Do they roll the dice? Dunno. But, the best avenue is "defense of Israel and the Hormuz shipping lanes."

(Yes, OP, I expect you to do a cut and paste, interspersed with silly epigrammatic nonsense and unclever insults...)

The meshugenehs are meshugeneh enough to do this. Bibi himself may not be meshugeneh, but the people he represents are.

Israel is ironically everything they and uncle accuse Iran of being: irrational nuclear armed zealots that want to wipe their enemies off the map.

I hope those wagering on hot air are right, and your arguments are persuasive. But the war drums will beat ceaselessly, and the US population has been softened for war with ("Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb") I-ran since 1979.

Expect to hear these words ceaselessly from the meshugenehs and their think tank flacks: "existential threat."

So if war does break out, where should I flee? Any suggestions?

Venezuela.

jack i'll spare you any realism about bibi's options here

and give u a one word answer

wroooongah !

you guys want us to view the zionics
like the neo cons want us to view the aya-totalers

having fun ??

if so great

trying to actually forecast ??

complete grubling peanut gallery stuff

"war drums will beat ceaselessly"

of course they will
but my dear chom-ziff
i'm surprised at you
falling for such blatant whoopee dupe

--- cue the waspish maiden aunt voice here--

-----------------------

you pundits need to review your record
are you right 90% of the time ?

i'll admit bush baby did jump
the sensible gap
and thru the early fall 02
--prior to the "vote "in the senate --
i would have bet against it

but now ...ohbummer ..rommney ...gingrich even ?

nope
we'll not have
two such loon jumps in less then fifteen ..twenty years
and iran it wouldn't be on any fore seeable account anyway

two loon jumps takes a very different sort of regime
then either of our corporate party can produce

ya way off base
war warnings annoy me

like tales of the imperial dollar
falling from its perch
atop the international financial system

it shows completely amateur instincts

now ya i follow my own instincts on dollar moves

but i don't follow my own instincts
on war prospects

so why do you guys
or do you have expert insights here
that aren't disinfo tin foil ?

thanx to the OCC
we have domestic prospects and concerns for once ..
lets keep our eye on the ball

" As I wrote below"

indeed
and straight fom the burning bush no doubt

gingrich even ?

What? Is that directed at the libs that you're lettin' down easy? Or do you buy into the Tinkgress.org-like 'Gangreench is clearly gonna do worse wars!' routine?

'Not even Gingrich.' Sorry, it's so funny, I had to repeat it.

If we're all so hopped up and wanna predict the ugly future, why not more seriously define the terms? I mean, are we talking 'WAR!' on the front page of Newsweek (are they still a mag)? A no-fly zone? Or maybe just a missile or two here and a tea or two there laced with poison?

So op's big bold prediction is what, like, no UN sanctioned action coupled with no US action without it?

The war started a long time ago. We're all just whistling through the graveyard until we know the real outcome.

That's exactly the thing, davidly. The US has been actively at war with Iran since persuading Saddam to invade. Successive Admins have imposed sanctions, armed insurgents, assassinated citizens and funded the Israelis to conduct more of the same.

When I say "hot war" I mean as much - it goes live on the telly. Americans have already proven pliant in the face of some mediated jingoism, and if it's successfully cast as defense against Iranian aggression (and who doubts that it can be done with success, really?), then liberals will sign on (Libya...) and the neocon hawks will bitch about conduct and process while they applaud Obama for following their advice.

Sundaa-aayyy! SUNDAAYYYYY!
THE FINAL SHOWDOWN!
GOLDBERG CLASHES WITH THE IRON SHEIK IN A NO-REFEREE STEEL CAGE TEXAS DEATH MATCH!
FANS, BE THERE!!!!!

Sorry, had to do that. Couldn't resist.

Sorry about that.

(Jeez, I'm really missing Mean Gene Okerlund right about now.)

Owen, you're right to observe that nobody is in any position to predict anything. I would add, including a negative. Who would have thought that an assassination in Sarajevo would set off perhaps the greatest bloodletting (annualized, of course) that the world had ever seen? These people are capable of cleverly maneuvering themselves into positions where they lose control of events. I wonder whether you're not -- in your own perverse way, so familiar and so congenial -- committing the error of overestimating the enemy?

What MJS said. My fear is that bluster can actually bring events to life, even if it all begins as bluster. I also firmly believe that between tha Arab Spring and *perceived* progress of I-ran's nuclear program (or propagandized progress of same), the meshugenehs are crapping themselves. And they're not rational actors to begin with (unless one considers things like slaughtering Gazans in response to a few bottle rockets rational).

I am less making a prediction that expressing an extremely uneasy gut feeling.

Yes, do not overestimate the foe.

the complex of actions called "containment "

includes proxy fights only
the principals never directly engage

Iran is now and has been since some time during
the second half of the carter admin
in containment

the definition of kold war
might be extracted from the us soviet waltz
' 46 to ' 91

this containment might
i suppose
turn to war at some point
unlike soviet containment
iran containment has wide margins
for rational escalation
given the serious uneven ness of power projection
and those margins if explored beyond some point
in turn might force an outcome
like a direct hot engagement
on a sustained and open scale
ie war

a war neither side now considers
a viable extention
of their present strategic policy

till today uncle's and apparently iran's
present strageic policy
in place since '79 has not changed

if either side changes policy the best sets of eyes on the other side will see markers

i guess i might suggest
crow has not provided plausible markers
that either side has made that change of strategy

-----------------

davidly:

surely u fudge here

more of the same cause we're already at war
is a casuistical evasion
containing nothing useful

crow of course jumps for the life ring it provides
with this all but acknowleged abdication:

"That's exactly the thing, davidly. The US has been actively at war with Iran since persuading Saddam to invade"

okay jacko if that was your meaning of hot war this next chapter you predict
will be too

and in the spirit of that
i declare to all readers here

i'm handsome and beautiful

'cause ain't
"all God's chillin' beautiful and handsome " ?
----------------

the great war i submit is not a parallel

it is however along with the great depression
one of the two magnificent demonstration
of marxist diamatic climaxing

alas

the advent of the second big war
and the subsequent emergence of an amerikan century
demonstrated
the global system's capacity for renewal

------------------------
it may just be an unhappy coincidence
the nuclear stalemate came alng to confirm
the containment strategy

but its clear containment came first

bw i conferred last nite with my personal foreign affairs guru

his take

" owen
ask any insider privately
any insider that is
who is not nor ever has been
either a zionist or anti zionist
and u get the clear response peeling at you
like a church bell

" war with iran ?...WAR?..are you pulling my dick here ? "

the great war
thanx for bringing that up father S

such a climax is quietly rebuilding even as we sleep and eat and read escape blogs like this

but despite Clios very considerable powers of acceleration

that eventuality is decades off

judge for yourself

the constellation of great powers
circa 1913
versus the constellation of
not yet and once were great powers
of today ...all save one that is

a rival ?

the obvious candidate has some growing to complete
and at least one other bogey of merit needs to consolidate itself as well
and then ?

prolly several decades of clash and maneuver
and near miss
prior to

the main event

ah yes the great war
one of
and so far
the last of
Clio's big tragic scenes
of the bourgeois era

"people are capable of cleverly maneuvering themselves into positions where they lose control of events. "
exactly true

but only in a context where that loss of control is possible

the great war was in the cards for two decades
b4 it occured

disbelief was all to human and all to foolish

the ignition point
of course is impossible to predict as to time or location

there are real near misses undoubtledly

however in our era
perhaps the so called cuban missile crisis
is
the locus classicus
for false notions of a near miss

but that's another story eh ??

for another escape into
the radically uncertain
sum over histories to come

I read once about a malfunction onboard a Soviet sub indicating that the US had launched a nuclear war. The orders were to launch it's own nukes in that event, but the guy in charge of the sub refused. I believe he was later punished. I think there were other near misses too.

I meant "its," but the stupid phone auto-corrected.

I always thought the Cuban missile crisis was oversold -- all that brink-of-Armageddon stuff. Just couldn't see it, and still can't. So the US might have stopped some Sov ships. And the Sovs would have responded with nukes? Puh-leeze. They might have pulled some face-saving stunt in Europe -- to which we would have responded with nukes? Puh-leeze again.

my own personal examination of the missile "crisis"

suggests seeveral gaps in the reords clarityvis a vis fidel's role

but the basic scenario as it now assembles itself
suggests 70%-80%
new frontier kennedy myth hype