Musings of a former chicken

Sanctions vs War.... Freds Logic

War bad............ it kills quickly

Sanctions good................. It kills slowly.

War bad.................... it costs money[Chinese and Japanese won't lend us anymore]

Sanctions good...................... it makes money[confiscating the assets] 

War bad..................... they will fight back

Sanctions good................. they will not be able to defend.

War bad .................... They will kill some of us.

Sanctions good ................... We only get to kill them.

War bad ................. We are already in two of them and are getting our @ss kicked big time.

Sanctions good................ we can rest a while while planning the next war.

War bad .................... They will call us bad bad names.

Sanctions good ....................... No harm done to our reputation.

War bad .................... it will cost a lot.

Sanctions good ................... We will sell it to them in black market  with 1000% markup .

 Feel free to add to these......

-YT 

AIPAC war pushers

Local AIPAC war/sanction pushers, keep pushing, I doubt you'll get anywhere.  Even the ultra right wing fox news ... has got the message:

" Alarming trend from surveys of soldiers shows morale of those fighting the Taliban is on the decline."

//www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/13/morale-...

Mammad

Mammad, if it weren't for the nuclear issue, do you think Fred et all (and the parrot on his shoulder), would be wasting their time here, killing their brain cells for the Iranians?

By no means I am asking this question from a negative perspective. I just like to know your take on this (*)

(*) if I ask Fred, he will not answer 

Sir

Mr. Mammad, are you arguing FOR a nuclear IRI?  I realize that we are just debating. But, are you suggesting that a nuclear IRI has no impact on people’s struggle to get rid of them? You and I and everyone else knows that when it comes to stopping IRI’s access to nukes, nobody gives a sh*t about Iranian freedom and democracy. Then, why fight something that you know the world would not let happen? It is  just a question of how the world would stop it from happening.

We can sit here and debate all we want about the devastating effects of sanctions. But, the reality is that sanction will probably be the most effective and life saving alternative outside of dialogue path. Regardless of our debate, sanction (in one form or another) will happen. So, let’s focus on the other element of Fred’s point, the “moral and material support” for those brave souls who are risking their lives to rid of theocracy.

None of these academic debates over the effects of sanction is relevant, when it is almost certain that it will happen (if it is not superseded by war).

Both, yours and Fred’s depth of knowledge is extremely respectable. However, there is always a place for reality….      

Let "us" hear your plan

Sober people might call demagoguery arguing but it does not make it so. To cut to the chase the plural “us” that the sober people use instead of singular I, should show their plan.

 The plan that obviously includes the messianic Islamist Rapists having nuke, since the argument is other tyrannies which had it still became democratic, the plan which mandates not touching the Islamist mafia which people depend on and the plan which takes into account thirty years of failure in reforming. What does the sober one propose?

The argument is false

1. If sanctions did minimal damage - or at least a level of damage that could be considered tolerable and worth suffering from for the long-term good of the country -  to common people, but maximal damage to the Mafia to the extent that they would bring them down, I would fully support it, even though every single member of my own large family and that of my wife live in Iran.

I am not against sanctions genetically, rather because of the very fact that the Mafia controls the economy and, therefore, the people are totally dependent on the Mafia. So, if you want to respond, respond to this aspect. Tell us how you would address this. Give us an analysis of how long you think your air tight sanction will need to work. Give us an analysis of what would happen to the people.

My argument may be circular in your view, but the fact is there is a triangle. The Mafia, the economy, and the people. People need the economy to survive. The Mafia controls the economy, which means people are totally dependent on the Mafia that controls it. Therefore, people are, at this stage, totally dependent on Mafia - that controls the most important assets of the country, including oil wealth - to survive. Now, if this were a square, i.e., if there were a 4th side independent of the Mafia, one could seriously consider sanctions.

2. It is a myth that sanctions brought down the apartheid regime. The regime was brought down because the white minority recognized that by not giving up political power, not only will they eventually lose political power, but also economic power. If you just take a serious look at what happened in SA, you will see it for yourself.

Just take a look at SA next door, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Ian Smith, the white ruler of Rhodesia, resisted giving up his apartheid regime there. There was armed struggle, and Smith was brought down in 1980. What happened? Ever since the whites began losing everything. That is why the whites in SA realized that they must give up political power in order to preserve economic power.

And look at the dissent within SA now. The black people accuse the African National Congress that it has done nothing to lessen the control of the whites on the economy. That is why even within the ANC there has been rebellion. 

3. Even if we assume that the SA case was successful, we also have many more cases of "airtight sanctions" that did not succeed. Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, .... many more. So, what guarantees that Iran's case will be more like SA not the other ones? In Iraq's case, sanctions eventually led to war. What guarantees that in Iran's case that will not happen?

4. Sanctions will ruin the middle class in Iran which is an essential ingredient for democracy (just as it did in Iraq), will intensify ethnic tensions, and will make the Mafia even more dangerous than what they are.

5. There is no link between a nation having the nuclear bomb and the same nation becoming democratic. I gave four examples. Give me one example to counter my argument.

That is how sober-headed people argue and analyze, without name calling, without accusations, and by sticking to the points.

Mammad

In my opinion, the Iranian

In my opinion, the Iranian people should kiss good-bye their dream of freedom any time soon, if IRI gets his hands on Nuke bombs.

This should give some ideas where the sanctions go. U.S won't let IRI to have nuclear weapon. Period.

//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091112/ap_on_re_us/us_mosque_forfeiture

Bijan

In short what I mean by airtight sanction(s) is doing it the way it was done to South African tyrants and at the same time just like there help Iranians with moral and material support with the express goal of overthrowing the regime and nurturing its transitional replacement.

I think once one gets into studying the minute details, the similarities between Iran and S. Africa is just amazing.   

Circular argument

“there is no link between the nuclear bomb and democracy in any nation, unless the "democracy" is to be established through military attacks by foreign forces. If there were, the Soviet Union and South Africa, not to mention Brazil and Agentina that are virtual nuclear states, would not become democratic.”

Whenever one brings up the subject of sanctions and how successfully it worked in South Africa, some people with known tendencies argue against it succeeding in the case of the Islamist Rapist Republic.

But when it comes to possession of nuke by a tyranny, which they are pushing IRR to have, the same crowd argues for it citing South Africa with the argument that it had nuke or the wherewithal to have it and yet became democratic.

What gives?

The same catch 22 applies to their finally accepting IRR being a mafia run enterprise and yet claiming it can be reformed by not hurting the mafia’s source of revenue because ordinary people are dependent on the mafia.

The same circular argument applies to their solution, it has been thirty years that IRR has been in power and they are proposing to live with the current Islamist Mafia till a counter balancing force comes about. The mafia by using rape, torture and murder on vast scale does not allow that so logic dictates putting up with the merry-go-round of living with Islamist savagery till eternity.

And that reference about citing Frontline just does not make sense.

BTW, not a single “sober head” tyrant fighting South African lobbied for their tyrants to have nuke or any other tyranny-power amplifying devices.

Funny stuff by some presumably sober heads.

Why Airtight sanctions?

خیلی خودمونی، برای اینکه کفتارهای مثل تو کف بکنند.

Sanctions hurt only common people

It is good that Tehran Bureau, the same site that has been used in the past to insinuate things about people like me, is now credible enough to be quoted here. But, anyway....

It is true that there is a big Mafia in Iran. It is also true that the Mafia controls a very big part, if not all, of Iran's economy. But, there is also no force to counter it. The democratic movement is not yet strong enough, and there is no viable economic force within Iran to compete with the Mafia.

That means, the people are totally dependent on the Mafia for their daily lives. No sober head can deny this. And that is why people like me are opposed to sanctions, because they will only hurt the ordinary people, precisely because the Mafia controls everything.

Finally, there is no link between the nuclear bomb and democracy in any nation, unless the "democracy" is to be established through military attacks by foreign forces. If there were, the Soviet Union and South Africa, not to mention Brazil and Agentina that are virtual nuclear states, would not become democratic.

Mammad

We're just debating....

I seriously doubt if any and everything that we say here will have the slightest (in nano scale) effect on what the world does or how the west deals with IRI. But, just for the sake of debating, how do we think the world should deal with IRI? Assuming that we all agree (like many other patriot Iranians) that at some point in time (hopefully soon), IRI must be replaced by a true democratic government. Given this assumption, do you think the time frame for achieving this goal is independent of whether IRI has Nuclear weapons or not?

In my opinion, the Iranian people should kiss good-bye their dream of freedom any time soon, if IRI gets his hands on Nuke bombs. I say this because they are ruthless enough to give finger to the rest of the free world when it comes to human rights. And, this is their cautious stance, in the face of intervention by outside world. Just imagine how much more brutal they will become when they have their hands on the trigger of a nuke bomb?

When we put our nationalistic hat on and with presence of Israel in the region, we face this dilemma of nationalism vs. freedom. Of course, those who believe the struggle for freedom is independent of nuke development do not face this dilemma.  

Let’s hypothesize that Nuclear IRI means death of freedom for an unforeseeable future. As a freedom fighter, how would you then stop it from happening? Forget about the motives of other nations and foreign forces for a minute. How would you do it on your own? How would you stop IRI from building the bomb? You have hard time walking peacefully in your own street and asking for freedom. Are you organized and unified enough to build your terrorist arm and sabotage every nuke related construction? I doubt it.

You may say my hypothesis is flawed to begin with. Let’s forget about the effect of nuclear IRI on the struggle of people for freedom. The rest of the free world is hell bent to stop IRI from developing nuke bomb. It doesn’t matter, somehow, the asshole AIPAC lobbyists or the criminal warmongers in the white house convinced the rest of the world that IRI must be stopped from developing bomb. How do you suppose they should do it different from what they are doing? Try dialogue and negotiation (zaboon-e khosh) first. If that doesn’t work, what is left other than sanction or war? Sanction is unanimously agreed to be the next step.

My problem is, I don’t understand the difference between different sanctions. What is meant by an “airtight” sanction? (I posed this question in a blog that got lost in the server crash) How do you implement and airtight sanction as opposed to any other sanction. Can a sanction be custom designed to impact only a particular segment of a population? Is there such a thing that would pressure Basiji, Pasdar, government official, etc… more than the ordinary people? If not, and any kind of sanction will apply equal pressure to the population, then what are we debating about?.

Why is everybody jumping at Fred for something as sensible as he is saying? Why magnify his airtight sanction and ignore his call for moral and material support for the brave Iranians. It does not make sense. Why don’t you instead of denouncing him, offer an alternative approach.

My question about the types of sanctions is still out there and I would appreciate any guidance.

Regards,

Bijan

santions are a prelude to war

Many mafia infested countries dont have oil that they can sell. So long as you have oil, there will be buyers. In the blackmarket if it comes to that.

What airtight sanctions will do is not go after the income of the mafia, but go after the income of the poor families in Iran and make them even more dependent on the mafia.

Make no mistake, sanctions will kill Iranians. And santions are a prelude to war. Of course Fred doesnt want you to know that.

why don't you ask the Iranians who are being targeted...

By the government because they do not follow Islam???