BFD. Russia's total is higher. Why don't you post those? Veto history USSR/Russia: 120 vetoes. U.S.: 76 vetoes. Blocked 35 resolutions criticizing Israel. Britain: 32 vetoes, 23 times with the United States. All solo U.K. vetoes on Zimbabwe. France: 18 vetoes, 13 with the United States and Britain. China: 5 vetoes.
Well, as you say, I disagree. You might conceivably draw some comfort from Victor Davis Hanson's latest observations, under the apt title "Time Is on Our Side." I think you'd find the entire piece worth reading (as usual, it's great "boring rightwing crap"). http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson042503.asp Key excerpts: Regarding Iran, specifically: The last illutrations may sound a little flippant, but there's an important element of truth to the larger point on Iran's susceptibility to further cultural "infection." I strongly disagree with you here, and I can't imagine a situation under which it would ever be either in our interests or justifiable for us to "mow down tens of thousands of Shiites." If and when whatever jihadists - likely, as ever, to be a very small number of the most easily manipulated from the ranks of more passive co-religionists - attempt acts of violence and terror, we and whatever Iraqi authority will have every right and reason to defend ourselves and our friends and to go after the perpetrators and their sponsors forcefully. Under any other circumstances, including the temporary assumption of authority in fundamentalist strongholds, we'll do much better to live and let live. It's worth pointing out also that the Shia of Iraq have every reason in the world not to hand their trust and their interests over to us. We mostly abandoned them in '91, letting Saddam kill an estimated 100,000 of them, and devastate their homelands environmentally, in the process putting down an uprising that we initially encouraged. On a moral level, it made Bay of Pigs look like a practical joke. In a sense, we deserve to have a hard time (not that our soldiers and our Iraqi allies deserve as individuals to be hurt - but they may be, and it will partly be our own fault). More to the point, over the course of the last 20 years, Saddam is estimated to have killed another 200 to 300,000 Shias during the "normal" exercise of state terror. Even if clamping down on them was practical and justifiable, there's very little we're likely to do, even after putting on our best tough guy expressions, that's going to impress them very much. Still, for all the typically alarmist and slanted mass media reporting, I've seen nothing yet that contradicts what most experts (including those of Shia background) have stressed - that, though the overall situation is delicate and difficult, it's a mistake to assume that a few demonstrations organized by a few fundamentalists represent the will of the entirety of the Shia population, much less of the majority of Iraqis. In addition to VDH's piece, others you might find of interest would be David Warren's more cautious but non-despairing essay on post-war matters, and Den Beste's latest thinking (near the end of a long essay written as a follow-up to the one I quoted on the "Why Do They Hate Us?" thread): http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Apr03/index133.shtml http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/Victory.shtml I'd also recommend returned Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya's TNR "War Diaries," though they've now gone "subscription required." His reports on the ground are even-handed and revelatory, and in critical ways much more positive than typical mass media reporting.
KF, I desperately hope you're right. Actually, I do think the situation in Iran is close to boiling over. Of course, you know what that might mean. another agonizing decision. Let's say secular reformers and people who are just damn tired of the ayotollahs get some traction and start mounting street protests. Let's say they begin to attract hundreds of thousands, the clerics panic and send out their thugs to start killing them. We have a couple of divisions sitting around in Iraq. What do we do? And I think the Bay of Pigs analogy is spot on. We hung the Shiites and Kurds out to dry.
Boy did we ever! You really can't blame them for being just a tad skeptical and resentful. Who wouldn't be?
Interesting question. Sounds like the background scenario for a military thriller. In another way, we're already in a slow motion version of that situation. In that the likelihood of aggressive Iranian military action against us is virtually nil, and that the Iranian opposition isn't of the type that fields a revolutionary army and occupies liberated territory, I don't think there's any way that we intervene militarily in Iran. It's also my impression from what I've read about Iran that massive repressive violence of the type you describe is unlikely. The defenders of the Islamic revolution have been willing to squelch opposition speech, punish non-conformists, and imprison opponents, but they've also been forced to back down when confronted by popular will - thus their possible vulnerability to a "people power" or "velvet" revolution. If repressive action anything like what you describe was attempted, it would probably be rightly seen as a sign that the end was truly near for theocratic rule. As for our response, we'd most likely accelerate efforts to isolate and undermine the mullahs, and to support the opposition, and otherwise watch how events developed. The one thing we wouldn't want to do is make it easy for them to rally support against an external enemy. Maybe someone with greater knowledge about Iran's situation could address the prospects.
The Kurds have forgiven the US because for more than 10 years they have protected them from Saddam (no fly zone) as well as provided them with aid. That is why Garner was greeted with flower petals and kids waving the US flag. Actually the Kurds are living rather well. They have their own government, newspapers, cell phones, etc... A totally different world compared to a few miles in central Iraq.
Interesting report on how the US Marines in one Shia city have dealt with an Iran-backed wanna-be. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...6apr26,1,3201208.story?coll=la-home-headlines EXCERPTS: