Trent Franks: U.S. is “wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force” Against Iran
Time for the debate again I guess:
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) has introduced legislation emphasizing the threat of military strikes against Iran and expanding unilateral, extraterritorial sanctions against Iran. The bill declares “the United States is wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapons capability.”
Among other things, it’s just false to say that the United States is “capable” or “willing” to “military force” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. Obviously, we could degrade their research program by blowing some stuff up, but that would likely lead the Iranians to intensify their efforts. But there’s no way to use air power to fully halt such a program. For all we know, bombing will accelerate the pace of advances by changing the Iranian political calculation.
35 Responses to “Trent Franks: U.S. is “wholly capable, willing, and ready to use military force” Against Iran”
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October 28th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Well, I don’t know if they are willing, but with 6K+ nuclear missiles at hand they are certainly capable.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
This is a guy who, on “Committee to Re-Elect Trent Franks to Congress” letterhead, wrote a cover letter to Capitol Ministries annual report sent to state legislators. It begins, “As you are aware, our nation is increasingly in a moral and spiritual decline.” I don’t think this type of behavior from our democratically elected officials augurs well for a rational foreign policy.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Oh, he just wants to try and get this up for vote in the House so the Republicans can vote for it and the Democrats won’t vote for it because it is stupid. Then the Republicans can claim in next year’s campaign advertising that the Democrats are surrender monkeys and don’t even think we are capable of winning a war with Iran and that they want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The Democrats will vote for it too, they are not anti-Semites.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Franks is obviously a radical right-winger. On the other hand, this is sound and prudent legislation:
October 28th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Way off topic, but there really isn’t a more relevant place to post this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/28/MNBN1ABKB8.DTL
If it was truly accidental, then it’s a really hilarious coincidence.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
@Why oh why: why do you think IRPSA is good legislation? Trade sanctions only hurt the people, not the government.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
As for Trent Franks, he is, of course, a wannabe murderer.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Bengt Larsson: I actually don’t think it is good legislation at all, but that is the “mainstream” policy now discussed in Congress: threaten economic ruin, which could lead to as many problems as an air strike.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
If I might broadbrush, AZ is full of people* (or the kids of people) who relocated for cheap property in the land of the rugged individualist (propped up with Federal dollars). My experience was that the plurality of them vote straight low tax/high conservative social issues… which leads to electing wack jobs that haven’t a clue. For them, the world is always October, 1945, when the US had all the food, clothes, money, industry, arms, and intact cities.
* outside the Tucson/Nogales corridor.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
@Why oh why: thanks, I had my doubts as soon as I’d posted.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
“For all we know, bombing will accelerate the pace of advances by changing the Iranian political calculation”
That’s why it is such a political winner. If we don’t end up wacking them it is just the sort of feelgood posturing that the party was built on. If we do wack them, then the Iranian reaction will be “proof” of their bad intentions. I.E. if after we bomb tehm, they decide they need a bomb of their own, we will take that as proof they were trying to get it all along. Either way the hawks figure they can gain on the issue.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The Iranians will greet us as liberators.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Hilarious
October 28th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Trent Franks: Yet another war monger who never served his country in uniform. Yet another saber-rattler who wouldn’t know the business end of a saber from the end of his nose. Fortunately, no one takes him (or his kind) seriously on such matters.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
JPR,
Liberators?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
This is why I feel sorry for Americans. Uber morons like Mr Franks should be held in a mental asylum possibly in a straitjacket not “serving” in the office.
How are you going to bomb knowledge you idiot?
Is he on AIPAC payroll too?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
The Democrats will vote for it too, they are not anti-Semites.
But they aren’t sociopaths either, this is Dr. Stangelove crap. There is absolutely no reason to attack Iran. If you think there is, then be prepared to pay for seven dollar a gallon gas that will break the back of the economic recovery, because that is what will happen if Iran goes apeshit and starts firing off Exocets at ships in the straight of Hormuz.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Those Iranians are so dangerous and warlike we simply must attack them.
Why do they hate us?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
That was a joke, Kropotkin.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
It seems the centrifuges at Natanz are leaving so many impurities that the uranium really can’t be enriched beyond 5% without destroying their equipment. Bombing that facility really isn’t going to set them back much. They obviously need a new facility anyway. They can’t even get up the purity used in medicine. So what’s the point of bombing it?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
THE RED PHONE
Hello,is this President Dmitry Medvedev, or Chairman Putin, that I’m talking to. Oh your both on the line. Well this is the Media Messiah President of the American-Israeli Empire calling to let you know we are using Thermo-Nuclear weapons against Iran, to stop them from obtaining Thermo-Nuclear Weapons, and the attack is now in progress. We are sorry about all those Russian Federation Techs, and workers that will soon be killed but please except our sincere apology for their death.
Oh, the fall out from the attacks should only be slight with the wind directions, most of it will go over The Peoples Republic of China anyway.
What do you mean we broke international law, we are the Empire and I am the Messiah, so just watch who your talking to Bud.
Oh, what’s that in the backgroung? Oh just two Republican Zoners singing Bomb, Bomb, Iran!
You got to love those Zoners, to much time in the sun.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
October 28th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
A few judicially placed 15 megaton bombs will set back the Iranian program 50 years.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
A few judicially placed 15 megaton bombs
While I am pretty firmly opposed to genocide as a matter of principle, the idea of sending Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Thomas into Iran with nukes strapped to their chests has a certain appeal . . .
October 28th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
“A few judicially placed 15 megaton bombs will set back the Iranian program 50 years.”
No, that would just kill a lot of people. But bombs don’t destroy information, no matter how big they might be. As for their facilities, they need new ones anyway. So what are we going to do? We’ll bomb plants that didn’t work well and were going to be abandoned anyway. This is exactly why we shouldn’t let rednecks like you do military planning. Those of us who know physics know that information cannot be destroyed. As long as the information survives, a new facility can be built in a year or so. And given that the current facilities suck, they’ll be building new ones, anyway. So we might actually help them by bombing them. It gives the politicians more incentive to spend money on a weapons program. Nuclear energy is very popular in Iran, but a weapons program isn’t. Bomb them, and a weapons program becomes a lot more popular. I know, bombing Iran is the macho thing to say, but macho people don’t make good warriors. Buddhism makes good warriors. The good warrior only fights when he has to. And only if fighting will help. People like you are exactly why empires fail. They get into debt fighting wars they can’t win. The empire collapses when the creditors call in their debts.
October 28th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
“the idea of sending Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Thomas into Iran with nukes strapped to their chests has a certain appeal”
I’m with you there. But dropping them out of a plane from 30,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific would be more cost effective. And even if we gave them parachutes, the results would be the same. Although maybe a little slower. Nobody can swim to shore if they’re a thousand miles away. They’re just shark food.
October 28th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Heh, “judicially placed.”
Sometimes I think SLC is here to disprove a certain well-known stereotype about Jewish people.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I think you don’t understand the nature of modern (post stealth and precision) air campaigns.
The Gulf War, the campaign in Bosnia/Serbia, and the Iraq war, showed that we have the information and the capability necessary to systematically disassemble the structures of modern military-industrial states from the air. We can’t conquer them in a traditional sense that way, and we certainly can’t govern them. But we can completely take apart specific pieces of infrastructure. I think it’s very likely that we know where most of the Iranian nuclear weapons infrastructure is located, and can render those facilities inoperable; and can do that repeatedly as necessary.
That’s not the problem. The problem is Iran’s capacity to retaliate; and the general level of blowback this will lead to in the Muslim world. We can do it. But the cost may be fearful.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:47 am
“But we can completely take apart specific pieces of infrastructure.”
That’s obviously true, and it won’t take much to do it. Hell, if we take out any infrastructure, we’d probably take out all of it. There’s barely any paved roads in the country. If you bomb a single paved road there, you took out a quarter of their paved roads. When the war started, I lived in Texas and everyone wanted to bomb them into the Stone Age. And I joked that you could do that with a firecracker. And that’s really the problem with bombing. It works great when there’s something to bomb. But it didn’t do shit in Vietnam because they didn’t really have much to bomb. And Afghanistan has far less to bomb. If you bomb dirt, it might actually help them. They had dirt before, and now they have dirt with a hole in it. That hole might be helpful to them. Hell, it would make a pretty good fish pond. This isn’t the kind of country where bombing will help. When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:09 am
And look, Afghanistan is so poor that we don’t even know whether it’s the poorest country in the world. It’s really hard to judge countries at that point. I’ve been to plenty of countries where a dollar a day is a decent wage. But it’s closer to a dollar a week in Afghanistan. But we can say this: it’s poorer than any country in Africa. And that’s a tough bar to go under. So really, what are you going to bomb? You think there’s some goats that are anti-American? Really, do you have a target at all? The Pastuns may be uneducated, but they do know one thing: we will leave and they will stay. It may cost them a few goats, but they’ll live. What it costs us is up to us. They’ve seen empires come and go in their land. And the goats still eat the grass and give milk. Whatever.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:26 am
My joke on 911 was that they spent a million dollars to cause 100 billion dollars in damage. And we’ll spend a hundred billion to cause a million dollars in damage. People thought that was crazy, and I admitted at the time that it was a slight exaggeration. But it still holds up well. And I am crazy, but I’m also right. Someday, maybe I’ll be lucky too.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Here’s a better way to explain how poor the Afghans are. The rice farmers in West Bengal, India think the Afghans are so poor that the people of West Bengal should help them. If a rice farmer in West Bengal makes $250 in a year, he’s lucky. And he thinks he’s fabulously wealthy compared to an Afghan. And he’s right. Think about that. It takes me about twenty minutes to make what an Afghan makes in a year. The effort I put into writing this would pay a year’s wages there. So think about that before you talk about Afghanistan. And think about another thing: as poor as they are, they are human beings that really do deserve the same right as you. The only thing that makes you better than them is that you had a chance and they didn’t.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Come on, larry. Are they around Baghdad and Tikrit, and east, south, west, and north somewhat?
I have absolutely no such confidence. Why would you?
October 29th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I would like to thank the person who relyed the fact that this man didn’t find it patriotic to serve his country in or out of war. Now he on a committee for the Armed Service(what do he know about the military. He wants the missile program t hat his corporate buddies want;the fact that he doesn’t know that our number U. S. Navy can handle it is a crying shame. Retire dude, you forgot what the representing the people means or do you just want to see innocent people killed.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
We’re certainly capable. Enriching that much uranium to a satisfactory level with the methods they’re using isn’t something that is easy to hide. If you build it far from people, the power infrastructure announces it like a bullhorn. If you build it near people, people find out and talk. Unlike Israel, which has no capacity whatsoever to affect Iranian nuclear research, we have ample means to detect and destroy anything they might build, without going nuclear.
I certainly hop it doesn’t come to that, and we’re certainly not anywhere near that point now.