Wednesday, May 23, 2007
نه ناو جنگی وارد خلیج فارس شدند
صبح امروز (2 خرداد ) 9 ناو جنگی آمریکا با گذشتن از تنگه هرمز وارد خلیج فارس شدند.
به گزارش خبرگزاری مهر به نقل از رویترز، صبح امروز 9 فروند ناو جنگی آمریکا با گذشتن از تنگه هرمز وارد آبهای ایران شدند.
فارس نیوز
به گزارش خبرگزاری مهر به نقل از رویترز، صبح امروز 9 فروند ناو جنگی آمریکا با گذشتن از تنگه هرمز وارد آبهای ایران شدند.
فارس نیوز
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Dissent Magazine
توضيح : اين وبلاگ براي اين راه انداخته ام كه مطالب مربوط به جنگ را جمع آوري كنم، تا آرشيو شود
براي همين خودم را به زحمت نياندخته ام راجع به نوشته ها توضيح بدهم، اينجا چند نفري خواننده پيدا كرده، شايد لازم باشد كه بدانيد؛ مي خواهم از تمام لايه ها و چرخ دنده هاي پرشماري كه يك جنگ را شكل مي دهد، آن مقداري كه به چشمم مي آيد و گزيده و شسته رفته است، در اينجا ثبت كنم.
به نقل از و بلاگ اينجا و اكنون، كه علي معظمي مينويسد:
نشريه ديسنت در آخرين شماره خود اقتراحي [ كنكاش ] را درباره ايران پيش كشيده است. در يادداشت سردبيري‌اي كه در اين مورد نوشته شده ابتدا چيزهايي گفته‌اند كه نظر خودشان را درباره جمهوري اسلامي مي‌رساند و طبيعتاً از منظرهاي مختلف قابل مناقشه است و در آخر هم چند پرسش مطرح كرده‌اند؛
اين آدم‌ها در اقتراح ديسنت شركت كرده‌اند: شلومو آوينري؛ اسحاق نقاش؛ مايكل دويل؛ سوزان نوسل؛ آن‌ماري اسلوتر. از اين آدم‌ها فقط دوتاي اول را كمي مي‌شناسم. آوينري در نظريه سياسي و فلسفه سياسي آدم شناخته شده‌اي است و اگر سر وكارتان با تفسيرهاي نظريه سياسي هگل افتاده باشد قاعدتاً اسم او را هم شنيده‌ايد....
حاصل اين همه روده‌درازي اينكه از كليت نوشته‌هاي اين شماره بوي خوشي به مشام نمي‌رسد؛ صدايي كه در مقابل جنگ عراق مخالف جنگ بود اما در صف سرسخت‌ترين مخالفان نبود، الان حتي قابل انعطاف‌تر به نظر مي‌رسد. و اين در وضعيتي است كه مصيبت‌هاي جنگ عراق ديگر بر هيچ كسي پوشيده نيست و جهنمي كه با حمله آمريكا در آن‌جا به‌پا شده با كمتر مصيبتي در نوع خودش قابل مقايسه است. اما چرا؟ توجيهش اين است كه دارد اجماعي به‌وجود مي‌آيد بر سر اينكه ايران يك "تهديد" هسته‌اي است. زماني كه چنين تصوري از حد تبليغات حكومت بوش فراتر رود و به يك باور فراگير تبديل شود، جنگ‌طلبان عملاً زحمت زيادي نخواهند داشت و مي‌توانند به شيوه‌هاي مختلف تهديد عليه ايران را افزايش بدهند
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Francis Fukuyama: neoconservative line of argument on Iran
If you Don't know Francis Fukuyama, first read his biography:
This from Guardian:
The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe
Francis Fukuyama
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian
The United States today spends approximately as much as the rest of the world combined on its military establishment. So it is worth pondering why it is that, after nearly four years of effort, the loss of thousands of American lives, and an outlay of perhaps half-a-trillion dollars, the US has not succeeded in pacifying a small country of some 24 million people, much less in leading it to anything that looks remotely like a successful democracy.
One answer is that the nature of global politics in the first decade of the 21st century has changed in important ways. Today's world, at least in that band of instability that runs from north Africa and through the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, is characterised by numerous weak and sometimes failed states, and by transnational actors who are able to move fluidly across international borders, abetted by the same technological capabilities that produced globalisation. States such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Palestine and a host of others are not able to exercise sovereign control over their territory, ceding power and influence to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, political parties-cum-militias such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, or various ethnic and sectarian factions elsewhere.
American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign needed to defeat transnational militias and terrorists puts political goals ahead of military ones, and emphasises hearts and minds over shock and awe.
A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.
A final lesson that should have been drawn from the Iraq war is that the current US government has demonstrated great incompetence in its day-to-day management of policy. One of the striking things about the performance of the Bush administration is how poorly it has followed through in accomplishing the ambitious objectives it set for itself. In Iraq, the administration has acted like a patient with attention-deficit disorder. The US succeeded in organising efficiently for key events such as the handover of sovereignty on June 30 2004, or the elections of January 30 2005. But it failed to train Iraqi forces, failed to appoint ambassadors, failed to perform due diligence on contractors and, above all, failed to hold accountable those officials most responsible for these and other multiple failures.
This lack of operational competence could in theory be fixed over time, but it has important short-term consequences for American grand strategy. Neoconservative theorists saw America exercising a benevolent hegemony over the world, using its enormous power wisely and decisively to fix problems such as terrorism, proliferation, rogue states, and human-rights abuses. But even if friends and allies were inclined to trust America's good intentions, it would be hard for them not to be dismayed at the actual execution of policy and the amount of broken china this particular bull left behind.
The failure to absorb Iraq's lessons has been evident in the neoconservative discussion of how to deal with Iran's growing regional power, and its nuclear programme. Iran today constitutes a huge challenge for the US, as well as for America's friends in the Middle East. Unlike al-Qaida, Iran is a state, deeply rooted historically (unlike Iraq) and flush with resources as a result of energy price rises. It is ruled by a radical Islamist regime that - particularly since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in June 2005 - has turned in a disturbingly intolerant and aggressive direction.
The US unintentionally abetted Iran's regional rise by invading Iraq, eliminating the Ba'athist regime as a counterweight, and empowering Shia parties close to Tehran. It seems reasonably clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons, despite protestations that its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes; nuclear energy makes little sense for a country sitting on some of the world's largest oil reserves, but it makes sense as the basis for a weapons programme. It is completely rational for the Iranians to conclude that they will be safer with a bomb than without one.
It is easy to outline the obstacles to a negotiated end to the Iranian programme, but much harder to come up with an alternative strategy. Use of force looks very unappealing. The US is hardly in a position to invade and occupy yet another country, especially one three times larger than Iraq. An attack would have to be conducted from the air, and it would not result in regime change, which is the only long-term means of stopping the WMD programme. It is hard to have much confidence that US intelligence on Iranian facilities is any better than it was in the case of Iraq. An air campaign is much more likely to build support for the regime than to topple it, and will stimulate terrorism and attacks on American facilities and friends around the globe. The US would be even more isolated in such a war than during the Iraqi campaign, with only Israel as a certain ally.
None of these considerations, nor the debacle in Iraq, has prevented certain neoconservatives from advocating military action against Iran. Some insist that Iran poses an even greater threat than Iraq, avoiding the fact that their zealous advocacy of the Iraq invasion is what has destroyed America's credibility and undercut its ability to take strong measures against Iran.
All of this could well be correct. Ahmadinejad may be the new Hitler; the current negotiations could be our Munich accords; Iran could be in the grip of undeterrable religious fanatics; and the west might be facing a "civilisational" danger. I believe that there are reasons for being less alarmist. Iran is, after all, a state, with equities to defend - it should be deterrable by other states possessing nuclear weapons; it is a regional and not a global power; it has in the past announced extreme ideological goals but has seldom acted on them when important national interests were at stake; and its decision-making process appears neither unified nor under the control of the most radical forces.
What I find remarkable about the neoconservative line of argument on Iran, however, is how little changed it is in its basic assumptions and tonalities from that taken on Iraq in 2002, despite the momentous events of the past five years and the manifest failure of policies that neoconservatives themselves advocated. What may change is the American public's willingness to listen to them.
· This is an edited extract from After the Neocons by Francis Fukuyama, published in paperback by Profile books at £7.99
This from Guardian:
The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe
Francis Fukuyama
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian
The United States today spends approximately as much as the rest of the world combined on its military establishment. So it is worth pondering why it is that, after nearly four years of effort, the loss of thousands of American lives, and an outlay of perhaps half-a-trillion dollars, the US has not succeeded in pacifying a small country of some 24 million people, much less in leading it to anything that looks remotely like a successful democracy.
One answer is that the nature of global politics in the first decade of the 21st century has changed in important ways. Today's world, at least in that band of instability that runs from north Africa and through the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, is characterised by numerous weak and sometimes failed states, and by transnational actors who are able to move fluidly across international borders, abetted by the same technological capabilities that produced globalisation. States such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Palestine and a host of others are not able to exercise sovereign control over their territory, ceding power and influence to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, political parties-cum-militias such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, or various ethnic and sectarian factions elsewhere.
American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign needed to defeat transnational militias and terrorists puts political goals ahead of military ones, and emphasises hearts and minds over shock and awe.
A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.
A final lesson that should have been drawn from the Iraq war is that the current US government has demonstrated great incompetence in its day-to-day management of policy. One of the striking things about the performance of the Bush administration is how poorly it has followed through in accomplishing the ambitious objectives it set for itself. In Iraq, the administration has acted like a patient with attention-deficit disorder. The US succeeded in organising efficiently for key events such as the handover of sovereignty on June 30 2004, or the elections of January 30 2005. But it failed to train Iraqi forces, failed to appoint ambassadors, failed to perform due diligence on contractors and, above all, failed to hold accountable those officials most responsible for these and other multiple failures.
This lack of operational competence could in theory be fixed over time, but it has important short-term consequences for American grand strategy. Neoconservative theorists saw America exercising a benevolent hegemony over the world, using its enormous power wisely and decisively to fix problems such as terrorism, proliferation, rogue states, and human-rights abuses. But even if friends and allies were inclined to trust America's good intentions, it would be hard for them not to be dismayed at the actual execution of policy and the amount of broken china this particular bull left behind.
The failure to absorb Iraq's lessons has been evident in the neoconservative discussion of how to deal with Iran's growing regional power, and its nuclear programme. Iran today constitutes a huge challenge for the US, as well as for America's friends in the Middle East. Unlike al-Qaida, Iran is a state, deeply rooted historically (unlike Iraq) and flush with resources as a result of energy price rises. It is ruled by a radical Islamist regime that - particularly since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in June 2005 - has turned in a disturbingly intolerant and aggressive direction.
The US unintentionally abetted Iran's regional rise by invading Iraq, eliminating the Ba'athist regime as a counterweight, and empowering Shia parties close to Tehran. It seems reasonably clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons, despite protestations that its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes; nuclear energy makes little sense for a country sitting on some of the world's largest oil reserves, but it makes sense as the basis for a weapons programme. It is completely rational for the Iranians to conclude that they will be safer with a bomb than without one.
It is easy to outline the obstacles to a negotiated end to the Iranian programme, but much harder to come up with an alternative strategy. Use of force looks very unappealing. The US is hardly in a position to invade and occupy yet another country, especially one three times larger than Iraq. An attack would have to be conducted from the air, and it would not result in regime change, which is the only long-term means of stopping the WMD programme. It is hard to have much confidence that US intelligence on Iranian facilities is any better than it was in the case of Iraq. An air campaign is much more likely to build support for the regime than to topple it, and will stimulate terrorism and attacks on American facilities and friends around the globe. The US would be even more isolated in such a war than during the Iraqi campaign, with only Israel as a certain ally.
None of these considerations, nor the debacle in Iraq, has prevented certain neoconservatives from advocating military action against Iran. Some insist that Iran poses an even greater threat than Iraq, avoiding the fact that their zealous advocacy of the Iraq invasion is what has destroyed America's credibility and undercut its ability to take strong measures against Iran.
All of this could well be correct. Ahmadinejad may be the new Hitler; the current negotiations could be our Munich accords; Iran could be in the grip of undeterrable religious fanatics; and the west might be facing a "civilisational" danger. I believe that there are reasons for being less alarmist. Iran is, after all, a state, with equities to defend - it should be deterrable by other states possessing nuclear weapons; it is a regional and not a global power; it has in the past announced extreme ideological goals but has seldom acted on them when important national interests were at stake; and its decision-making process appears neither unified nor under the control of the most radical forces.
What I find remarkable about the neoconservative line of argument on Iran, however, is how little changed it is in its basic assumptions and tonalities from that taken on Iraq in 2002, despite the momentous events of the past five years and the manifest failure of policies that neoconservatives themselves advocated. What may change is the American public's willingness to listen to them.
· This is an edited extract from After the Neocons by Francis Fukuyama, published in paperback by Profile books at £7.99
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Saudi king says
Read complete Article here
" King Abdullah also said efforts to spread Shi'ism in the Arab world would fail. Leading Sunni clerics have said in recent months that Iran is promoting Shi'ite belief in Arab countries. "
" King Abdullah also said efforts to spread Shi'ism in the Arab world would fail. Leading Sunni clerics have said in recent months that Iran is promoting Shi'ite belief in Arab countries. "
آيا جنگ پيش بيني پذير است؟
مقاله عطاءالله مهاجراني در روزنانه اعتماد ملي
آيا آمريكا به ايران حمله مي‌كند؟ به اين پرسش چگونه مي‌توان جواب داد؟ آيا پيش‌بيني در جهان سياست امري ممكن است؟ يعني مي‌توان پيش‌بيني نزديك به واقعيت داشت؟ استفات هاوكينگ نابغه فيزيك، مقاله بسيار خواندني دارد با عنوان؛ <آيا خداوند تاس مي‌اندازد؟>! چنانكه اشاره مي‌كند، او اين عبارت را از انيشتين وام گرفته است. انيشتين قائل بود كه خداوند تاس نمي‌اندازد و هستي هردمبيل و بي‌قرار و قاعده نيست. هستي نظام‌مند است و هر چيزي در جاي خويش نيكوست. پرسش هاوكينگ اين است كه در چنين جهاني مي‌توان آينده را پيش‌بيني كرد؟
آيا آمريكا به ايران حمله مي‌كند؟ به اين پرسش چگونه مي‌توان جواب داد؟ آيا پيش‌بيني در جهان سياست امري ممكن است؟ يعني مي‌توان پيش‌بيني نزديك به واقعيت داشت؟ استفات هاوكينگ نابغه فيزيك، مقاله بسيار خواندني دارد با عنوان؛ <آيا خداوند تاس مي‌اندازد؟>! چنانكه اشاره مي‌كند، او اين عبارت را از انيشتين وام گرفته است. انيشتين قائل بود كه خداوند تاس نمي‌اندازد و هستي هردمبيل و بي‌قرار و قاعده نيست. هستي نظام‌مند است و هر چيزي در جاي خويش نيكوست. پرسش هاوكينگ اين است كه در چنين جهاني مي‌توان آينده را پيش‌بيني كرد؟
Friday, January 26, 2007
ٌٌWashingtone Post reported, I got this form CNN
Bush authorizes targeting Iranians in Iraq
January 26, 2007WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian agents active inside Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the plan.
The move, approved last fall, is aimed at weakening Iran's influence in the region and forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program that the West believes is for nuclear weapons and not energy, the newspaper said, citing the unidentified officials...
The new policy applies to Iranian intelligence operatives and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to be working with Iraqi militias, but not civilians or diplomats, the newspaper said...
But in response to questions about the "kill or capture" authorization, NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the Post: "The president has made clear for some time that we will take the steps necessary to protect Americans on the ground in Iraq and disrupt activity that could lead to their harm. Our forces have standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council."
