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#61 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
Berichten: 3.460
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#62 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
Berichten: 3.460
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#63 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
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#64 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
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#65 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
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#66 | |
Burger
Geregistreerd: 15 december 2006
Berichten: 112
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2. Ah, nog iemand die oorzaak en gevolg omkeert. Voor fanatieke moslims zijn we reeds de vijand, gewoon omdat we een wereldwijd kalifaat niet steunen. Even een Youtube link naar een stukje toespraak van Ann Coulter. Controversieel en op zijn Amerikaans, maar haar punten zijn daarom niet minder waar. 3. Men moet kijken naar het grote plaatje. De oorlog in Irak IS tegen Al Qaeda en moslimextremisme in het algemeen. Strategisch ligt Irak goed, en het was een relatief makkelijke opwarming (de invasie, niet wat daarna kwam) voor wat mogelijk zal volgen. Nog voor de invasie van Irak werd gemeld dat de mobiele laboratoria zich verplaatsten naar... Syrië. Los van de vraag of dit werkelijk zo was, wijst zo'n bericht in de pers al meteen aan wat er na Irak zal komen. Ongetwijfeld speelt er meer mee dan enkel dit, Irak werd bewust gekozen omdat invasie van dat land meer dan één doel diende. 5. De man die Israël van de kaart wil vegen? Moet hij het echt letterlijk uitspellen vooraleer iemand het plaatje snapt? 6. Absoluut. 7. Bush hoeft Irak niet de baas te kunnen. Zolang ze daar onderling vechten, vechten ze hier niet - net als het geval Israël/Palestina. Ik geloof geen seconde dat Irak binnengevallen werd omdat Saddam zo'n wrede dictator was, hoewel men hetzelfde argument voor Iran ook wel naar voor zal brengen. Opnieuw, het grote plaatje en de lange termijn moet men in het oog houden, niet de opinie van de dag. Democratie in Irak is niet waarom de oorlog gevoerd werd en wordt, wat Bush of de pers ook zeggen, dat ziet elk zinnig mens. Olie is evenmin de reden, het blijft goedkoper om de olie gewoon te kopen dan om zulke troepenbewegingen en gevechten te financiëren. Iran wil de grootste en machtigste staat in de regio worden, en gebruikt daarvoor al wat het kan. Bush en zijn raadgevers zien dat niet zitten, en eerlijk gezegd ik ook niet - teminste niet met een religieuze gek aan het stuur. StratFor Analyse van 17 januari: Rhetoric and Reality: The View from Iran By George Friedman The Iraq war has turned into a duel between the United States and Iran. For the United States, the goal has been the creation of a generally pro-American coalition government in Baghdad -- representing Iraq's three major ethnic communities. For Iran, the goal has been the creation of either a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad or, alternatively, the division of Iraq into three regions, with Iran dominating the Shiite south. The United States has encountered serious problems in creating the coalition government. The Iranians have been primarily responsible for that. With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June, when it appeared that the Sunnis would enter the political process fully, the Iranians used their influence with various Iraqi Shiite factions to disrupt that process by launching attacks on Sunnis and generally destabilizing the situation. Certainly, Sunnis contributed to this, but for much of the past year, it has been the Shia, supported by Iran, that have been the primary destabilizing force. So long as the Iranians continue to follow this policy, the U.S. strategy cannot succeed. The difficulty of the American plan is that it requires the political participation of three main ethnic groups that are themselves politically fragmented. Virtually any substantial group can block the success of the strategy by undermining the political process. The Iranians, however, appear to be in a more powerful position than the Americans. So long as they continue to support Shiite groups within Iraq, they will be able to block the U.S. plan. Over time, the theory goes, the Americans will recognize the hopelessness of the undertaking and withdraw, leaving Iran to pick up the pieces. In the meantime, the Iranians will increasingly be able to dominate the Shiite community and consolidate their hold over southern Iraq. The game appears to go to Iran. Americans are extremely sensitive to the difficulties the United States faces in Iraq. Every nation-state has a defining characteristic, and that of the United States is manic-depression, cycling between insanely optimistic plans and total despair. This national characteristic tends to blind Americans to the situation on the other side of the hill. Certainly, the Bush administration vastly underestimated the difficulties of occupying Iraq -- that was the manic phase. But at this point, it could be argued that the administration again is not looking over the other side of the hill at the difficulties the Iranians might be having. And it is useful to consider the world from the Iranian point of view. The Foundation of Foreign Policy It is important to distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality of Iranian foreign policy. As a general principle, this should be done with all countries. As in business, rhetoric is used to shape perceptions and attempt to control the behavior of others. It does not necessarily reveal one's true intentions or, more important, one's capabilities. In the classic case of U.S. foreign policy, Franklin Roosevelt publicly insisted that the United States did not intend to get into World War II while U.S. and British officials were planning to do just that. On the other side of the equation, the United States, during the 1950s, kept asserting that its goal was to liberate Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union, when in fact it had no plans, capabilities or expectations of doing so. This does not mean the claims were made frivolously -- both Roosevelt and John Foster Dulles had good reasons for posturing as they did -- but it does mean that rhetoric is not a reliable indicator of actions. Thus, the purple prose of the Iranian leadership cannot be taken at face value. To get past the rhetoric, let's begin by considering Iran's objective geopolitical position. Historically, Iran has faced three enemies. Its oldest enemy was to the west: the Arab/Sunni threat, against which it has struggled for millennia. Russia, to the north, emerged as a threat in the late 19th century, occupying northern Iran during and after World War II. The third enemy has worn different faces but has been a recurring threat since the time of Alexander the Great: a distant power that has intruded into Persian affairs. This distant foreign power -- which has at times been embodied by both the British and the Americans -- has posed the greatest threat to Iran. And when the element of a distant power is combined with one of the other two traditional enemies, the result is a great global or regional power whose orbit or influence Iran cannot escape. To put that into real terms, Iran can manage, for example, the chaos called Afghanistan, but it cannot manage a global power that is active in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously. For the moment, Russia is contained. There is a buffer zone of states between Iran and Russia that, at present, prevents Russian probes. But what Iran fears is a united Iraq under the influence or control of a global power like the United States. In 1980, the long western border of Iran was attacked by Iraq, with only marginal support from other states, and the effect on Iran was devastating. Iran harbors a rational fear of attack from that direction, which -- if coupled with American power -- could threaten Iranian survival. Therefore, Iran sees the American plan to create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad as a direct threat to its national interests. Now, the Iranians supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003; they wanted to see their archenemy, former President Saddam Hussein, deposed. But they did not want to see him replaced by a pro-American regime. Rather, the Iranians wanted one of two outcomes: the creation of a pro-Iranian government dominated by Iraqi Shia (under Iran's control), or the fragmentation of Iraq. A fragmented Iraq would have two virtues. It would prove no danger to Iran, and Iran likely would control or heavily influence southern Iraq, thus projecting its power from there throughout the Persian Gulf. Viewed this way, Iran's behavior in Iraq is understandable. A stable Iraq under U.S. influence represents a direct threat to Iran, while a fragmented or pro-Iranian Iraq does not. Therefore, the Iranians will do whatever they can to undermine U.S. attempts to create a government in Baghdad. Tehran can use its influence to block a government, but it cannot -- on its own -- create a pro-Iranian one. Therefore, Iran's strategy is to play spoiler and wait for the United States to tire of the unending conflict. Once the Americans leave, the Iranians can pick up the chips on the table. Whether it takes 10 years or 30, the Iranians assume that, in the end, they will win. None of the Arab countries in the region has the power to withstand Iran, and the Turks are unlikely to get into the game. The Unknown Variables Logic would seem to favor the Iranians. But in the past, the Iranians have tried to be clever with great powers and, rather than trapping them, have wound up being trapped themselves. Sometimes they have simply missed other dimensions of the situation. For example, when the revolutionaries overthrew the Shah and created the Islamic Republic, the Iranians focused on the threat from the Americans, and another threat from the Soviets and their covert allies in Iran. But they took their eyes off Iraq -- and that miscalculation not only cost them huge casualties and a decade of economic decay, but broke the self-confidence of the Iranian regime. The Iranians also have miscalculated on the United States. When the Islamic Revolution occurred, the governing assumption -- not only in Iran but also in many parts of the world, including the United States -- was that the United States was a declining power. It had, after all, been defeated in Vietnam and was experiencing declining U.S. military power and severe economic problems. But the Iranians massively miscalculated with regard to the U.S. position: In the end, the United States surged and it was the Soviets who collapsed. The Iranians do not have a sterling record in managing great powers, and especially in predicting the behavior of the United States. In large and small ways, they have miscalculated on what the United States would do and how it would do it. Therefore, like the Americans, the Iranians are deeply divided. There are those who regard the United States as a bumbling fool, all set to fail in Iraq. There are others who remember equally confident forecasts about other American disasters, and who see the United States as ruthless, cunning and utterly dangerous. These sentiments, then, divide into two policy factions. On the one side, there are those who see Bush's surge strategy as an empty bluff. They point out that there is no surge, only a gradual buildup of troops, and that the number of troops being added is insignificant. They point to political divisions in Washington and argue that the time is ripe for Iran to go for it all. They want to force a civil war in Iraq, to at least dominate the southern region and take advantage of American weakness to project power in the Persian Gulf. The other side wonders whether the Americans are as weak as they appear, and also argues that exploiting a success in Iraq would be more dangerous and difficult than it appears. The United States has substantial forces in Iraq, and the response to Shiite uprisings along the western shore of the Persian Gulf would be difficult to predict. The response to any probe into Saudi Arabia certainly would be violent. We are not referring here to ideological factions, nor to radicals and moderates. Rather, these are two competing visions of the United States. One side wants to exploit American weakness; the other side argues that experience shows that American weakness can reverse itself unexpectedly and trap Iran in a difficult and painful position. It is not a debate about ends or internal dissatisfaction with the regime. Rather, it is a contest between audacity and caution. The Historical View Over time -- and this is not apparent from Iranian rhetoric -- caution has tended to prevail. Except during the 1980s, when they supported an aggressive Hezbollah, the Iranians have been quite measured in their international actions. Following the war with Iraq, they avoided overt moves -- and they even were circumspect after the fall of the Soviet Union, when opportunities presented themselves to Iran's north. After 9/11, the Iranians were careful not to provoke the United States: They offered landing rights for damaged U.S. aircraft and helped recruit Shiite tribes for the American effort against the Taliban. The rhetoric alternated between intense and vitriolic; the actions were more cautious. Even with the Iranian nuclear project, the rhetoric has been far more intense than the level of development seems to warrant. Rhetoric influences perceptions, and perceptions can drive responses. Therefore, the rhetoric should not be discounted as a driving factor in the geopolitical system. But the real debate in Iran is over what to do about Iraq. No one in Iran wants a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and blocking the emergence of such a government has a general consensus. But how far to go in trying to divide Iraq, creating a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and projecting power in the region is a matter of intense debate. In fact, cautious behavior combined with extreme rhetoric still appears to be the default position in Tehran, with more adventurous arguments struggling to gain acceptance. The United States, for its part, is divided between the desire to try one more turn at the table to win it all and the fear that it is becoming hopelessly trapped. Iran is divided between a belief that the time to strike is now and a fear that counting the United States out is always premature. This is an engine that can, in due course, drive negotiations. Iran might be "evil" and the United States might be "Satan," but at the end of the day, international affairs involving major powers are governed not by rhetoric but by national interest. The common ground between the United States and Iran is that neither is certain it can achieve its real strategic interests. The Americans doubt they can create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and Iran is not certain the United States is as weak as it appears to be. Fear and uncertainty are the foundations of international agreement, while hope and confidence fuel war. In the end, a fractured Iraq -- an entity incapable of harming Iran, but still providing an effective buffer between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula -- is emerging as the most viable available option. Distribution and Reprints This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds ruminate over events. Small minds talk about people. |
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#67 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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![]() Slappeling? Wie is hier de slappeling? Degene die de propagandatrukjes rond die oorlog doorziet en er niet aan mee doet, of diegene die als een kip zonder kop een idioot als Bush achterna loopt?
![]() Alsof het moedig is om vanuit een F-16 wat bommetjes te droppen op een woonwijk in Bagdad. |
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#68 |
Gouverneur
Geregistreerd: 19 januari 2007
Berichten: 1.114
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![]() Ik denk dat vooral het moment van belang is, als ze gebombardeerd worden vooraleer Iran een nuke kan maken, zal er niet veel risico zijn(Het Israël-Irak-Nucleair conflict heeft daar immers ook niet voor gezorgd), maar als ze wachten met bombarderen tot Iran een Nuke heeft(en dat hoeven ze niet wereldkundig te maken) zitten met de gebakken peren.
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#69 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 4 augustus 2006
Berichten: 3.460
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#70 | ||
Secretaris-Generaal VN
Geregistreerd: 20 september 2003
Locatie: Brussel
Berichten: 23.102
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Afrika stikt van de diamanten dus aan de natuurlijke rijkdommen kan het al niet liggen.
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#71 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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Verder heb je veel pretentie als het gaat over militaire zaken maar veel kennis heb je desondanks nog niet tentoon gespreidt. Hooguit een misplaatst superioriteitsgevoel. Om bedenkingen te hebben bij de politiek van Bush moet je ook geen Bushhater zijn. Je moet al abnormale neigingen vertonen om deze mislukkeling als president zelfs nog het voordeel van de twijfel te geven. Zelfs in zijn eigen partij krijgt hij hoe langer hoe minder steun. Laatst gewijzigd door groene flamingant : 21 januari 2007 om 12:59. |
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#72 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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![]() Dat waren er meer dan genoeg. Genoeg voor Bush om een hetze te starten tegen 'het oude Europa' en de verstandhouding met Frankrijk en Duitsland te laten zakken tot een dieptepunt.
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#73 |
Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN
Geregistreerd: 27 maart 2004
Berichten: 15.640
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![]() Dat Frankrijk en Duitsland onder het desastreuze leiderschap van Chirac en Schröder inderdaad alles gedaan hebben om de EU te verdelen en volkomen besluiteloos te maken is een feit. Herinner u de bijzonder arrogante en domme uitspraak van Chirac die liet weten dat de nieuwe Oost-Europese lidstaten moesten zwijgen als het over internationale politiek ging. Hoe sneller die man verdwijnt hoe beter.
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#74 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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Dat de VS of Israël het fundamentalistische regime met militaire middelen kan onthoofden is een gevaarlijke dwanggedachte. Net zoals Hezbollah in Libanon, zal het huidige regime er alleen maar van profiteren om zijn imago te versterken. |
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#75 | |
Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN
Geregistreerd: 27 maart 2004
Berichten: 15.640
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#76 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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![]() Sukkel. Heb ik gezegd dat Iran en Syrië zonder enige voorwaarde zouden meewerken? Natuurlijk niet. Natuurlijk zullen Iran en Syrië eisen dat hun steun aan het stabiliseren van Irak, gepaard gaat met een terugtrekking van de VS-troepen. Natuurlijk is dat niet wat Bush wil maar wil hij een totaal fiasco vermijden, is het zijn enig overblijvende kans.
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#77 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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Laatst gewijzigd door groene flamingant : 21 januari 2007 om 15:13. |
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#78 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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2. Iedereen die de moeite doet om de geschiedenis van het Midden-Oosten te bekijken gedurende de laatste honderd jaar, kan zien dat die laatste 100 jaar bol staat van Britse, Amerikaanse (en in mindere mate Franse) bemoeienissen. Het is niet toevallig dat juist de twee grootste agressors als eerste getroffen werden door terreuraanslagen in eigen land. 3. Je redenering is al een tegenstrijdigheid op zich: het zou een oorlog zijn tegen Al Qaeda maar je voert hem wel tegen Irak en Syrië, twee seculiere staten. Dat bewijst dat je redenering niet klopt. 5. Het enige land in het Midden-Oosten waarvan we met zekerheid weten dat het over massavernietigingswapens beschikt en voortdurend zijn buurlanden bedreigt is Israël. Ik heb geen sympathie van een man als Ahmadinejad maar de propaganda tegen zijn land is iets te doorzichtig om serieus te nemen. 6. Zoals je zelf toegeeft: het gaat niet om democratie en mensenrechten maar om de overheersing van het Midden-Oosten. 7. Je mag Ahmadinejad dan een religieuze gek noemen, de fundamentalisten in Iran zijn dan wél aan de macht gekomen door de Amerikaanse bemoeienissen in de Iraanse politiek. Het was immers de VS die destijds eigenhandig de eerste democratisch verkozen regering in Iran omver wierp. Laatst gewijzigd door groene flamingant : 21 januari 2007 om 15:12. |
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#79 | |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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#80 |
Banneling
Geregistreerd: 22 november 2004
Locatie: Vlaanderen
Berichten: 5.725
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![]() Alsof je een antisemiet moet zijn om de Israëlische politiek af te keuren. Alsof je een sympathisant van Ahmadinejad moet zijn om de oorlogsplannen tegen Iran af te keuren.
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