In Hahvahd Yahd
I thought they’re supposed to be smaht at Hahvahd. Wicked smaht. So how come Graham Allison thinks neogiating with the Iranians is in anyway a viable course of action? He also doesn’t appear to get what is going on over there.
However the war in Iraq ends, it is clear who the biggest winner will be: Iran.
Wrong.
While certainly not its desire or design, the objective consequence of the US military campaign that toppled the Taliban was to eliminate Iran’s major threat from the East: the result of America’s toppling Saddam to eliminate Iran’s major threat from the West. Since these developments occurred as byproducts of other ambitions, and without consultation with Iran, they have failed to engender gratitude or extract compensation. Nonetheless, Iran has emerged as the dominant state in the region with a sense that history is on its side.
Still wrong.
If Iran is to be prevented from building nuclear bombs without war, the US must now explore negotiating options that are unpalatable but nonetheless better than the options a President will face at the end of the road he is now on.
Wrong again!
A tour de force in thoughtful, yet vapid handwringing, in which Allison also lights a candle to the sainted JFK with an utterly irrelevant comparison to an entirely unrelated set of circumstances.*
I don’t know what HuffPo paid for this piece, but Ariana should demand her money back. This thing is full of holes. It doesn’t work.
Allison fails to notice that we, the United States, did not simply remove two threats on Iran’s flanks … the Taliban and Saddam Hussein … we replaced them with a greater threat. Us. That’s why Iran is trying so hard to undermine us in both places. Iran is not the dominant power in the region. We are. But we won’t be for long if we follow his advice.
Allison also fails to recognize that we are in fact already at war with the Iranians, and if we wish to influence Iran’s behavior in any of the arenas in which we face them … Iraq, Afghanistan and the nuclear unpleasantness … we must first kill their agents and destroy their proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and significantly set back their nuclear program. To the Stone Age. As it were. My good man.
And I thought they were supposed to be smaht at Hahvahd. This guy probably doesn’t know how to pahk his own cah.
* The Russians were actually afraid of us and had no reason to think we’d back down. Unlike the Iranians. Also the desired result was limited and easily verified. It was a different time.
Here’s another Harvard brainiac who thinks the Russians will respond to sweet talking.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:38 pm Comments (5) on Saturday, January 27, 2007
5 Responses to “In Hahvahd Yahd”
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January 28th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Just what parallel universe do these people live in? Wherever it is, there is no proxy war going on between Shi’ites and Sunnis, and everybody was flying kites before we stuck our nose in.
The world seems full of very highly schooled idiots.
Do you think a couple of nuclear blasts on American soil will clean the cobwebs from between their collective ears?
January 28th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Bill’s Nibbles
I’ve been staying pretty busy getting my new toy up and running, as well as waiting for some site management issues to be resolved, and haven’t mentioned some things I possibly should have here. Let’s try an experiment and see
January 28th, 2007 at 12:44 am
In Hahvahd Yahd
In Hahvahd YahdJules Crittenden I thought they’re supposed to be smaht at Hahvahd. Wicked smaht. So how come Graham Allison thinks negotiating with the Iranians is in anyway a viable course of action? He also doesn’t appear to get what
January 28th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Oh by all means, let’s keep talking with the bad guys. And talking and talking. It’s worked so well for us in the past.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
RebeccaH-lib are all about talking, it saves them having to actually do anything.