Category Archives: Iran

Hot Time, Summer in the City

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Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting burnt and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

The irony, my god the irony, so dense and thick it practically drops through the earths’ crust and heads straight for the core; that injured anti-administration protesters in the streets of Tehran are being encouraged to take shelter in various foreign embassies. And I daresay that ours would have been one of them, that is, if we still had a functioning embassy in the Iranian capital. And always assuming that our State Department would have grown a pair and decided to do the decent thing – always a bit of a stretch as far as Foggy Bottom is concerned, admittedly.

One gathers that it’s not that any of those who were running for office in the contested Iranian election were expected to be much of an improvement – just the best of a bad lot, and maybe someone just a little bit less worst. And one way and another the same-old-same-old ritual shouts of ‘death to America, death to the Jews’ and sadly, the funding of Islamic militants like Hezbollah would continue without much diminution, regardless of who among the mullahs was really in charge.

That being said, it’s hard to watch some of the video, and read some of the tweets, emails and blog-posts filtering out of Iran and not feel some sort of instinctive sympathy for the outrage of citizens, upon seeing an election being casually, openly stolen, and having their very understandable outrage and objections over this unfortunate turn of events being dismissed by a grubby little thug, essentially saying: “I won.” (The corollary being, “You’d better sit down and shut up about it, you unpatriotic and ignorant little gits – we know what is best for you!) And then, adding injury to insult, to be set upon – once again – by foreign bullies with clubs … well, as I said, the irony of it all. And not just that particular irony, but that word and image of this is filtering out through cellphones and twitter, through email and all the rest of the electronic volunteer citizen’s media … not with press releases and statements from the usual suspects, and press conferences where the usual anointed spokesperson stand up in front of the anointed and properly gilded media representatives (oops, I nearly said gelded… well, that’s what living in Texas will do to you, straight to the biological, domesticated-animal comparisons). The spontaneous, real-time, real-life video is heartbreaking; the evidence of what happens when citizens reach their limit and are pushed beyond it … yes, the bad little lizard part of my brain is wondering what would happen if the penalties for loudly protesting in the streets (or on the sidewalks of the city) involved out-of-town thugs with clubs and permission to beat the heck out of whomever they feel like beating up.

And what if it began to happen here?

Winds of War

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Interesting article in this morning’s OpinionJournal.com. It’s not all that different from points that our very own Sgt Mom has made, on occasion.

The article, written by Joshual Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is titled: Winds of War: Iran is making a mistake that may lead the Middle East into a broader conflict. It looks at recent actions by Iran and compares them to actions that have occurred at other points in history – actions that led to two world wars and other, “lesser” conflicts.

Several conflicts of various intensities are raging in the Middle East. But a bigger war, involving more states–Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps the United States and others–is growing more likely every day, beckoned by the sense that America and Israel are in retreat and that radical Islam is ascending.
Consider the pell-mell events of recent weeks.

(snip)
Two important inferences can be distilled from this list. One is that the Tehran regime takes its slogan, “death to America,” quite seriously, even if we do not. It is arming the Taliban, with which it was at sword’s point when the Taliban were in power. It seems to be supplying explosives not only to Shiite, but also Sunni terrorists in Iraq. It reportedly is sheltering high-level al Qaeda figures despite the Sunni-Shiite divide. All of these surprising actions are for the sake of bleeding the U.S. However hateful this behavior may be to us, it has a certain strategic logic: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

(snip)

A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak. Often democracies have fed such beliefs by their own flaccid behavior.

(snip)

Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out?

With the Bush administration’s policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to constrain the president’s freedom to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help extricate us from Iraq–all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of our imminent collapse. In the name of peace, they are hastening the advent of the next war.

Read the whole thing, and tell us what you think. Does Muravchik make sense, or is he all wet? In either case, where do we go from here?

Resist By All Means Available

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From our POW Code of Conduct

.I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

This code of conduct was created and adapted for all the American services in the wake of the Korean War, when American (and other nationalities) POWs were both brutally mistreated and exploited for propaganda purposes by their captors. While some service personnel may be a trifle foggy on the exact requirements of the Geneva Convention until the need for familiarity with those conventions floats up to the top of their personal to-do duty requirements, the POW code of conduct is branded on our consciousness. Well, that and the bitter knowledge that the last military opponent of ours who paid anything like strict attention to Geneva Convention requirements when applying them to captured American service personnel were the Germans in WWII.

So, we have quietly gotten our heads around a couple of facts, one of the most important being the brutal reality that Americans best not surrender. The odds of surviving long enough for the International Red Cross to make that all-important visit to verify your well-being are practically non-existent. Snuff videos made available through various pro-fundamentalist Islamic media throughout Middle East make it pretty damn clear that no surrender in the first place may be the most viable career option.

Even if a prisoner is lucky, and the market for death-porn is flooded, the odds of being used as a hostage, and paraded like a puppet in front of the video cameras are pretty much a given. Exactly how far one can or ought to go in resisting this kind of exploitation is a judgment call. Admiral James Stockdale, as the senior American POW in North Vietnam chose to mutilate himself rather than be paraded in public for propaganda purposes, and threatened suicide if the North Vietnamese continued to continue torturing other POWs.

Pvt. Patrick Miller, of the 507th Maintenance Company was taken prisoner during the dash into Iraq in 2003, (at the same time as Pvt. Jessica Lynch) and was one of the five surviving members of his unit paraded on Iraqi television. I remember seeing the clip of the five on the news, and thought that he was the only one of them who seemed to be defiant. He answered back with his name and rank, and looked like he was about to spit into the camera, even if he and the others were entirely at the mercy of Saddam Husseins goons. In the long run, ones response to the extreme of captivity and threatened (or actual torture) depends on training, and maturity. But sometimes it depends on strength of character, and maybe a large lashing of stubborn bloody-mindedness, which are harder to predict in advance and inculcate with training. But I digress. I have a point, and I am getting to it.

This week, its the fifteen British sailors and Marines, taken by Iranian goons, and paraded in front of cameras, while Tony Blair and the British media agonize over how to react, what should have been done, and what can be done to get them back without loosing any national self-respect, and their families try and maintain a stiff upper lip under the hot searchlight of media interest.

It pretty much looks like it was deliberate and well-planned, done expressly for the purposes of getting hostages to toy with, probably with an eye for a prisoner exchange, and building up their image internally. They announced their intentions to kidnap coalition personnel some weeks ago, but at this point in the war, American personnel are probably just too damn hard to catch unawares. So, go for the easily gathered harvest, and drag it out as long as possible. I am afraid that if it drags on for a long time, as long as the Teheran embassy hostage crisis that it will become as much of a political hot potato. I can see the Blair government in a cleft stick; having neither the means or the will to respond with gunboats, or the 21st century equivalent. Being that the war in Iraq is resoundingly unpopular (as near as I can judge from a distance) I wonder if there is any stomach for that kind of response anyway. And while the diplomatic alternative grinds slowly away, over weeks and months, and the hostages families fret and worry, and the national media pounds away, involvement in the coalition may become even less popular. Getting the hostages freed may come to seem to be such an overwhelmingly good thing that no one will care very much about the price paid for such an end.

I hope that there is a Stockdale, or a Miller among the captured British sailors and Marines. I hope that they are not being tormented, as Admiral Stockdale was, at the hands of the North Vietnamese and I hope that they are resisting as best they can, for the sake of their own self-respect as members of a proud military with a long tradition of defiance and resistance to captivity. I hope they will return knowing in their hearts that they held to the code, and to their comrades, and never in their hearts surrendered.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network)

Iran Hostage Crisis Redoux

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Not a good feeling about all this. Will the British let themselves be played for 444 days, like we were, after the Teheran embassy was overrun? Are we prepared for another long series of staged demonstrations and photo ops, fruitless diplomatic wrangling, a ceaseless media circus, yellow ribbons around the old oak tree, and an assortment of clueless do-gooders making their way to Teheran on their knees, and making sure their good side is to the camera? Five will get you ten, George Galloway already has his bag packed.

So, is this a calculated move from the highest levels in response to the alleged defection/kidnapping of a top Iranian military man a couple of a weeks ago, or just some ambitious and impulsive underling taking a chance and seeing how far he can go?

How far will the Iranians go? How far will the British go? Will Ahmedinajad still be admitted to the US on his way to address the UN? How many of the UN members will break out the old knee-pads and kneel down before him, metaphorically speaking.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets, please. I have a feeling it is going to get kinda interesting.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network… and corrected)

From Ignorance Into the Light

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I have been unable to stop thinking of Sgt. Moms recent post suggesting that the outrageous behavior we have seen from the many who are so aggrieved at any insult to the Muslim faith is based on some inner realization that they are losing power and relevance. I was particularly impressed with the link that addressed the issue of whether the Koran, in its present form, accurately depicts the original visions said to have been revealed to Muhammed. This is significant because the followers of Islam insist upon a very literal interpretation of their holy book an interpretation that would seem to defy the premise that it is a religion of peace and tolerance (a premise that is well supported both in recent and in distant history). The author suggests that the book in its present form is perhaps as accurate a reflection as one would see if the message was passed via 150 200 years of playing the game telephone. He points out that this does not render the religion irrelevant, rather, that it should be subject to a scholarly review of the type that changed our perception of Christian teachings after the dark ages. It seems to me that this is the key to preventing the final gasp of mankind due to the clash of civilizations currently being incited by Mahmoud Ahmednejad and his ilk. Such scholarly reviews seem to be moving forward, albeit in very quite way.

While in Washington D.C. on business last week, the hotel where I stayed (Capital Hilton – sucky Internet service but nice location) hosted a conference attended by editors of a number of major newspapers (L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, etc.). While unwinding at the bar Thursday evening, I met a number of these editors and we engaged in some lively discussion related to the print media vs. web logs. I deliberately steered the conversation toward the above point, asking them why this sort of perspective can only be found on-line. I pointed out that, given the importance of the issues surrounding this, it would be more helpful to bring it into the light than the continual hand wringing about the Arab Street response to the most recent slight or perceived slight. Although they were polite and at least made some effort to consider my point, the general response was unsurprising How could you, a blogger for Gods sake, deign to tell us how to do our business?. I did collect some business cards, and plan to follow up (and be a nuisance if need be). Dont be overly optimistic that the quality of coverage of these issues is likely to change though. I heard that the L.A. Times publisher was fired the very next day for his refusal to make staff cuts. Given the staffing choices that his successor must make, I would bet that theyll choose editors inclined to publish the lame progressive liberal crap that we have come to know and love over storoes that would offer insightful commentary that illuminates the issues of our time.

More Stolen Kisses at the Skylark

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Our TI, Sgt. Petres pre-liberty lecture as regards the possibly alien mores and amorous intentions of various foreign military members that we might encounter was all of a piece with other informative lectures, mostly tinged with a certain air of dark warning. The famous Dempsy-Dumpster story was featured prominently, presumably as a cautionary tale for those of use whose lusts were so uncontrollable and whose aesthetic senses were so un-fastidious as to pick exactly that venue for a tte--tte. The choice of venues for engaging in sexual congress were pretty slim, on Lackland AFBs training side, where total privacy was by practice and edict impossible. For that substantial portion of the world who has not gone through USAF basic training during the last four decades, the Dempsy-Dumpster story involved a male and female trainee who chose one of those enormous metal industrial trash containers for their particular brief encounter, only to be brutally interrupted in coitus by one of those enormous trash trucks, mechanically picking up the dumpster, and dumping all contents into the back of the truck. Hilarity ensued, along with least one broken limb, a considerable amount of embarrassment and a folk-tale for the ages. It might even have really happened, sometime in the early 1970ies, but I myself would have to see the contemporary incident report to believe it.

Anyway, we were forewarned, and presumably forearmed about the dangers posed to our virtue although I thought it was very amusing that we had the birth control lecture a couple of days before we had town liberty, by an NCO who frizbeed a diaphragm the entire length of the classroom, by way of catching our attention. Which she certainly did for some of us; that was the first time in my life I had actually seen any such thing. It was probably lost on others, though; one of our number included the wife of an E-6 who had four children. Others women were married, or had been married, or hoped to become married, and had practiced a bit but we didnt have much in the way of illusion about some of the foreign troops, after what happened to four of us, one drear December day.

It was at the point in our training when we were allowed in pairs and fours to go to various places on base by ourselves, on formally sanction errands after overcoming a certain amount of disorientation. Like: how the hell can you find your way back to a place when all you have ever seen of the way there, is the back of the neck of the girl in formation ahead of you? And what the hell do you do, when the four of you are marching along, two and two— as you have to, because your TI said so— when you are about to intersect with a full flight of fifty or so other trainees, with their TI and guidon and all the pomp and majesty of a flight of trainees marching on their way to somewhere or other? Why, of course, just has you have been told— stand at full attention, until they have marched by, and then you can go about your own business.

But this flight was a flight of Saudi tech school trainees, and I had the dubious honor of standing at rigid attention on the sidewalk, while an entire flight of them marched by, making every sort of vulgar comment, sotto voice out of the ranks; bird-whistles, crude suggestions, rude noises, low whistles the entire armory of disgusting guy behavior, all in one fell blast, on four female Air Force trainees, who were under orders to stand there at attention, without responding, in obedience to military protocol, as we were verbally treated like whores in a particularly disreputable neighborhood. Sgt Petre looked particularly black, when we reported this to her, afterwards. We were distraught, and particularly outraged that this would happen to us, on a military base, and when we were constrained from showing any kind of reaction. It was a thoroughly nasty experience, and during twenty subsequent years in the military, nothing quite equaled it for the feeling that it gave me of slugs crawling over my bare flesh. We all agreed that if we were ever out and about again, and spotted a Saudi flight, we would turn around and go a couple of blocks out of the way. No one wanted to repeat the experience, although Airman Duncan— tall, gawky, plain and outspoken— was haunted for the rest of her base liberties by a short, squat and silent Saudi student who magically appeared in any place were Duncan was, and spent the time watching her yearningly from across the room. We couldnt figure out how he always knew where she was. Efficient information pipeline among the male students, I suppose. I had developed my own admirer, but at least he could bring himself to make pleasant conversation.

On Christmas Day, we had liberty base liberty for all of that afternoon, but no better place to spend it than the bowling alley. The snack bar was open, and a half dozen or so of us were making the most of a couple of hours of freedom; free to drink soft drinks, to laugh with the usual constellation of male trainees. After a certain point, I noticed that one of the Iranian trainees had been drawn into the happy little group. We knew he was Iranian because his uniform was hung with a lot of ornament, and in two clashing shades of blue. Oddly enough, he reminded me of Kiet, my Vietnamese foster-brother; the same air of gentle diffidence, even shyness. He lingered on the edge of the group, not speaking very much at first, but eventually he began talking to me. His name turned out to be Nassir. He had a picture of the Shah in his wallet, and one of the Empress Farah, too. We pointed out Duncs admirer, watching her as per usual from across the room, and Nassir laughed and told us how the Iranian students looked down on the Saudis as uncouth and ignorant country bumpkins— hicks from the sticks, with no culture.

We met a couple of more times, after that, and spent some pleasant hours in the darker corners of the Skylark, holding hands and kissing shyly, while he paid me elaborately flowery compliments which amused me no end. I had never met a man in real life who could unreel yards and yards of it, like Elizabethan love poetry. I never took this gallent compliments seriously, being fairly level-headed about my own attractions; knowing that my own citizenship probably featured rather highly among them. No, I took his attentions not the least bit seriously, but I liked him and wished him well. He wrote to me a couple of times, after I departed for tech school and that real world outside from those stolen hours of base liberty. I fell in love with someone else, and went on to Japan, and about four years later the whirlwind of Khomeinis Islamic revolution swept away the Shahs government. Ive always hoped that Nassir was able to avoid being caught up in that, or the war with Iraq that followed; it would have been such a bad place for a gentle, courtly poet, who was so proud of being a Persian, and had a picture of the Shah in his wallet, and stole kisses from the girl I used to be, in the shadowy corners of the Skylark.

Nineteen, Thirty-Eight

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The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air

From The Fellowship of the Ring

There is a change in our world, and in the world of the blogosphere, that most sensitive of organisms, like a jellyfish that flinches at the slightest change in the water, the temperature or the flow of it, curling in upon itself, tensing in readiness against something harsh and horrible. I thought it was just me, for the last six months or so, feeling a jangling unease, thinking it was just me that found it hard to write, finding it all sad and wearying and depressing, finding it all too horrible, words and ideas not flowing easily, thoughts all incoherent, un-climbable mountains of trollage and spam piling up, of editorial issues and looking for a new job, of temp wage slavery at the Enormous Corporate Behemoth all of that, and thinking it was just me and my personal issues, not finding blogging to be fun any more, just another grim job to be dealt with, until I read this, and thought with no little relief; Oh, it just isnt me, after all.

I have really enjoyed blogging over the last four years— it is a lifeline and outlet, a useful purpose and a voice, my connection to others of like mind and if not of like, at least of interesting and stimulating minds. And sometimes I am touched by fire, and write something interesting and cogent and relevant, and someone on the other side of the world or in the next city reads it, and is touched by the fire also, and lets me know about how I have made it possible to understand something, or feel something, or be able to see an event with someone elses eyes. Blogging here is an opportunity to educate about the many-splendored weirdness of the military world and I would hate to think I was at the point of giving it up, after the fun of the coaster-ride over the last four years and since it only this last week the NY Times, the magisterial paper of record, had to publish a correction about muddling a Purple Heart and a Gold Star in a story about the funeral of a serving military member, it would seem that there is still a heck of a lot of educating to do. (Sheesh! Three years of war, and theyre as bone ignorant today as they were then, another reason to be slightly depressed ok, breath deeply, and repeat the mantra. It is not my job to reform the NY Times, it is not my job to reform the NY Times, it is not my job to reform the NY Times better be someones job soon, otherwise they will just be a local fish-wrap with an amusingly elevated sense of its own importance, and about thirty readers, who all live in expensive condos in a very small part of town. See the LA Times, which used to be a fine and respected newspaper.)

I can suppose this is only cosmic payback for a lifetime spent entranced in history, of the times before of the times before things changed, of the times just out of reach of my own memory, the times of my grandparents and my parents formative years, of the worlds that they remembered, but which irretrievably slipped away. Grandpa Jim, Grandpa Al, Grannie Jessie and Grannie Dodie all were born into a world of horse-drawn conveyances, of gaslights and steamships, where the monarchies of Russia and Austria and Germany were seemingly set-in-stone eternal, and the sun never set on the British Empire and then, hey presto by the time they were all teenagers or in their early twenties, three of those verities were gone and the fourth moved into twilight. But my grandparents moved on, did their jobs and made their homes, raised their families into that new world, and then there was that other seismic shift, the next war that shattered and reformed their established world, the one that I most particularly studied, almost to the extent of sometimes thinking I was re-living it.

In a curious way, I think that it is 1938 again, the very last year that it was possible for the well-meaning and well-intentioned to believe with a whole heart that total war was not inevitable, the year of the annexation of Austria, of Neville Chamberlains attempt to buy peace—followed promptly by the German annexation of the Sudetenland, and the Night of Broken Glass— the year that it became obvious to more than just the extremely far-sighted that no peaceful and well-meant actions on the part of the British and French administrations could swerve Hitler from his appointed path, that there was nothing to be expected from the League of Nations, that however much they wished otherwise, bad stuff would be happening. It might be soon, it might be later, but it would be happening, however much one wished and prayed for, otherwise war would come. And there was nothing to be done that would stop it happening

Events and portents appear, flashing like lightning in one of our summer Texas thunderstorms, finally occurring so frequently that the sky is continuously lit with an eerie blue-white lightriots in Paris and in Australia, murders of Thai teachers, the Affair of the Danish Cartoons. The abject truckling in to threats and violence by western main-stream media, and now threats by Irans president to destroy Israel, twinned with Irans nuclear ambitions and such threats reported not in fringy little foreign-affairs journals and blogs, but over and over again, on the front pages and in the headlines. Are they credible threats? Whose lives do we bet that they are not?

I wonder now, if some of the contemporary venom, and malice directed towards FDR, and to a lesser extent, Churchill— both of whom quite clear-eyed about the menace that Hitler posed from a fairly early date— might be a sort of displacement of their fears. There are terrible, lurking dangers, awful people that you can, in the long run, essentially do nothing about— more comfortable to be able to displace your fear and anger, aim it all towards someone that you can do something about, not some fanatic in a cave, or in Berlin, far, far away. Best to focus all your fears and apprehensions, and aim that at the closer and more comprehensible target, and comfort yourself that you have done what you could, that you are blameless and above reproach, sincere in not wanting any of that nasty war and violence. If it falls on someone else, then it must be all their fault then, it was something they did, or didnt do, that caused war to be interested in them and their children, their houses and cities, and tall shining buildings on a lovely September morning.

What could our grandparents and great-grandparents do, in 1938, but wait for the inevitable to fall, knowing that all their safe and peaceful world would not be eternal and everlasting, but would be finite, and of short duration; that there would soon be an end to all the lovely, predictable joys of a settled existence. What better encouragement to enjoy them with bitter-sweet gusto, knowing that the ship was definitively and slowly sinking, that the ordinary pleasures of life would be at an end?

I am going to finish the touch-ups to the house this weekend, painstakingly climbing up and down a tall ladder borrowed from a neighbor, who most definitely will be wanting it back soon, since I have had it since early this month, carrying a small brush and a paint-can, my pockets filled with nails and tools. I have a notion to pave the center part of the back yard with concrete pavers of my own creation, set with black river pebbles set on end, to make flowers and geometric patterns, like the stairs and terraces I saw in Spain and have never seen again. I want to set a small fountain in the middle of it, to hear the sound of running water in the afternoons of these brutally hot summer days, which is work that will take months to accomplish and about the same to pay for. And all the time I am doing it, I will have the radio on. And all these days to come, Ill know that someday, some time, Ill hear a news bulletin about a mushroom cloud someplace in the Middle East, or Europe, or maybe over an American city and that these days of peace will be ended for once and all.

Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened. ”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
From “The Fellowship of the Ring”

Memo: Your Recent Kind Letter

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To: His Whateverness Ahmedinajad, President of Iran
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Your recent kind letter*

1. How nice to know that we are all on haranguing terms, just now. And this makes a change from the last quarter-century. how?

2. We are given to understand from the better sort of middle-eastern newspaper that your co-religionists have been importuning the Presidente-for-Life Fidel Castro of Cuba to convert to Islam. We personally are skeptical, wondering how on earth anyone in the same room with the Dear Leader (Western Hemisphere Version) could get in a word edgeways with a wedge and hammer. But frankly, some of these middle eastern media sources are about on par with the sort of tabloids who run stories about mutant alien babies, and reappearances of the Titanic and Elvis. Oh, dear, a fair number of our very own dear media sources have achieved that same degree of credibility. My bad, and on to my next point. (Although this may validate Blairs Law, which states that all sorts of extremism eventually go around the bend from different directionsand finally merge in one huge pulsating ball of idiocy.)

3. Your very scholarly * and fascinating* correspondence concluded with a rather disquieting salutation disquieting, to those with an inclination to history. According to this source, it translates as Peace only unto those who follow the true path. which however way you slice it, sounds well, a bit threatening. Rather like the comment of a certain sort of local insurance* agent, who says Nice little place you have here, be a shame if something bad happened to it.

4. Your diplomatic* attempt at direct communication are noted, however, and I would have but one well, several prerequisites before a diplomatic* reply can be tendered, the first of which is to return the American Embassy in Teheran to American custody, scrubbed of various abusive graffiti, cleaned and comprehensively refurbished, and every scrap of US government property taken from those premises, either returned, or a like replacement. I would also demand an official delegation from your government to go around to each of the American citizens and employees taken hostage in 1979, and apologize personally to each of them, (those still living, or their next of kin) and to offer a suitable recompense of their choosing.

5. Until then, my Dear President Ahmedinajad, I have only three words in reply to your missive.

6. Rat-hole.
7. Sand
8. Pound.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

* Do I have to add this— those are “viciously skeptical “quote-marks… and a small but vital correction added at 3:05 after a comment

Iran Tests Stealth Missile

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This from AP:

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran successfully test-fired a missile that can avoid radar and hit several targets simultaneously using multiple warheads, the military said Friday.

Gen. Hossein Salami, the air force chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, did not specify the missile’s range, saying it depends on the weight of its warheads.

As I said before, the time to strike is now.

Update: (4:03PM PDT) This just in from Monsters and Critics:

Tehran – Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Sunday that an underwater missile was successfully tested during a naval manoeuvre in the Persian Gulf, state news agency IRNA reported.

Deputy commander of the navy forces of the IRGC, General Ali Fadavi, said the missile could hit a target with a maximum speed of 100 metres per second.

No further details were disclosed.

The Russians already have this. I’ve been following this technology for a while. I’ll post more about it, and our countermeasures development, later.

Update 2: (9:10AM PDT 04/04/06) The Russian torpedo (which the Iranians most likely bought, rather than develop their own), is called the Shkval-E. They’ve been hocking these things since 2000. They have been in development since the late ’60s.

There are no (unclassified) countermeasures for this weapon. But I would think that, could we get a fix on one, a Phalanx gun might have some limited effectiveness against it, as it is made to also engage surface-skimming airborne missiles.

However, the Shkval has a rather short 7.5km range, and it would be difficult for an aggressor host vessel to get inside a CVBG’s defense perimeter. While considered very quiet, the Iranian’s five1 Russian-built Kilo class diesel/electric subs are considered easy prey for the US’s Los Angeles or Seawolf classes – to say nothing of the Virginia.

Even so, during the Falklands War, the Argentine San Luis, a German Type 209/1200 submarine, managed to elude 15 British frigates, as well as the antisubmarine forces of two small carriers. The San Luis maneuvered into torpedo range of the British fleet, and launched three torpedoes, although all three shots were unsuccessful. And, if Saddam Hussein had bought six modern diesel/electric subs, prior to invading Kuwait, “and positioned three of them on either side of the Strait of Hormuz, that would have complicated matters,” according to U.S. Vice Admiral James Williams. “One diesel sub can make a great difference to how you drive your ships.” But note that, even if only running it’s motors for station-keeping, a diesel/electric sub can’t remain below snorkel depth for very long.

Incidentally, our own counterpart to the Shkval, being developed through the Office of Naval Research, is called the High-Speed (Supercavitating) Undersea Weapon.

You all know about cavitation; it is the same process by which bubbles develop along the inner skin of a pot, just before it’s about to boil, and the froth which emerges in a ship’s propeller trail, despite the fact it’s totally underwater.

Notes:
1) The most Iranian subs I can confirm currently are three Kilo class, Project 877EKM, purchased between 1992-97. This can be verified from The Illustrated Directory of Submarines of the World (2002) by David E. Miller (ISBN 1-84065-375-2). However, I have later, unconfirmed reports of one or two more subs (likely Kilo class, and perhaps of the quieter “Project 636“). The authoritative civilian reference here would, of course, be Jane’s. But it’s a subscription thing, and my local library can reference only as recently as 2003. Any help out there?

More Shadow Boxing At The UN

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Well, Iran got a good finger-wagging from the UNSC yesterday:

NEW YORK — The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution yesterday giving Iran 30 days to suspend its uranium-enrichment program, but gave no hint of punishment if Tehran fails to comply.

After succeeding in having Iran’s nuclear program put before the Security Council, the United States and its European allies spent three weeks negotiating a watered-down resolution to meet the demands of Russia and China that it contain no justification for sanctions or use of force.

While yesterday’s resolution is toothless, all 15 members of the Security Council clearly rejected Iran’s assertion that it has the right to enrich uranium without interference from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said it is now up to the Iranian government to demonstrate that it will abide by the requirements of the IAEA, which must report back to the Security Council in 30 days.

This is absurd! Does anyone think that playing these games improves the US’ stature in the world? Would Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt put up with this shit?

We did the same gawd-damn thing with Iraq. France and Russia objected then, just as Russia and China are objecting now: for purely short-sighted commercial reasons. (And they say America is only interested in the next quarter’s P&L statement.) This sort of mind-set amongst the permanent members makes the UNSC patently dysfunctional.

But yet, we play the damn game. And, just as Saddam got all his WMD staged for a quick exodus to Syria when he knew the UN negotiations were in their terminal phase, Iran will enrich all the uranium they can, until they know the Rubicon has been crossed, and then they will pack everything for shipment to Syria, Africa, or one of the ex-Soviet ‘stans – and perhaps provide any product they have to al-Qaeda.

We may not have the capability to stage another invasion. (I think we do, but it would first require pulling out of places we have little or no business being in any more – like Okinawa, South Korea, Germany and England.) But we still have a quite formidable military option. We should strike now, and strike hard. As Ann Coulter recommends, not just at their nuclear installations, but their entire industrial capacity. And at the same time, we should be prepared to funnel massive assistance to any nascent contra organizations.

And forget “nation building”. That was kind of essential with Iraq, as leaving a power vacuum would have been irresistible to Syria or Iran. But we won’t have that problem with Iran; who’s going to invade: Russia? Pakistan? Georgia?

The 800 lb. gorilla is, of course, the disruption in the world’s oil supply. But, if that proves to be truly prohibitive, the oil fields are distributed over only a small portion of the nation – mostly along the Persian Gulf, and to a lesser extent, the Caspian Basin – we can easily effect a limited occupation over these regions.

Of course, the moonbats will go on the march. “No blood for oil,” they will cry out. It’s about time we stop shadow dancing with them as well. When not enough oil on the world market means hospitals in the third world go dark, and innocent children die, HELL YES, that oil is worth a little blood.