Thousands of US troops deploying to Israel

[slim 1,530]

Oh, I read the middle, too. I laughed so hard it hurt.

Typical media fluff. They don't want people to know that the Royal Navy probably doesn't have anything else it can send.

And the part about the tech on board HMS Daring? Do a web search and find out how scarily unready she was when she was commissioned. I just hope, as as I mentioned in my earlier post, that it all works now, because it sure as hell didn't when she entered service - especially the much-vaunted Sea Viper anti-air system.

This is nothing more than a routine deployment replacement for the Royal Navy's Gulf patrol.

Don't worry. The US has a navy and it'll be there.

We have enough air fields near Iran that we don't even have to rely on carriers in order to bomb them back to the stone age. We get NATO to chip in and we bomb them for two months straight...we leve military bases, and any nuke plants they have in the works. That should send them a message.

Exactly what might happen. Seems all the politicians want it. One of the major questions at all the debates was "will you support Israel" and "Will you bomb Iran back to the stone age."

It's coming. That is, unless RP gets elected. Then our troops are coming home.

Bring all U.S. troops home now.

If RP is elected, this could happen.

Blah blah blabbity blah.

How about you name one country in the Middle East (other than Israel) where homosexuality is not illegal, where openly gay soldiers can serve in all branches of the military (including special units), where openly gay politicians can run for office and newspapers have openly gay editors and writers.

Jordan and Iraq are the only two countries in the Middle East where homosexuality is not illegal, but they don't provide any legal (anti-discrimination) protection to homosexuals.

What about places where gays have "extra" protections? Places where some people are more important than others? Is that the ultimate goal of society? Where "some people" are better than others?

LGBT rights are a pretty good gauge of democracy (and tolerant society).

Says who?

[^_^ 5,021]

Says who?

the gay mafia, who else?

<ominous music>

[Sofiyya 1,687]

LGBT rights are a pretty good gauge of democracy (and tolerant society).

Then, using your logic, the USA is a poor gauge of democracy.

[mawilson 2,133]

Then, using your logic, the USA is a poor gauge of democracy.

Yep - some countries are ahead of the US. No question about it.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The Israel only does wrong crowd can be pretty obtuse as well...

When they show up here, you can speak to them about that.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Yep - some countries are ahead of the US. No question about it.

So, when you want to do guys, you know that Israel is the place to be. I don't have that issue; I'd just like to be equal to the most equal straight Jewish Israelis, because not all Jewish Israelis are equal under Israel's "democracy" either.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

the gay mafia, who else?

<ominous music>

Going by the +1's, there's at least 5 in the rank of Made Brown-Noser here

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

I just hope no civilians are harmed this time. Last time this happened the US shot down an airliner.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

LGBT rights are a pretty good gauge of democracy (and tolerant society).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNV6QkRtj3A

[tmma 467]

This is just a routine deployment rotation ........

Sure it is.

*rollseyes*

There's nothing much ' routine' about it at all.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Send in the drones.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Send in the drones.

Why not? The clowns are already there.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Why not? The clowns are already there.

So are the terrorists (In charge of Palestine)

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

So are the terrorists (In charge of Palestine)

Funny you should mention that.....

How Hamas steals a war

There seems to be no limit to the villainy of the Palestinian resistance movement. This week, they did something quite unforgivable. They stole a war. For some weeks now, our almost new Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has been announcing at every possible opportunity that a new war against the Gaza Strip is inevitable. Several commanders of the troops around the Strip have been repeating this dire forecast, as have their camp-followers, a.k.a. military commentators.

One of these comforted us. True, Hamas can now hit Tel Aviv with their rockets, but that will not be so terrible, because it will be a short war. Just three or four days. As one of the generals said, it will be much more “hard and painful” (for the Arabs) than Cast Lead I, so it will not last for three weeks, as that did. We shall all stay in our shelters — those of us who have shelters, anyway — for just a few days.

Why is the war inevitable? Because of the terrorism, stupid. Hamas is a terrorist organization, isn’t it?

But along comes the supreme Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, and declares that Hamas has given up all violent action. From now on it will concentrate on nonviolent mass demonstrations, in the spirit of the Arab Spring.

When Hamas forswears terrorism, there is no pretext for an attack on Gaza.

But is a pretext needed? Our army will not let itself be thwarted by the likes of Mashaal. When the army wants a war, it will have a war. This was proved in 1982, when Ariel Sharon attacked Lebanon, despite the fact that the Lebanese border had been absolutely quiet for 11 months. (After the war, the myth was born that it was preceded by daily shooting. Today, almost every Israeli can “remember” the shooting — an astonishing example of the power of suggestion.

Why does the chief of staff want to attack?

A cynic might say that every new chief of staff needs a war to call his own. But we are not cynics, are we?

Every few days, a solitary rocket is launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. It rarely hits anything but an empty field. For months, now, no one has been hurt.

The usual sequence is like this: Our air force carries out a “targeted liquidation” of Palestinian militants in the strip. The army claims invariably that these specific “terrorists” had intended to attack Israelis. How did the army know of their intentions? Well, our army is a master thought reader.

After the persons have been killed, their organization considers it its duty to avenge their blood by launching a rocket or a mortar shell, or even two or three. This “cannot be tolerated” by the army, and so it goes on.

After every such episode, the talk about a war starts again. As American politicians put it in their speeches at AIPAC conferences: “No country can tolerate its citizens being exposed to rockets!”

But of course, the reasons for Cast Lead II are more serious. Hamas is being accepted by the international community. Their Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is now traveling around the Arab and Muslim world, after being shut in Gaza — a kind of Strip-arrest — for four years. Now he can cross into Egypt because the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organization, has become a major player there.

Even worse, Hamas is about to join the PLO and take part in the Palestinian government. High time to do something about it. Attack Gaza, for example. Compel Hamas to become extremist again.

Not content with stealing our war, Mashal is carrying out a series of more sinister actions.

By joining the PLO, he is committing Hamas to the Oslo agreements and all the other official deals between Israel and the PLO. He has announced that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. He has let it be known that Hamas would not contest the Palestinian presidency this year, so that the Fatah candidate — whoever that may be — would be elected practically unopposed and be able to negotiate with Israel.

All this would put the present Israeli government in a difficult position. Mashaal has some experience in causing trouble for Israel. In 1997, the (first) Netanyahu government decided to get rid of him in Amman. A team of Mossad agents was sent to assassinate him in the street by spraying his ear with an untraceable poison. But instead of doing the decent thing and dying quietly from a mysterious cause, like Yasser Arafat, he let his bodyguard chase the attackers and catch them.

King Hussein, Israel’s longstanding friend and ally, was hopping mad. He presented Netanyahu with a choice: Either the agents would be tried in Jordan and possibly hanged, or the Mossad would immediately send the secret antidote to save Mashaal. Netanyahu capitulated, and here we have Mashaal, very much alive and kicking.

Another curious outcome of this misadventure: The king demanded that the Hamas founder and leader, the paralyzed Sheik Ahmad Yassin, be released from Israeli prison. Netanyahu obliged, Yassin was released and assassinated by Israel seven years later. When his successor, Abd Al-Aziz Rantissi, was assassinated soon after, the path was cleared for Mashaal to become the Hamas chief.

And instead of showing his gratitude, he now confronts us with a dire challenge: Nonviolent action, indirect peace overtures, the two-state solution.

A question: Why does our chief of staff long for a little war in Gaza, when he could have all the war he desires in Iran? Not just a little operation, but a big war, a very very big war.

Well, he knows that he cannot have it.

Some time ago I did something no experienced commentator ever does. I promised that there would be no Israeli military attack on Iran. (Nor, for that matter, an American one.)

An experienced journalist or politician never makes such a prediction without leaving a loophole for himself. He puts in an inconspicuous “unless.” If his forecast goes awry, he points to that loophole.

I do have some experience — some 60 or so years of it — but I did not leave any loophole. I said No War, and now Gen. Gantz says the same in so many words. No Tehran, just poor little Gaza.

Why? Because of that one word: Hormuz.

Not the narrow strait that is the entrance and exit of the Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil (and 35 percent of the sea-borne oil) flows. My contention was that no sane (or even mildly insane) leader would risk the closing of the strait, because the economic consequences would be catastrophic, even apocalyptic.

It seems that the leaders of Iran were not sure that all the world’s leaders read this column, so, just in case, they spelled it out themselves. This week they conducted conspicuous military maneuvers around the Strait of Hormuz, accompanied by the unequivocal threat to close it.

The U.S. responded with vainglorious counter threats. The invincible U.S. Navy was ready to open the strait by force, if needed.

How, pray? The mightiest multibillion aircraft carrier can be easily sunk by a battery of cheap land-to-sea missiles, as well as by small missile-boats. Let’s assume Iran starts to act out its threats. The whole might of the U.S. Air Force and Navy is brought to bear. Iranian ships will be sunk, missile and army installations bombed. Still the Iranian missiles will come in, making passage through the strait impossible.

What next? There will be no alternative to “boots on the ground”. The U.S. Army will have to land on the shore and occupy all the territory from which missiles can be effectively launched. That would be a major operation. Fierce Iranian resistance must be expected, judging from the experience of the eight-year Iraqi-Iranian war. The oil wells in neighboring Gulf states will also be hit.

Such a war would go far beyond the dimensions of the American invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps even of Vietnam.

Is the bankrupt U.S. up to it? Economically, politically and in terms of morale? The closing of the strait is the ultimate weapon. I don’t believe that the Iranians will use it against the imposition of sanctions, severe as they may be, as they have threatened. Only a military attack would warrant such a response.

If Israel attacks alone — “the most stupid idea I ever heard of,” as our former Mossad chief put it — that will make no difference. Iran will consider it an American action, and close the strait. That’s why the Obama administration put its foot down, and hand-delivered to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak an unequivocal order to abstain from any military action.

That’s where we are now. No war in Iran. Just the prospect of a war in Gaza. And along comes this evil Mashaal and tries to spoil the chances of that, too.

(The writer is an Israeli author and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. This article appeared in Arab News on Jan. 8, 2011)

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/09/187242.html

Edited January 9, 2012 by ☼

[luckytxn 2,265]

Funny you should mention that.....

Interesting article.