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Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

That is disasterous. That logic is why Chaimberlain allowed Hitler to get more and more and more power. ("Surely they'll agree to peace if we just let them have Poland.")

It is also why my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US.

That war will potentially kill millions. And whose fault will it be? Obama's and Bush's. They will (if history is just and we don't change course) go down in history as potentially making mistakes that killed millions, just as Stalin and Hitler did.

Or we could insist now (or, ideally, a few years ago) that Iran not develop nuclear weapons capability, if necessary fighting a minor tactical war to stop them.

(There is NO reason to have Vietnam IV, where Afghanistan and Iraq are Vietnam II and III. Except of course socialism for defense contractors and altruism as we throw away trillions "re-building" the latter two countries.)

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The reality is that Britain wasn't ready. Chamberlain bought us the time needed to power up to fight the Battle of Britain in 1940. Which we won. 2 years later, having profited from selling weapons to both sides, America sees which way the wind is blowing and decides to join the winning team.

PS You forgot Clinton bombing pharmaceutical plants in Sudan, then taking his eye off the ball to play his sax, schmooze with Hollywood and chase skirts, while the wheels of 9/11 were set inexorably in motion.

Your contortions, while amusing, rewrite history in order to maintain your unhealthy obsession with America's alleged wickedness. Sure, Europe won the war and the US tagged along. Right. Whatever you need to believe to try to hold your precious worldview together, reality be damned.

The reality is probably that neither the US nor Russia could have defeated Germany alone. The GP is wrong that the US joined the "winning side" though - they joined the losing side, because a Europe united under one hostile power would be a fundamental security threat to the US.

They could have. If they have started early. Longer they waited, harder it got to achieve.

Battle of Britain was won because the Canadian air force shot down huge numbers of Messerschmitts, and because a German pilot screwed up and bombed London against orders not to do so, instead of focusing on air strips and bases. Result was Allies bombed German cities in retaliation and Hitler ordered London destroyed which took the focus off disabling the Royal AF, and allowed Britain to regain air superiority and stop the attack. Anyways this has nothing to do with RSA taking a bribe to sell feeble crypto products

Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement which allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia at the end of September 1938.

World War 2 started when Germany decided to invade Poland in late 1939. Germany was never given Poland.

You get even the most basic history wrong and then proceed to say that Bush and Obama are historically equivalent to Stalin and Hitler?

Never let facts get in the way of a good dogma.

> World War 2 started when Germany decided to invade Poland in late 1939.

Germany and the Soviet Union. Sure, the Soviets attacked after the Germans, but they split Poland between them before the invasion.

Not just Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

> That is disasterous.

You should have hedged with "can be" instead of "is." Fighting preemtive wars can be disastrous too.

> my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US

Do you seriously believe that? Sure, Iran will get to throw their weight around a bit more with nuclear power, but they're not that desperate or stupid.

> Obama and Bush ... will go down in history ... just as Stalin and Hitler did

No.

> a minor tactical war [would] stop [Iran from developing nuclear weapons]

Maybe. You complain about "throwing away trillions" fighting silly wars and re-building countries. You do realize that the exact same sell (fight a minor war, stop the terrorists!) was used for the last two multi-trillion-dollar debacles, right?

Either we give them a bloody nose and they just try again (keeping their cards closer to their chest this time) or we spend trillions trying to install another puppet government.

It is also why my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US.

No, we won't. There is simply no geopolitical logic to Iran and Israel going to war.

Umm, Iran is run by a council of religious fanatics. There is no logic to Iran.

That may be (although it amounts to a gross oversimplification), but it's still a functional government and a self-interested bureaucracy. Daily life goes on in Iran much as anywhere else. Council of religious fanatics notwithstanding, and its occasional grandiloquent pronouncements also notwithstanding, Iran's government is mostly full of administrators and workers that implement things like water treatment, motor vehicle registration, low-income housing, zoning, meat inspection, and energy. There is most definitely logic to Iran, much as to any other actually-existing government.

There's even logic to its foreign relations, underneath the ideological veneer. Imagine if someone thought US policy actually worked literally as presidential speeches suggest; you'd think they're an ignorant tool. "Everyone knows that speeches are just speeches," you'd say, with no connection to the actual practice of governance. It may surprise you to learn that it's like that in any state, including Iran.

Disclaimer: US citizen living in Armenia, NW of Iran. None of the very numerous Iranians here leave one with the impression that they are from a place with "no logic". Turn off Fox News.

> Imagine if someone thought US policy actually worked literally as presidential speeches suggest; you'd think they're an ignorant tool. "Everyone knows that speeches are just speeches," you'd say, with no connection to the actual practice of governance.

I don't agree with this at all. For instance, Obama has done what he promised: More big government programs and spending, nationalized healthcare. People knew what they were getting with Obama when he ran for President. There are a lot of problems with America but I can't stand it when people attack it for reasons that it actually doesn't deserve.

> None of the very numerous Iranians here leave one with the impression that they are from a place with "no logic".

I was referring to the government, which was pretty explicit. Fundamentally, there is a tradeoff between religiosity and logic in any religious government. The two are opposites. We cannot assume that Iran will never instigate a war for religious reasons, or that no rogue element of its government will ever share its weapons with outside religious groups.

> Turn off Fox News.

We can discuss the issues, but you cannot dismiss me by trying to claim I'm ignorant. I actually don't even watch Fox News, but I disagree with maligning Americans who do.

1. Obama most certainly did not implement "nationalised" healthcare. Nationalised healthcare refers to a state-owned and operated healthcare sector. In any case, whatever it is that the administration implemented, there seem to be some doubts as to its viability.

I can point you to a litany of campaign and post-inaugural promises that are widely perceived to be broken by a large cross-section of people, from closing Guantánamo to definitively and swiftly ending American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

2. "We cannot assume that Iran will never instigate a war for religious reasons, or that no rogue element of its government will ever share its weapons with outside religious groups."

So, factionalism exists within the Iranian state? And what is the American state, a univocal monolith? For an overplayed but relevant example, I give you Iran Contra, or, for that matter, the runaway intelligence apparatus that Snowden helped put into sharper relief.

The point being that there are semi-autonomous appendages to any non-trivially-sized state. It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are extremist elements within Iran. Indeed, I would be willing to grant you that the extremist elements are more prominently positioned and influential within Iran's state. That's a far cry from "there is no logic to Iran". What does that even mean?

The way in which Iran has conducted its foreign policy strongly suggests that the usual constraints of geopolitics apply to it. This is unsurprising, as these constraints are essentially independent of the complexion of a national government.

USA made a war claiming that Iraq had Nuclear weapons. Apparently it didn't. The only one who gained anything from Iraq war, were 7 USA-based oil companies.

Iran has lost the war vs Iraq a some years ago. As a European, I don't see Iran as a threat. But you probably do...

That's wrong. We do know that they had been trying to develop nuclear weapons for years. The first reactor was bought from France in the 70s and the Israelis bombed Iraq a few times to stop them from developing nuclear weapons. The same will happen with Iran if they do not stop enriching uranium above energy-related levels. Back to Iraq, there was evidence that was presented to Congress, and if you ask most of the people who voted to authorize the war based on the evidence, such as Hillary or John Kerry, they say they have no regrets in voting that way (i.e. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/). Now, in hindsight, whether all that evidence was correct is an entirely different debate.

If you explain to me why Iran can not have nuclear weapons while USA and Israel (and France and the UK and Russia and Korea and China) can I'll give it a second thought.

My personal view is that the USA was interested in the oil sitting there. End of story. Same thing with Ghadafi. The rest is politics to justify a war that doesn't make any sense.

Indeed the Iraq war was Blair's political destruction in the UK. Why do you think no one wants to attack Syria? Out of lack of evidence ? At that level you don't need evidence, you create them...

Your personal view is wrong, and, even worse, not very smart. It does not make any sense to spend this much money on getting Iranian oil - it could be just bought much cheaper (if all sanctions and impediments were removed), and US has plenty of oil that is not being developed anyway.

>>> Why do you think no one wants to attack Syria?

Because attack presumes you need to achieve something. There's nothing in Syria that can be achieved right now that would be a desirable target. Assad is evil, islamic fundamentalists that battle him are evil too, US has no power and no political will to reform Syria and make anything good out of that mess. Neither does anybody else. That's why Assad is not being removed - because after removing him nobody knows how to clean up the mess.

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