Alex Jones going nuts on Piers Morgan

[MichaeltheGreat]

They're not really big externalists like the al Maududi inspired Sunni Islamists. It's more about creating enough instability in certain arab regimes to improve their sense of their strategic position. Although technically it's international, I think "regional terrorism" is more accurate, since the Iranians have not really seriously promoted attempts to get uppity far afield from the ME, unlike Al Qaeda which has tried to spawn and usually control affiliate groups anywhere and everywhere.

Khamanei must be a big fan of Orwell and Macchiavelli. He gets the hard core RG elements satisfied with a little external terrorist support, creates enough external antagonism to draw sanctions, but not enough to get into a shooting war, so he maintains the support of Iranian nationalists and is able to use external enemies as an excuse to cover economic mismanagement. The problem (from their side) is the bastard can't live forever, and there is not really any clear new generation succession I've seen anything about. The revolution is getting a bit old at this point, and the green movement in 2009 showed there are some definite cracks. I think Khamanei is more about placating various hard line factions than he is a dedicated exporter of Islamist movements.

[Lonestar]

Alex Jones is unbelievably insane. Piers Morgan got what he wanted from it.

[kentonio]

Much as I despise Piers Morgan, fair play to him for managing to not punch that ranting freak in the face.

[Sava]

That interview pretty much sums up the debate on guns in America. Crazy vs everyone else.

[DinoDoc]

The shocking thing here is that someone watched Piers Morgan's show.

[giblets]

Because he is anti-Israel and his nomination indicates that Obama is content to merely "contain" Iran as opposed to actually stop it from getting nuclear weapons, unlike he promised in the campaign (of course we have known this for a long time so that is not news). Chuck Hagel has in the past said things that were borderline anti-semitic.

Though let's try to nip this I/P threadjack in the bud.

So in other words you like to suck Israel's dick.

[giblets]

What's the numbers? Like 85% of Jews are registered Democrats and vote Democratic? Get off their circumcised dicks, regexcellent! They don't vote for what you want!

What is going on? **** like this makes me think Alex Jones and others are right and Israel actually DOES control this country!

Only by accident. Some Americans just have really really dumb political opinions.

[DinoDoc]

So in other words you like to suck Israel's dick.

His weakness is that his record is one that projects weakness abroad and shows that he's more than a bit homophobic. If the nomination fails it's going to most likely to die due to liberal opposition.

[kentonio]

His weakness is that his record is one that projects weakness abroad

Which part? His record in Vietnam which he actually fought in unlike most of the chickhawks?

[DinoDoc]

Which part? His record in Vietnam which he actually fought in unlike most of the chickhawks?

I don't particularly care about his Vietnam record. John Kerry would make a poor SecDef IMO as well.

[kentonio]

I'm curious about what part of his views or record would make America look weak though, could you explain please?

[snoopy369]

Reg, I think the problem those of us who are not antisemitic have with America's current support for Israel - or at least, with what many want it to be - is that while Israel is an ally, certainly, they're also behaving fairly badly and creating a lot of the problems that they're in. Their continued pushes for settlements in areas they shouldn't be settling in, and in general their behavior that they can do whatever they want and the Palestinians should be glad they haven't been eliminated yet is unacceptable to a lot of us.

I don't have anything against Israel, and if tomorrow they said they would stop the settlements and accept a reasonable compromise with the Palestinians (which certainly would require statehood, and on the other side would certainly require the complete ceasing of terrorist attacks - but with no expectation of a fully disarmed Palestinian state, unless and until Israel fully disarms of course ) I would support them 100%. But until then, the difference between Israel and Canada is that Canada isn't being a bully to its neighbors. In 1967 this probably wasn't unreasonable, given the tenuous situation Israel found itself in; but this is 2013, and Israel is no longer at significant risk of ceasing to exist.

One of the reasons why Israel can continue acting this way to its neighbors is the 100% support they get from America in everything they do; it's sort of like the school bully whose mom tells him "Honey, you're the best" when he gets home. That's not responsible parenting, and this is not responsible politics. I don't advocate telling Iran they can do whatever they want, certainly, but stating that our policy is "Defend Israel from foreign aggressors, but tell Israel they are behaving badly when they are" is hardly unreasonable. There won't be reasonable peace in the Middle East until that happens.

[DinoDoc]

I'm curious about what part of his views or record would make America look weak though, could you explain please?

Off the top of my head:
1) Hagel voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, when they were actively involved in murdering Americans in Iraq.

2) Hagel vocally opposed the Iraq Surge in 2007.

[regexcellent]

I would want Israel to do more for peace too if it weren't blindingly obvious that the palestinians don't actually want peace. Israel has made a lot of concessions and and has never gotten anything for it. Even the Oslo accords have been violated as of the UN bid.

[kentonio]

Off the top of my head:
1) Hagel voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, when they were actively involved in murdering Americans in Iraq.

All 125,000 of them? Do you not think there might have been a few unintended consequences from designating a large part of Irans military as terrorists?

2) Hagel vocally opposed the Iraq Surge in 2007.

You think not wanting to get further embroiled in Iraq would have seemed weak? Do you think pulling out of Vietnam 5 years earlier would have made America look weaker than the eventual result?