Iran the Winner- Won by Using its Soft Power

[leftyladyfrommo]

It's that pesky ole Law of Unintended Consequences - Hezbollah starts th the trouble in Lebanon. Hezbollah is militarily weakened - but politically greatly strenghened. Israel is the loser. And all other countries that have backed Israel are losers (including the US) but Iran came out the big winner.

I found this article in the Afghan Daily News - and this is what I have been getting from articles all over the place.

We have been the best thing that has ever happened to Iran.

http://article.wn.com/view/2006/08/22/Iran_wins_by_using_its_soft_power/

Here is another article on Iran being the big winner
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1221183.ece

[Dhalgren]

1. The Iranians are proving over and over just how smart they are.

It could also be that Iran just seems very smart because of the comparison with the US - who under the Bush Dictatorship is just plain stupid. We are in a high stakes game and the Iranians have their best people at the table, while we are represented by morons, goons, and ideological misfits. We lose before we even take a seat. Israel just proved how ineffective an air-war is against a determined adversary and air-war is all we got - and the Iranians know this. Russia and China are watching and are leaning strongly toward supporting Iran and Iran knows this, as well. The US is using the old British ploy of impressment to supply itself with soldiers just to fight the insurgency in Iraq. Americans won't join the Army, won't accept a draft, won't even go on a "wartime" footing because Americans don't really believe this is a war and don't see any need for one. And the Iranians know this, too. Americans get all pissed and puffed-up because the Iranian President says things that are inflammatory and dumb. Americans want to bully the Iranian President into frightened submission - but not pick-up a gun and go into harms way.

The Iranian President (who is equal in power and position to the Israeli President) can make all of the ridiculous statements that he wants to and it means nothing. Everyone in the civilized world knows this except the US public - even the stooges in the Bush Dictatorship know what the position "President of Iran" means. So I ask, does anyone know what in the hell the US is doing and why? "Death Squads" Negroponte, himself, has said that Iran is 8 years away from even thinking about nuclear weapons, so...? It can't be Iraq, because even the BD stooges can't make a case for Iran being very heavily involved in Iraq and, besides, Iran has no need to get very involved in Iraq; the US is doing just too good of a job there already.

So, go find the deed to the house, because the way this game is going...

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. I have to agree that this adm. middle east policy has caused

huge unintended consequences - mainly because we have no foreign policy any more - we are just flying by the seat of our pants.

[Dhalgren]

3. And that's why we have so little support around the world and

we continue to lose support every day. The Bush bunch couldn't diplomacy themselves out of a wet paper bag. We have only one trick up our sleeve and that is war, but we don't seem to be very good at that lately. The Dictator thinks that all you have to do is threaten war and then just go to war - like deciding to go to the park, you just do it. This is the idiocy that we are saddled with. The Bush Dictatorship has no concept of what war really is, of how it is managed, and what it actually is intended for. This is the destruction of our country we are watching. This is why we will lose and continue to lose as long as we have dumbed-down one-trick-ponies running our country...