He'd also get shouted down as a hippie communist nazi socialist pig by American conservatives - even though those lines of belief are completely incompatible with each other in so many ways. For the record, I don't believe he's any of those things, but that doesn't stop people from calling people they don't like that. Yes, it's stupid - it's VERY stupid - but that's politics for you.

I don't have a problem with conservatives. On the contrary, I'm quite conservative myself. I DO have a problem with the stupid conservative extremists who have been dominating the conservative side of the political spectrum lately and are doing much, much more harm then good all in the name of a political agenda.

Mind you, these are the same conservatives who keep calling for us to invade Iran for apparent development of nuclear weapons*. For an idea of how terrible of an idea this is, the Iranian army could field 2,500 battalions, modern tanks and anti-tank weaponry, modern aircraft that they've purchased from Russia and China plus one they've built themselves as well as fast-attack watercraft our navy is not prepared to defend itself against. Oh, and they have 10 million citizens capable of military service who in a pinch they could easily arm and have already been trained due to mandatory conscription. This is in addition to a standing army several hundred thousand strong.

This would not be the cake-walk that the initial invasion of Iraq was. Anyone who says it would be easy is either lying or delusional. Sure, we'd win eventually, but it would likely be after several years unless the Iranian generals are 100% incompetent - which the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's demonstrated they are not - and I would not rule 100,000 casualties on our side out of the question - probably several million on theirs. And then we'd have to deal with another insurgency possibly larger than the Iraqi one.

To top the delicious war cake off, the United States military has been preparing for the last war - the Iraq war - where they had uncontested control of the sky, numerical superiority and has been primarily preparing for counter-insurgency operations. In fact, the Department of Defense has only very recently (the last few weeks) started actually preparing for a possible war with Iran. If we were to declare war on Iran tomorrow, due to, say, a nuclear weapons test... well, it would not be surprising if it ended up about as well as when the Romans marched into Parthia like they already owned the place expecting to easily win (as they had in their last few wars) and it turned into one of the greatest military disasters ever for the Romans.

*Mind you, this weapon development has not been conclusively proven but to be fair a few signs pointing to it ARE there. However, this ignores a few things: Building a nuclear weapon is illegal in Iran. Yes, seriously. So are chemical weapons. Also, the Iranian people have already suffered at the hands of WMDs due to 1980's Iraq using them against Iran and roughly 30,000 of them STILL suffer complications from the chemical weapons used by Iraq in that war. It would be literally amazing if they tolerated their government developing these weapons. With that said, it is indeed possible they are trying to build a nuclear bomb - just exceedingly unlikely (but it wouldn't be the first really unlikely thing to happen).

Also, all this noise about "Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty and is in violation of it!" as justification for a war - well, we've signed it and are in violation of it too, because we continue to research and build nuclear weapons. Sure, our overall number has decreased markedly from cold war days, but that's because we have greatly increased their accuracy and we don't need 20,000+ to have a hope of actually hitting our targets. I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind you that despite all the saber-rattling and muscle-flexing and how close it's been a few times, the united states remains the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon on another nation - two, no less.

And the excuse that nuclear war would be inevitable because "Iran is not a rational actor!" is also terrible, because history has demonstrated repeatedly that they are rational, and in fact, they're more rational then China was in the 1960's when they got their first nuclear weapon and we haven't gotten in a nuclear war with china yet, have we? No? I didn't think so. On the other hand, china has become significantly more sane in the last 50 years and more moderate. So if a nuclear-armed Iran means a more-sane and more moderate Iran, maybe that's not so bad, even at the cost of the regional arms-race that would result.



Considering the above alone - and that I have not begun to scratch the surface of how big of a clusterfuck that would be - I will simply refuse to vote for any candidate in this next presidential election who thinks a war with Iran is a good idea and is the first thing on the table. So, all of the current republican candidates. I guess I'm voting for Obama, because he's at least trying to keep us out of another major war that we not only cannot afford to fight but one we're not even close to prepared to fight.