Tom Coton is a War Monger.
Cotton went to Harvard for undergrad and law school. Since he was a farm kid from Arkansas, he doesn't look like a legacy candidate to me.
It's very dangerous to underestimate your opposition's intelligence.
It's equally dangerous to
overestimate your opposition's intelligence. Simply because Senator Jughead went to Hah-vard doesn't mean he can't talk like a damn fool.
If bombing Iran would be a "cakewalk" I nominate Cotton to be the first pilot to deliver the cake.
CassandaraW said:
B.F.D. And that makes Cotton an expert on the ease of aerial bombardment of sovereign nations?
If so, what does that make
actual military experts?
...American military leaders — who worked for lawmakers of both parties — strongly disagree with Cotton’s assessment, arguing that an attack could actually prove a regional war and further push Iran towards the bomb.
“[If Iran were to be attacked] the United States would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases, and there are economic consequences to that attack….which could impact a very fragile economy in Europe and a fragile economy here in the United States,” former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta predicted in 2011. General Anthony Zinni, former CENTCOM commander, put it more clearly, “I think anybody that believes that it would be a clean strike and it would be over and there would be no reaction is foolish,” he said in 2009. And former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained that “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.” “The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world,” he said.
This is the contemporary neo-conservative wet dream. Unleashing America's military might on Middle East nations for reasons vague and illusionary while selling the suckers at home the myth you can wage and win war on the cheap.
During the protests against the Vietnam War protestors said in the Sixties,
"Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity." It was true then and its still true now.
Tom Cotton should stop fucking agitating for a war with Iran simply because Bibi Netanyahu, Sheldon Adelson and William Kristol have hard-ons for one.
CassandraW said:
None of that means he's necessarily right, about this or anything else. For the record, I have all kinds of problems with his views on all kinds of things.
How magnanimous of you. Please enlighten everyone with what some of those "all kinds of problems" might be.
CassandraW said:
It does mean that it's a tad presumptuous to dismiss him as an ignorant bumpkin who has no clue what he's talking about. This is something the left does all the time with regard to the right in this country, and it isn't helping them any.
There's nothing remotely "presumptuous" to dismiss Cotton as an ignorant bumpkin who has no clue what he's talking about when he is being an ignorant bumpkin who has no clue what he's talking about. Going to Harvard and being a war veteran has neither jack nor shit with making him an "expert."
Whenever anyone is casually talking about dropping bombs and killing large numbers of human beings like it ain't no big thing, they deserve all the scrutiny they get.
The desire for the United States to be engaged in a permanent state of endless war against its enemies is nothing new even if the freshman Senator from Arkansas is. This is the same garbage which was peddled by the neo-cons of
the Project for the New American Century back in 1997 which argued:
We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.
We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.
Among the endorsees of this bilge include conservative superstars Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams, Danny "Potato" Quayle, Frank Gaffney, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes and Evil Dick Cheney.
The New American Century's group espoused a theory of American imperialism striding across the globe muscling our opponents into line or crushing them mercilessly under our heel. They offered a theory. The second war in Iraq was the practice.
An insane lust for spilling blood and building empires is a sickness peculiar to the modern neo-con. They never met a conflict they couldn't solve by killing large numbers of people. If they had their druthers, they would infect the rest of their fellow citizens with their disease, but fortunately the voices of reason, diplomacy and peace have quarantined and isolated them from contaminating the mainstream of American political thought.
What's really presumptuous is the alarmist rhetoric of the neo-cons that the best solution to their hysterical cries the world is afire is to pour more gasoline on it.
This is something the Right does all the time with this country, and it isn't helping them any.