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Depends on what you call victory. Thoroughly trashing the place so that they are incapable of any industrial production, much less high end uranium refining, sure we could do that in three weeks. Undo the damage of radical Islam on the Persian people, we couldn't do that in a century.

Nation building is a pipe dream. People talk about the Marshal plan as being nation building, but the nations already existed. It was just fixing broken buildings. Creating a civilized nation state where one has not existed in centuries isn't nearly so straight forward. It is difficult to comprehend what needs to be done and nearly impossible to do it.

Nation wrecking on the other hand is quite simple in theory and easy in execution.

-The Marshall plan worked because Germany, even defeated, was predominately Christian, civilized and very ordered in it's social structure.

Nation building, by contrast in the Middle East, has to deal with tribalism, an uneducated and superstitious population and most detrimental, a religious base rooted in the seventh century.

Depends on what you call victory.

Your post was excellent, from start to finish.

It is one thing to simply knock out Iran's nuclear facilities from the air. Bit if the US wants to "defeat" Iran, that means more widespread destruction, and troops on the ground.

And from that, I guarantee will come "nation-building". Of course, the current administration will call it something different, but we'll be back to building roads, bridges, schools, etc.

And then our troops will be sniped at, and bombs will start exploding in market squares and along convoy routes. We've seen all that before. It will end badly.

As General MacArthur said, never get involved in an Asian land war.

Good post.

There is however another war aim which we ought to consider: the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama.

If you want to know our intentions in the Persian Gulf we need not look to our Armed Forces there, our pair of carriers cruising there, or our newly deployed Raptors there as described in the companion news story, we should look instead to today's private sector job numbers, a pathetic 119,000, and know that Friday's job numbers will be toxic for Obama's reelection chances.

Consider Obama's recent ploys: he spikes the football on the anniversary of Obama's assassination; he accuses Romney of cowardice and an inability to pull that trigger; he takes a ride to Afghanistan and appears before the troops and has a speech broadcast back to the nation.

The ground is being prepared, the public conditioned to hail a strike against Iran in time for an October surprise.

As for this president shrinking from violence, nothing could be further from the truth. He is a traditional leftist, the most bloodthirsty ideologues human kind has ever known. On March 4 I wrote the following vanity:

Nevermind the Ides of March Beware the Surprises of October

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2854282/posts

We totally remade Japanese civilization. Before the bombs dropped, the Emperor was a god. Now he is a celebrity.

We restored German civilization, somewhat. Their recent actions make me wonder just how much. The Germans still want a United States of Europe, and have it now with the EU.