Posted on 02/23/2007 5:31:04 PM PST by blam
American armada prepares to take on Iran
By Damien McElroy aboard USS Eisenhower
Last Updated: 1:09am GMT 24/02/2007
It is four and a half acres of US power in the middle of the Arabian Sea but the influence of USS Dwight D Eisenhower stretches hundreds of miles.
The aircraft carrier, backed by its sister vessel, a handful of destroyers and a shoal of support ships, has placed a ring of steel around an increasingly unstable region.
While the Eisenhower is ostensibly assisting US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is increasingly occupied by the looming threat of Iran.
Recent tensions between the US and Iran over Teheran's meddling in Iraq and attempts to build a nuclear bomb have raised the prospect of its third regional war in a decade.
The addition of a second aircraft carrier to its strike groups has fuelled the belief that the US is gearing up for a fight with Iran. Not since the Iraq war in 2003 has America amassed so much fire power around the Persian Gulf.
As flagship of the Fifth Fleet, the Eisenhower welcomed the arrival of the second Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS John C Stennis, and its accompanying destroyers on Tuesday.
Captain Dan Cloyd, the Eisenhower's commanding officer, compared the situation with the international tension of the Cold War.
"There was a time when we had two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean," he told The Daily Telegraph. "The world changes and we adapt."
The quietly spoken Capt Cloyd embraced the suggestion that the dual deployment is at the forefront of efforts to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, pointing out that his maritime assets have been tasked to quash any challenge to global security.
"Our presence here is an affirmation of our resolve to engage with the nations of the region either where we share common goals or where we face challenges."
The Eisenhower has more than 5,000 people on board and its range of missions is virtually limitless.
As it patrols the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the Eisenhower ensures the safe passage of oil tankers. It also prevents the trading routes being used to transport materials that would help rogue nations build a nuclear weapon.
Capt Cloyd said: "Our maritime security mission is about denying the use of the seas to any potential spread of weapons of mass destruction."
Iran's belligerent posture has increased the challenges facing the Eisenhower since it was deployed to the Middle East last October. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, issued a stark warning that Iran risks triggering an "accidental war" during aggressive military manoeuvres.
During the Great Prophet 2 missile test in November, the Islamic Republic fired a Shabab missile into the six-mile corridor of shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. In such a constricted corridor, the results could have been disastrous.
With Teheran's real strategic intentions unclear, the US takes the threats made very seriously. "They threaten to use oil as a weapon. They threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz," Adml Walsh said. "It is the combination of the rhetoric, the tone, and the aggressive exercises in very constrained waters that gives us concern."
US commanders ascribe the increase in instability to increasingly deliberate aggressive actions by Teheran. For that reason the deployment of the carriers is designed to intensify pressure on Iran to step back from the brink.
Depends on the nature of the war. Many are (incorrectly) assuming it would be an Iraq-type invasion, occupation, policing, rebuilding, "hearts and minds" effort. ....in which case you'd be correct about the imprudence of such an undertaking. But thankfully that's not in the cards.
This action will be done primarily through the air, and confined to destroying Iran's "Navy," what's left of their air force, and their nuke facilities. .....and it'll all be over relatively quickly.
Erasmus ("The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war") is right.
Neville Chamberlain evidently thought so as well. But he and his ilk quickly learned that "disadvantageous peace" eventually leads to disaster and war.
Non, ce n'est pas "la vie".
It's not a matter of playing some sort of silly game.
The American war effort in Iraq right now is having the very foundations pulled out from it by political problems within the UNITED STATES. Nothing going on has anything to do with France at all. It has to do with problems in America, between Americans.
The Gulf War was an allied tactical victory, which was stopped too soon.
The Cold "War" was not a war.
The Algerians have assimilated better than you understand. It is why the protests in the French banlieux looked like French labor unrest, and not like Madrid and London train stations. The Beurs HAVE BEEN assimilated, culturally. They have NOT been assimilated ECONOMICALLY, and that is the problem. They're frustrated by that, and rightly so (to an extent).
But it's not germane to the issue, is it. It's a sidebar. France annoys you, apparently, so you're going to generate a series of beliefs for yourself by which France is defeated and humiliated, in your mind. Meanwhile, out in the real world, the PROBLEM is that AMERICAN resolve is cracking in the Middle East well short of victory.
There are reasons for that, but if it isn't addressed, America's going to have another awful defeat and retreat to hang on the wall next to the pictures of the last helicopter out of Saigon, the last boat out of the Bay of Pigs, the transports leaving Beirut, the burnt out carcasses of the US transports in the Iranian desert, and Blackhawk Down.
There OUGHT to be lessons learned from these strategic blunders and humiliating defeats, but the lesson seems to be "Well, at least we're not as bad as the French!"
To which my response is (1) That's not claiming much, and (2) Since the foundation of the Fifth Republic, in my lifetime, actually the US has a much WORSE military track record than France does. The US overcommits militarily but undercommits politically, such that exposed forces get taken by surprise and killed, and the US pulls out and looks weak. In Vietnam, and it looks more and more like it in Iraq, the US committed militarily to full fledged war without, however, politically committing to legal, properly declared war. And now, as before, the American colossus' feet of clay are falling in again on the POLITICAL front.
You would THINK we would learn. France actually DID learn after 1940. That's why France has nuclear weapons, and was willing to break with NATO in order to develop an independent nuclear arsenal under its own command. No matter what the Americans did or didn't do, if the Soviets were surging over the Rhine, France was going to take out the USSR and the Soviet forces with nukes, to wreck them and wreck it. The Maginot Line was designed to make France militarily secure, but it failed because it could be gotten around. Mutual Assured Destruction is a hell of a lot harder to get around. The Soviets would have had to RELY on France being unwilling to actually USE its nukes to devastate Russia in the event of a Soviet attack that was heading into France. The French lived for four years under the Gestapo. Had the Russians made that bet, it would have been the last one they ever made.
So no, the United States did NOT "save Western Europe's ass yet again". The US may have saved West Germany's ass. The Soviets had no greater capacity to take out France without being burnt to cinders than it did to take out the USA. Nukes is nukes, and France had (and has) an ample supply of them to destroy the USSR. Sure, the Soviets could have bounced the rubble in France many time over. So what? They'd still be shattered and gone as a nation.
France learned from 1940.
But did AMERICA learn from Korea and the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam and Beirut and Mogadishu? Did we? From the looks of Iraq, no, we did NOT. And THAT'S the real tragedy, and it doesn't have one damned thing to do with France.
Strange, you cite the "American losses" in Vietnam and Korea (both Cold War miltary battles) as evidence of America's lousy military track record since WW2, but downplay our overall Cold War victory as "not a war." It was indeed a war, and one in which we lost a few military battles. .....but ultimately prevailed.
The Algerians have assimilated better than you understand.
Delusional, but oh so French. The Islamics are 10%-15% of the "French" population as it now stands, and with their birthrate outdistancing the "Old Europe" French by a country mile it's just a matter of time before the surrender is complete. Let's just hope the French nukes are destroyed before that happens.
the PROBLEM is that AMERICAN resolve is cracking in the Middle East well short of victory.
Concerning Iran, see my post (#141) above. Concerning Iraq, our military victory was complete in about three weeks (in Apr/May of '03). It's the political victory that has eluded us, which isn't exactly surprising considering the barbaric "culture" we're dealing with. So for you to rack this up as yet another "American military loss" is disingenuous.
But we agree about our propensity to overcommit militarily while undercommitting politically. ....usually with tragic results.
For political reasons, obviously.
You make it sound quick, easy, and painless; like there will be no repercussions. If Iraq has taught us anything, it's that that's never the case.
I remember before the Iraq war started, V.P. Cheney was on television talking about how we were going to use Iraq's oil revenues to rebuild the country, and how the war itself would cost us only about 10 billion or so. I'm not going to get down on Cheney for being wrong, none of us expected Iraq to turn out the way that it has, but the fact that a person deeply involved in planning the war was so wildly wrong about its aftermath indicates what a messy business war is.
For me the lesson of the Iraq war has been that the grinding frustration of diplomacy is better than the uncertainty of war. War with the Persians is not going to be so easy as a few weeks of stand-off bombing. The carriers are useful as a threat and a deterrent, but the only victory short of a major military ramp-up (which is impossible in today's political climate) will come at the negotiating table.
The Gulf is a bad place for carriers. There is no place the Iranians can't reach with anti ship missiles, they probably have enough to saturate the defenses of a battle group (once, anyway). Just one hit and the media would be spinning a defeat for the USN...
Where is the Vinson?
Again, you're comparing apples and oranges. It's never "quick, easy, and painless" when the plan is occupying policing a bunch of Islamics (as we're doing in Iraq). The Bush admin. knows this all too well, and that we'd never be able to sustain such an effort on the political front in dealing with Iran. But thankfully that's not the plan.
Primary goal: Destroy Iran's nuke facilities. And yes, considering our enormous military superiority it can be done quickly and relatively painlessly. Sure, the rest of the world will make a bunch of self-righteous noises. ....just as they did when Israel destroyed Saddam's nuke facility in '81. But that's all they're capable of doing -- making impotent noises.
Not to mention they've probably floated a few mines, too.
Be nice if we took out their oil production and terminals, too. That way they'd be out of money.
I hear ya. Could very well be part of the plan.
Roger that, Shipmate!!!
Our carriers (mostly nukes) are routinely deployed in that little pond.
I have been the OOD as well as Conning Officer in the Persian Gulf
and the bottom isn't that far down. Of course, running the Straits
is always a bit intense with the Iranians postering. Especially
the Iranians foolish attack on the Big "E" Battle Group in '88.
Yeah, running past the Sunburn and Silkworm batteries is not a lot of fun. Of course the Iranians would die in a world of hurt if they really did blow up one of our carriers by surprise, but it's not much fun BEING the tripwire, y'know?
This is going to get tense, but the Iranians aren't going to fire the first shot. They know that all they have to do is sit and wait, and then they'll have nukes and be a sanctuary.
Will WE fire the first shots, then, to stop them?
No, we won't.
Sure, we'll cross the border and bomb resuppliers aiding the Iraqi insurgents, but the Iranians won't lose their cool over that. That's about all we can hope for, given the self-imposed limitations that this administration has placed on us. The hope would be that our cross-border raids from Iraq would provoke the Iranians into popping their tops, hosing off a bunch of missiles, and starting the war. I think they're cooler customers and won't.
And then there will be, three Battle Groups bumping into each other in the pond, for a month, then three, then six, then it'll be time to rotate out. We'll have spent a lot of money, but the Iranians won't oblige us with that act of war. Will Bush just get frustrated and hit them anyway, maybe even MANUFACTURE an attack?
I sure as hell HOPE SO, because it is RIDICULOUS to let IRAN get NUCLEAR WEAPONS just because they play by the rules. We need to stop them. Manufacture an incident, lie to the world, and ATTACK them before they get the bomb.
Unfortunately, the Dudley Dooright crowd down in DC just don't play that way.
So, Iran will get the bomb, we'll transit in, spend a lot of sweat and burn a lot of gas. And then we'll transit out. Iran will have the bomb, and will be more menacing than ever.
Either we cheat and start the war, or they get the bomb.
You are right about how to deal with the Iranian nukes.
The problem is with the pretext to do it.
The UN will not approve it.
Indeed, the more time that the Administration spends in front of the UN in another forlorn (and idiotic) effort to get what will NEVER, EVER BE GIVEN (and what anybody with an ounce of sense ought to KNOW will never be given), the more time the First World will line up against the US action. The French will veto it. The Chinese and Russians will veto it. The British will not support it. The more we TALK about it, the more we will allow the ENTIRE diplomatic community to organize into a massive anti-US alliance. If we do it anyway, after that, then WE will find ourselves facing realignments of alliances.
If we play the same diplomatic idiots game we played with the WMD, our destruction of the Iranian facilities will provoke such a torrent of condemnation that you'll see the Russians shipping new reactors in a fortnight.
So, what do we do?
Well, starting to hit across the Iraqi border at Iranian resupply would be a really good idea. That MIGHT flush out the Iranians into going nuts. It's worth a try.
When that doesn't work, we will need to manufacture a pretext. The Iranians will need to attack us. It will need to be relatively ineffective, but it will need to be apparently a real attack. Sort of like the Gulf of Tonkin. Of course, given the WMD fiasco, the world won't BELIEVE us (and the world, in this case, will be RIGHT), but it won't be able to PROVE us wrong during the time period that we go and plaster the Iranian sites. We'll have the video, after all (we just need to remember to paint out the white stars on the delivery vehicles).
Thinking that this will be painless is as ignorant as
posting nuke explosion pictures and thinking it makes
any impression on the Iranians.
It will not be painless. Sailors can and do fall overboard,
aviators can and do crash their planes and the financial
and commodities markets will take more than passing note
of anything that happens in the Gulf.
We may well have to go toe to toe if the mullahs don't blink, and it may be the right think to do, but its stupid
to think it will be "painless". It will hardly be painless
for the folks at the spears point, and to our economy.
I said "relatively" painless, as in relative to our 3+ year occupation/policing/rebuilding in Iraq.
....but you knew that.
Don't fret too much about oil and our economy -- the Arab oil producers (especialy Saudi Arabia) would like nothing better than to see us deal a crushing blow to Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Don't rule out the Israeli option -- worked in Iraq.
Can't work in Iran.
Iran is much to far from Israel for sustained Israeli operations, and the Iranians have spread their facilities around such that it's not a matter of just hitting an Osiraq.
Also, don't assume that the Iranians won't have WARNING this time. The Iraqis didn't have warning, but Iran is a lot farther. The Israelis would have to fly over Jordan or Syria, AND Iraq, and quite a bit of Iran. The Iranians won't be blind. The repercussions of an Israeli attack will be quite bad, obviously, but they will have to reattack and reattack and reattack again to really take out the Iranian capability. They won't have the element of surprise on reattack.
Will Iraq allow overflight on a reattack?
If the Iraqi government is strongarmed by the US into allowing repeated Israeli overflights, will ALL factions go ballistic in Iraq and unwind our entire position there? Probably.
Israel can't do it this time. It's a bridge too far, much too far.
The more we TALK about it, the more we will allow the ENTIRE diplomatic community to organize into a massive anti-US alliance.
Agreed. I suspect the U.S. is talking so much right now not to get some sort of "coalition of the willing" together but as a last-ditch effort to (hopefully) put enough pressure on the Iranians to get them to abandon their nuke ambitions. .....an effort that most likely won't work on the Mullahs and their lapdog, but could very well spark the Iranian opposition elements to take some action. Hard to say. A longshot, for sure.
Yeah, if we can't goad the Iranians in militarily we can always manufacture a pretext without much difficulty. If it's going to happen it'll happen soon, imo. ....before summer.
A nuclear Iran, as I suspect you'd agree, is completely unacceptable.
A nuclear Iran, like a nuclear North Korea, a nuclear Pakistan, a nuclear Red China and a nuclear Soviet Union, is completely and totally unacceptable.
So's death.
Accepting the unacceptable is one of the thing big boys have to do sometimes.
This will be the second time in a couple of years.
After 9/11, instead of declaring war we declared an "Axis of Evil". Since that time, one of the the three was taken down and is now in a civil war that is pulling the US down in its undertow, and the other two either have become or are becoming nuclear powers.
Can't walk that cat back. But we COULD still WIN in Iraq, if we would do the obvious thing. Unfortunately, the obvious thing that would win, the President and the national security team have said is "unacceptable". Therefore, because they will not accept the unacceptable in Iraq, we will accept the unacceptable in Iran.
Sad but true.
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