Can Israel deal with Iran on its own?

[dukeofpain]

deuceswild said:

ndrthl said:

The most dangerous situation would be the proliferation of nuclear weaponry in the muslim world, and hence the possibility of an anonymous terrorist cell detonating a nuclear artifact (like a suitcase nuclear bomb or something) in a previous designed place. Iran has supported terrorist movements against the West and Israel. It would well do so. In such a case, the target would not know the place where the response should be directed at. The philosophy of Islam is a beligerant one (fidel/infidel binome), and everyone knows that.

Qaeda doesn't have the personnel to maintain complicated nuclear weapons. The Iranians do, and they'd be first on the Hit Parade were they to peddle nukes to Qaeda. Only they wouldn't. Major powers don't invest billions in uranium enrichment and then give the product of that investment to a Saudi playboy, and a Sunni one at that. The Iranians are interested in playing Judenrein with the Shahab 3 missile and have their own plans for the Jews. In any event, both Iran and Qaeda have a similar agenda (revival of the caliphate), though they are both going about it independently from one another.

The real reason why Al-Qaeda thinks of attacking with nuclear weapons, but will stay their hand, is rather simple: once you attack a nuclear power like the United States with the Big One, all bets are off-there is no level of diplomatic restraint that would keep the US from responding in overwhelming kind. When atomic weapons are used as instruments of mass terror, the point is understood that two can play at that game. It's that simple. The notion of legalisms cease when mass killing begins.

The notion among some that America would do nothing because there is no "address" to respond to is a joke. Millions of Muslims, probably upwards to 100 million, would be dead after the first couple of waves of American retaliatory strikes. Vast reaches of the Islamic heartland would be an uninhabitable wasteland. Bin Laden would have achieved his dream: the 9th Century restored. But the Islamic World as it is today would cease to exist.

Restraint falls away when survival is at stake. Bin Laden isn't mad. He is rational. He is a fanatic, like Hitler. That will be his undoing. All fanatics undo themselves in the end. But despite the fanaticism he uses to gull his credulous followers, he knows better than to cross the Rubicon.

No way. It would never happen. Russia and America are still perfectly well aware that a non-tactical nuclear strike simply isn't an option. If America used nuclear weapons against some completely helpless country like Iran because of a terrorist attack, Russia would nuke the US, and because of the fact that the only possible way of even coming close to "winning" such an engagement, would require an overwhelming and all encompassing immediate strike, the numbers would be gross i.e., If America nuked Iran, 250+ million Americans would be dead in kind. And shortly there after another couple billion people worldwide no doubt.


Not just that, but Russia's been preparing for sometime. And unlike America its practical preparedness, typical of the Russians. When Americas Sending up experimental satellites, Russia is building underground shelters, like the massive one in Yamantau Mountain in the Urals.

[asdf]

drooperdoo said:

Forrester,
Amic is right. You keep following me around and posting these really catty, mincing responses that make you seem a little . . . well . . . gay. Snap out of it, man.

"You're not a Catholic" isn't a mimic. Posting a response or two a week on an internet forum = stalking and latent homosexuality. Got it.

As to my calling myself a Catholic. I am a Catholic insofar as I arose from Catholic culture--Iberian which stretches back 500 generations. I was baptized Catholic, as well as having attended Catholic school.

Yes, as an adult, I take a mature view of religion and don't gullibly accept the Bible as if its inspired or even history, but that doesn't disqualify me from my background anymore than an atheistic Jew is not a Jew. He was Jew enough for Hitler to kill him no matter what his beliefs, and I am culturally and ethnically Catholic. Deal with it.

My upbringing and ancestry are 100% Catholic. Not Buddhist, not Muslim, not Lutheran, not Shintoist.

So deal with it.

I guess this makes you a Latin speaker and Portuguese-Spanish duel citizen too. Ancestry is irrelevant. You're not a Christian.

Whether I part ways with Biblical dogma or not is irrevelant. Albert Einstein famously said that he didn't believe in Judaism, but what idiot would deny that he was a Jew?

Jews have a common origin. Christians don't. He's referring to nationality. There is no "Catholic" nationality.

Religion is more than a set of dogmas--it's a culture, a background, a set of shared values and common history.

We already know you think that.

re·li·gion (rĭ-lĭj'ən) pronunciation
n.

1.
1. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
2. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle

But there's no room for that.

And, by the way, the last I heard only the Church could excommunicate people. Next time you want to deny my heritage and cultural background, check with the Church. To my knowledge, you're not qualified to judge anyone--let alone excommunicate them.

I'm not qualified? You're not a Christian. A non-Christian is not part of the Catholic church. The Catholic Church doesn't extend its membership to atheists. That's no outlandish claim.

In English, if you go around calling yourself Catholic, people will think you, gee, I don't know, believe in it. I doubt Educate_me thinks you meant you were a "cultural Catholic". He probably thought what you meant what he means when he says he's Catholic. If you're from a Catholic cultural background, say that.

Learn English and stop exaggerating while you're at it.

[Yankel]

Igu, while I understand that you are very proud of your culture (rightfully so), you could easily become a Jew. I'm not trying to get you to convert (I hate people who proselytize), but it seems like you would fit in perfectly.

[annienormanna]

seizure said:

drooperdoo said:

Forrester,
Amic is right. You keep following me around and posting these really catty, mincing responses that make you seem a little . . . well . . . gay. Snap out of it, man.

"You're not a Catholic" isn't a mimic. Posting a response or two a week on an internet forum = stalking and latent homosexuality. Got it.

Maybe someone should look into Amic.

[Drooperdoo]

Forrester,
In The Spy Who Loved Me by John LeCarre, the Jewish character Fielder talks to the Irishman Leamus and says, "You Christians have it easy" whereupon Leamus--an atheist--says, "I'm not a Christian".
"You know what I mean," retorts the Jew.
And indeed we do.

The Jew--who is an atheist--is still a Jew; the Gentile--who's an atheist--is still a cultural Christian. Whether he believes in God anymore or not, he celebrates Christmas, his kids celebrate Easter, he comes from a tradition and culture that separate him from the Jew and place him in communion with the greater European traditions.

So whether you want to deny the fact that I'm Catholic or not is irrelevant: I'm baprized Catholic and have not been excommunicated.
As for not believing that the Bible is literal truth, you should read The Flight of Peter Fromme. I'll give you a hint: Most Catholics and protestant theologians don't believe that the Bible is literal, and many don't even believe it is inspired. A sort of atheism within the Catholic tradition has existed since intellectuals like Aquinas said that God is essentially unknowable, invisible, absent . . . characteristics that make Him largely non-existent.
Read up on theology a bit more and learn how naive and uninformed you are about the whole culture of Catholicism. Hell, even most protestant theology schools and Jewish rabbis lean toward a sort of neutered religion where God has been rendered abstract and all but absent, where the Bible is a series of "metaphors," not divine truth.
I'll give you a hint: Most of the people at the highest echelons of all the major religions aren't literalist rubes--yet they're still Catholics, Jews, Muslims, etc.
Learn a little. It might help break your intolerant, dogmatic attitudes, and your narrow circumscribed ideas of what constitutes Jewishness or Christian-ness.

[asdf]

Intolerant because...? If you phrase it the way you do, most people are going to think you're a believer to any degree. And you're not, at all, as I showed. Again, learn English.