Standing Idly, in-between

Conditions: Warm, Moist.


Still Waving Fists At Iran

The latest declaration from President Obama regarding nuclear weapons, where he reserves the right to fire them at Iran, is being seen as another strategy in the ongoing attempt to persuade Iran that an attack from Israel is a near possibility.

Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the NPR broadens the range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.

A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.

Now we've seen this buildup coming from a long way away. So is it actually a viable strategy, or is it (still) completely the wrong approach?

As part of an apparent effort to make Iran uncertain about an Israeli attack, a series of public statements by U.S. senior officials over the past year have suggested that the would do nothing to prevent such an Israeli attack. However, the Obama administration has conveyed to the Israeli government privately that it strongly opposes any Israeli attack on Iran, according to reports in the Israeli press.

A former senior U.S. intelligence officer on Iran believes the nuclear option is likely to cause Iran to go farther in the direction of nuclear weapons rather than to give in. In an e-mail to IPS, Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, said Iranian officials probably see the new nuclear option as "another manifestation of U.S. hostility toward Iran".

The perception of a U.S. threat to Iran "provides one of the principal incentives for Iranians to develop their own nuclear weapons", said Pillar.

Pillar said Iranians "may also see the doctrine as providing cover for an Israeli strike by serving as a deterrent against Iranian retaliation for such a strike".

- truthout.org/

Oh great, so it's both. On the one hand you look sternly toward the Iranians, warning them of terrible consequences, while at the same time you also look at Israel and ...warn them of terrible consequences. While in reality there's not a lot of viable things you can do to stop the ...terrible consequences from happening. How do we keep getting ourselves into these situations?



Film Review: The Hurt Locker.

The thing that makes a movie a movie, as opposed to a documentary, or footage from a news channel, is that the audience gets to explore and understand the characters who populate the world we are being exposed to. The Hurt Locker, a film set in Iraq and concentrating on three soldiers who's job it is to defuse various bombs left by insurgents, has been rightly praised for being gritty, intense and quite realistic. But the fundamental point of a film is missing here. By the end of the film we are almost exactly where we were when we started. There's not really much of a "movie" here. These characters are and remain as enigmas.

Particularly the main character, James who is brought in as the new bomb tech to replace the last one, and quickly establishes himself as a risk taker, a fact that pisses off his squad, who get put in more danger as a result of James's actions. War is a drug, and James is portrayed as a classic junkie, who feeds off the tension and drama, and seems addicted to it to an almost suicidal degree. But that is really all we know, and 2+ hours of film later we still don't know any more. There's no resolution, no arc, no revelation, the film just keeps moving along until the end, leaving us to our own conclusions, which inevitably are the obvious ones sentient beings have after watching a film about war.

I'm not saying it's a bad film, but I do wonder where all the buzz really came from. I mean, it's not really all that hugely impressive, really. It's shot shaky-cam style, with not-great picture quality, again presumably to make it feel more real, but in reality it's just a distraction. We know we're watching a movie, so why doesn't it just look like one and stop teasing? The film really feels like a video game, where our characters progress through a series of stages. But there's no master bomber at the end they have to face down, and no real lessons learned. In the end the characters remain simple, albeit caught up in complicated situations. Any chance to explore this premise of risk-takers thriving in a war environment is left to a few grunted words in a Humvee along the lines of "whatever, man." Three triggers out of Five.



- Peace out