back with a Rant

So, it's been a while and I'm maybe going to give this a try again. We'll see. Don't expect much, though, cuz I'm a slacker.

I was talking with my girl today about political issues, and she asked me "what I was going to do about it?". What I really need is a radio show, since my behavior wouldn't fly as a politician. But, getting a radio show is kind of tough, so I guess I'll start with a blog. Blogging sometimes just seems so futile sometimes because SO many people do it and I doubt anyone will read my blog if I don't self promote it....and I hate self-promoting. I guess advertising is pretty important in this country, but for some reason it feels differently when you're "advertising" your blog. Now that I think more about it, it's different because my blog has little or no value to you where as goods/services we see advertised everyday have some value albeit in many cases only marginally more.

I bought a thirsty V8 not too long ago, and luckily I don't drive much so these gas prices aren't killing me, but I've been watching the prices more. I have to use premium now too, so I guess that's another reason. While the domestic oil problems are surely playing a huge, probably majority of the role in these ridiculous prices, the subject of Iran and the Middle East keeps coming up. I'll try to solve the domestic oil issues in a future post. But, as I started thinking about Iran, I started wondering this:

Why don't, or can't, we just assassinate officials of other countries anymore?

I feel like it's so easy to call our (America's) bluff these days because it's so hard to bomb other countries in terms of all the red tape and media massaging and the results aren't even that great. We end up killing a ton of civilians and destroying infrastructure with no real quality outcome. It's just really hard for us to get to that stage, so these leaders can do what ever they want. But, if these leaders were scared that they were going to be assassinated, they would probably be less cocky. A great example is Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani, who is apparently a "Top Revolutionary Guard Commander" and made a statement a few days ago that Iran would target Israel if the US attacks. Now, I'm not even defending Israel here, but this just goes and gets everyone worked up around the globe. We don't need this while we're still trying to avoid a war. If the guy were to wind up dead tomorrow, suspiciously assassinated hopefully the next top guard would be a little more reserved with his threats.

But on a larger scale, why can't we just take out whole regimes? I don't see why we really need to have ground forces there to help. The worst that can happen is there is a short fight while the next group takes power. If we don't like this group, they're gone too. It won't take too many iterations before the group that gets power stays in line. Everyone loves power, but in order to weld it well, there has to be some checks. I feel like revolutions are the only checks in some of these countries, so maybe bringing a little fear of assassination would provide a good check for some of these leaders.

Now, clearly the US cannot have any clear ties to these assassinations. This brings me to my next idea. Whey doesn't the U.S. setup our own terrorist organization, Islamic extremist group, cult, whatever you want to call it...? How hard can it be to recruit guys into caves, sell them a mission, and then command them to do it in the name of something. We could then use this group to carry out assassination missions and other important missions. If these gents felt so strongly that they chose to die in order to carry out the mission to the fullest extent, they would be honored, of course, but such practices wouldn't be encouraged.

Okay, so this probably seems outlandish, but the fact remains; we're not that good at fighting the extremists groups in the Middle East. I think it's because we're not thinking like them. We bust in with guns and large bombs. They blend in with small bombs. In the U.S. we have undercover workers all of the time, but we have to abide by our laws. If we enlist natives to our cause, they can abide by the local laws which are much less stringent. They can lie, deceive, and cheat in order to get information, access, and opportunity in these hot spots. We can then carry out our pro-democracy missions with much more efficiency.

If we truly believe our cause to be just, I'm just not so sure that our means need be so proper. We need to use the best means possible. I could string a few more cliques along here about winning ugly, etc. But I think I made my point, however crazy it was....it was a rant after all. See you next time!