Elections Disad – Core – Hoya-Spartan 2012
Download 2.41 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Turns Afghanistan
- Strikes crank Afghanistan policy
- ( ) Strikes make Afghanistan a mess
On Balanceon balance strikes worse – their ev is based on flawed best case analysis, ignores alternatives and exaggerates the threatKahl, 12 COLIN H. KAHL is an Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. In 2009-11, he was U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Foreign Affairs, April) In "Time to Attack Iran" (January/February 2012), Matthew Kroenig takes a page out of the decade-old playbook used by advocates of the Iraq war. He portrays the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as both grave and imminent, arguing that the United States has little choice but to attack Iran now before it is too late. Then, after offering the caveat that "attacking Iran is hardly an attractive prospect," he goes on to portray military action as preferable to other available alternatives and concludes that the United States can manage all the associated risks. Preventive war, according to Kroenig, is "the least bad option." But the lesson of Iraq, the last preventive war launched by the United States, is that Washington should not choose war when there are still other options, and it should not base its decision to attack on best-case analyses of how it hopes the conflict will turn out. A realistic assessment of Iran's nuclear progress and how a conflict would likely unfold leads one to a conclusion that is the opposite of Kroenig's: now is not the time to attack Iran. Turns AfghanistanStrikes distract US – causes Afghan theater to flare-upRiedel, Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, 2007 (Bruce, Speech for the University of Maine School of Policy and International Affairs http://www.brookings.edu/views/speeches/riedel20070723.htm gjm) First, we should recognize clearly how awful the military option is and what a catastrophe war would be for America, for Iran and for the region as a whole. To imagine war with Iran use as your template not the Israeli air strike on Osirak in 1981 but the war last year between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon with hundreds of clashes, dozens of air strikes and extended salvoes of missiles and rockets – close to 4000 in the end—into Israel's cities, especially Haifa. Only a war with Iran would not be fought in the relatively small space of the Galilee, it would be fought across the whole of the Middle East from Lebanon to the Khyber Pass. Iran would have every incentive to strike American targets across the region with missiles, terrorists and insurgents. An early casuality would be the Maliki government in Iraq which could not afford to choose between its two most important sponsors. The Shia street in Iraq would go with Iran as would the Shia warlords Iran has supported there for years. Once again the Kurds would be in a hard place torn between America and Iran. Whether the Karzai government in Kabul could survive is also open to question. So the US would find the twin insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan burning more intensely while it struggled to destroy targets deep inside Iran and Iran retaliated with terror on a global scale. And once the fireworks begin to settle down, what then? Do we try to occupy Iran? With what army? This is not an option that serious policy makers should spend much time considering. When we looked at it in the Clinton administration – long before the Iraq war—it was wisely rejected. Strikes crank Afghanistan policyPaul Kelly 7/2/08 (Editor, The Australian, “All must lean on Iran”) There is, however, no denying that the US and Iran are on a collision trajectory. Former US diplomat Nicholas Burns, who was number three at the State Department under Bush, told The Australian: ``I think for President Bush and for the next president, Iran is the most serious foreign policy challenge because the consequences of an altercation with Iran are incalculable for our interests and for the fate of the larger Middle East. We have been right to keep the military option on the table but I do not believe there is an inevitability about war with Iran.'' The arguments against hostilities by either the US or Israel are far greater than recognised. First, any strike will prejudice the pivotal US strategic goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would expose 150,000 US forces in Iraq to Iranian retaliation. It would threaten progress in Iraq and vastly complicate US force withdrawal. It would trigger Iranian terrorist activity across the region and provoke Shi'ite militia group Hezbollah into strikes. It would represent a complete refusal to absorb the lesson from the 2003 invasion of Iraq: that resort to massive military action unleashes forces beyond the control of the US. Second, the global economic consequences would be grave. Iranian retaliation would see the world oil price skyrocket from its present high level. Commander-in-chief of Iran's revolutionary guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, has warned that Iran ``will definitely act to impose controls on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz''. This will take inflation and recession threats to new peaks in the industrialised world. The resentment towards Bush would be even greater. Third, the Bush administration would implode politically. There is little grasp in Australia of the dramatic power shifts within the administration with Vice-President Dick Cheney's influence on the wane and the diplomatic option in the ascendancy under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates. ( ) Strikes make Afghanistan a messDaily Times, Monday, January 24, 2005 http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_24-1-2005_pg4_21 [gjm] WASHINGTON: With the bulk of its ground forces tied down in Iraq, the United States has compelling reasons to avoid military action against neighbouring Iran even while stepping up pressure to halt its nuclear programme, analysts said. “There are no good military options,” James Carafano, a military expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Friday. The United States could launch pinpoint strikes on targets in Iran from US warships or from the air. But short of an imminent threat from nuclear-armed Iranian missiles, any gain would likely be outweighed by the trouble Iran could cause US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. Anthony Cordesman, an expert on Iran at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Iran “would see any pre-emptive attack as encirclement.” “It would probably react hard to whatever happened, and that would make it more destabilising than stabilising,” he said in an interview. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 2.41 Mb. Share with your friends:
|