I remember reading a blog about a year ago that talked about the possibility of a war with Iran, and I wrote it off as conspiracy nonsense. I mean Bush wins the gold star of incompetence, but surely, I thought, he’s not contemplating a war of fantastic proportions while we are still dealing with that “minor inconvenience” in Iraq.
Surely he doesn’t believe attacking Iran will mean more freedom, peace and security for the world. If he believes that, he’s officially a madman.
If you think back to the days right after 9/11 you might remember Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mohamed Khatami both condemning the attacks. We had their support, or at least they didn’t wish death upon us for a brief period of time. If you zip forward a few months to President Bush’s State of the Union Address, he single-handedly squashed that solidarity by grouping Iran in his notorious “axis of evil.” If he really believed Iran was evil and out to destroy us, why would he publicly announce that? I would imagine gaining intelligence after that would become much more difficult. What do we gain from stirring up the bee hive?
It’s absolutely possible Bush has been planning a war with Iran for years. Hillary Mann worked for the Nation Security Council as a Middle East policy expert for the Bush Administration, and has been saying for a couple of years now the administration has basically undermined all attempts of diplomacy.
Back in 2003, Flynt Leverett, also a member of the National Security Council at the time, met with the supreme leader’s son-in-law about a proposition to help bring peace to the Middle East. The proposition included hunting down terrorists in Iran, resending support for Hamas, and stopping its nuclear program. Those are rather large goals, but a legitimate source brought the propositions to our doorstep. The Bush cronies didn’t care; their minds were made up and having diplomatic talks with a member of the “axis of evil” just wasn’t on the agenda.
Suddenly we’re supposed to be surprised Iran has been giving weapons to Sunni extremists in Iraq. That’s what you do when you border a country that’s in the midst of a civil war; you support the people most likely to benefit you. Iran wouldn’t benefit from an Iraqi government supported by the U.S.
It kind of brings back memories of when we were supplying weapons to Afghan rebels in the 1980s. Oh wait, it also brings back memories from a few months back when we sold arms to Israel, Egypt and Palestine. It seems that the gunrunner’s version of the Marshall Plan never ends.
Bush and his cronies didn’t start the turmoil in the Middle East but they’ve stoked the hatred like most could never imagine, and it doesn’t appear that they’re ready to let up any time soon. So go home and pull out those old antiwar protest signs because it appears they might be coming back in style.
