Bush, Iran, and reality

October 22, 2007

The president is making irresponsible references to “World War III,” Cheney is dusting off his 2002 speeches to bluster about “serious consequences” for Iran, and Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria is left to wonder what planet these guys are on.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear button yet and won’t for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

Rudy Giuliani went so far as to argue last week that Ahmadinejad is actually worse and less rational than Stalin and Mao, which is … what’s the word … insane. As Zakaria added, “One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.”

The irony, of course, is that Iran actually wants improved relations with the United States, and we were on the right track in 2001, until Rumsfeld & Co. decided to push them away.

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush’s representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that “the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for.” Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, “looked down and rustled his papers.” No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They’re mad.

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, “is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.” This would all be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

Ezra adds a good point: Iran really does have the capacity to “inflict substantial pain” on the U.S., but only because we have 165,000 troops in Iraq.

If we were to, say, withdraw, that ability would disappear.

We just love the smell of napalm in the morning! Can you say a big word with me boys and girls? It’s apocolypse….let’s all say that together, just like the biblethumpers at church do, okay?

  • “If we were to, say, withdraw, that ability would disappear.”

    cb, why do you hate america? 🙂

  • If we were to, say, withdraw, that ability would disappear.

    Nope. You’re forgetting the Straits of Hormuz, the world-wide response to another US attack in the Middle East and long term effects of what BushCo has already done. Does anyone really think that even after we withdraw the Iraqi people will want to be our friends?

  • Bush and Cheney are insane with this push to attack Iran and none of their reasons are credible. They are going about the country trying to justify their plans. They only want 40% approval. It’s a madness that can at present only be stopped by congress by removing the threat…Cheney.

    This administration is trying to make their lies believable and the press continues to allow them latitude in lying. The press could debunk nearly everything coming from this administration’s lips but they only report what is said even when they know it is a lie.

    Looking back on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the calm rational approach used to prevent a nuclear war is an excellent example of how a president should be dealing with these situations. The yahoo cowboy mentality present today in the WH does not consider the consequences or the aftermath of their actions, much less the moral responsibility of leadershiop in a democracy. Their creed is if you can’t smoke it, drink it, ride it or screw it, then blow it up. The consequences of attacking Iran will haunt the world for a century. Diplomacy can and should win out if only we could get rid of the obsessed war profiteers in the current WH.
    Once again, if Pelosi would just do her duty and impeach Cheney we could stop the mass murder of thousands of innocent Iranians and the increase of world wide terrorism.

    If there ever were an armed revolution in this country (like in the movies) Pelosi would be one of the first strung up for allowing Bush/Cheney to destroy our democracy. Would never happen, just like the 850 member AQI will never take over Iraq or anybody else.

  • Does anyone really think that even after we withdraw the Iraqi people will want to be our friends? -TAIO

    Maybe if we send them an apologetic e-card.

    Dear Iraq,

    Sorry we messed everything up.

    Good luck,

    The United States

    PS – We may have left some dangerous stuff laying around, so keep the kids inside and, uh, don’t let it fall into the wrong hands and stuff. Good luck, again!

  • Bush’s reality:

    When all of your plans have failed, when your nation has lost confidence in you, when your army is worn out and your Treasury is awash in red ink, attack dammit!

    Half a league half a league,
    Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred:
    ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns’ he said:
    Into the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred.

  • Oil and Iran: neocolonialism
    President George Bush often states that Iran is threatening the interests of the Unites States in Persian Gulf! What are the interests of England and the United States in Persian Gulf, the Persian front door to Iran?

    A primer for discussion of these issues must start with review of British and the United States policies relative to the Persian Gulf region. Stephen Kinzer, a veteran New York Times correspondent, in his book “All the Shah’s Men, an American coup and the roots of Middle East Terror”, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003, brilliantly reconstructs the events leading to the present dilemma of the United States in the Middle East. The events described in this marvelous book are not fiction, events actually happened during the summer of 1953 in Tehran, Iran.

    The United States Central Intelligence Agency operation Ajax staged coup d’état in 1953 against democratically elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh. Democracy was substituted with the despotic regime of Mohammad Reza Shah. The dawn of democracy in Iran, started in late 1880, flickered by democratically elected Mossadegh, was extinguished. This was the beginning of Iranian servitude once more to the interests of England and the United States. During his last years, Shah did not trust Iranian people; his inner palace was guarded by Israel commandos. Since 1979, the United States has been punishing Iranian people for ousting the immature, weak, despotic Mohammad Reza Shah. This punishment, Iranian assert, included Iraq invasion of Iran instigated by President Regan. During this war, the United States and her satellite nations helped materially and logistically Iraqi military forces to invade Iran and use chemical and biological weapons on Iranian population.

    In the preface of his book, Kinzer recalls his conversation with an Iranian lady about Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh. He asked her: “What do you remember…about the coup against him?” She responded:

    “Why did you Americans do that terrible thing? We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again…”

    This un-American act was instigated by Winston Churchill-Anthony Eden of England and two American brothers John Foster Dulles (US Secretary of State) and Allen Dulles (Director of Central Intelligence Agency). The primary reason for this regime change was to subordinate Iranian people and exploit the Iranian natural resources.

    President George Bush prevaricate his true intensions and hide the administration’s primary interest to dominate and exploit the natural resources of Iranian people. Administration states that Iran is threatening the interests of the Unites States in Persian Gulf, because Iranian defense of their homeland is considered a threat. In contrast to 1953, Iranian people are willing to die and kill to defend their homeland.

    Harry Truman once said:”There is nothing new in the world except the histories you don not know.” Have we learned from our past mistakes committed during 1953 not to repeat it once more? This time the price would be much larger for both societies of Iranians and our Americans. We must stop President George Bush adventure in his neocolonialism.

  • Bush will be in for two big surprises. The first, of course, will be that the Iranians will stand up and fight. The second—and the more suprising of the two surprises—will be that the American People might stand up and fight, as well.

    Fight Bush, of course.

    It may be complete madness, but if this Republic getting it’s ass waxed by the Iranians is what it takes to get people to finally wake up and drag this drug-addled, boozed-up howler monkey and his scum out of the Oval Office—then it may well be better for the fight to begin sooner, rather than later….

  • I’m afraid this is only the latest in a series of stupid policy blunders where we’ve pushed away nations who expressed an interest in having relations with us. Cuba? Vietnam? Time and again during the cold war we rebuffed populist revolutionaries and drove them into the arms of the USSR if for no other reason than the fact that they wanted to promote land reform.

    After watching Gary Kasparov’s discussion with Bill Maher the other night, I found myself wishing that a certain very high score on the IQ test would be a determinant of fitness to run for office. Or to be an advisor to the president. It wouldn’t be prejudice against dummies, just a common sense way to run a nation.

  • I worry more about V.P. Cheney starting WWIII than anyone else in the world. He has pushed his own agenda from the start with little regard for what is best for the American people. His actions are also making sure it will be almost impossable for a Republican to win the next election.

    I was a supporter of the war to free Iraq and I have a son in the military. Now that the people of Iraq have shone little interest in rebuilding their government, it is time to leave. We can not be expected to do it all, everywhere.

    We need to rebuild New Orleans (a National Disgrace), our health care system has failed us all and the energy problem is worse now than in the 1970’s.

    Let’s look at what the American people need. After all it was and is the American people that make this country great.

  • Lets see, Mao and Stalin, who commanded huge armies and massacred tens of millions of people are..less dangerous than a country who may be, at the most, responsible for several hundred deaths in Iraq? Right..

  • “but only because we have 165,000 troops in Iraq”

    don’t forget they could also cause the front in Afganistan a great deal of difficulty.

  • The media lives off our country’s obsession with fear. Fear that the worst is around the corner. Fear that our liberties and freedoms will be taken away at the hand of insane leaders in the middle east. But every time we give those who pump fear into our society any power over our thoughts and our understanding of the world abroad, we give up those very freedoms that we fear will be extinguished.

    Then, with every additional soldier we put in harms way in the middle east, with every Iraqi civilian who leaves a family behind after being killed in the name our restoration of Iraq, with every twisted reason we continue a bankrupting foreign policy (from resources to the wealth of private defense companies)… we create another enemy. We give more recruiting propaganda to the extremists. Which creates new terrorists that want to attack on our homeland. Have we as a country been so blinded and ignorant that we will actually let this continue?!?!

    Media… You want some true fear to pump into America? Bombing Iran when our resources are already strained from the current wars will leave us more vulnerable as a nation than we have ever been. New enemies that haven’t even thought once about Jihad will become vindictive and will seek revenge for all of their innocent family members and countrymen we murder if we bomb them. The trillions that we will use for wars in foreign lands instead of securing our own borders will let our new enemies in. And when the dirty bombs and chemical terror attacks happen on our own soil, we won’t have the National Guard here to protect us, because they are there. And the trillions pumped into these wars won’t help the health crisis’ that occur due to these attacks because we haven’t fixed our health care problems. And our blank check we have been writing will come back to haunt us for generations to come because of these wars. The current war is costing an average of 2.3 billion a week. We have spent 200 billion this year alone on our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we have to take into account that we aren’t at war with either country. Just Islamic extremists in those countries. If we add a full fledged war with the country of Iran to the tab, the cost will be absolutely absurd. If America buys into fear so easily, maybe that is the story that should be spread across the airwaves and not the idea that we need to have a preemptive strike against Iran for our safety.

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