NYT editorial: Amateur Hour on Iran

[DeepModem Mom]

Amateur Hour on Iran
Published: August 16, 2007

The dangers posed by Iran are serious, and America needs to respond with serious policies, not more theatrics. Labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization — as the State Department now proposes — is another distraction when what the Bush administration needs to be doing is opening comprehensive negotiations with Tehran, backed by increasing international economic pressure.

Those negotiations need to deal with all real and alleged facets of Iran’s many dangerous behaviors: its nuclear ambitions; its sectarian meddling in Iraq; its providing of missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the charges it is arming the Taliban and others in Afghanistan. And any talks must take into account Iran’s concerns about its own security — with a clear offer that it can come in from the diplomatic and economic cold if it improves its behavior.

Designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist group would trigger automatic American economic penalties against the guard leaders and companies dealing with them. But Iran does little direct business with the United States, so those penalties would cause minimal pain. That suggests that the State Department’s real audience isn’t Tehran, but conflict-obsessed administration hawks, who are lobbying for military strikes, and conflict-averse European allies, who have resisted more far-reaching multilateral economic sanctions.

We hope the State Department prevails in both of those arguments. But it has chosen a particularly blunt instrument to wave around. If there’s any doubt about that, officials should take another look at the recent North Korea nuclear deal — and the contortions and delays they had to go through to roll back the Patriot Act sanctions on North Korean bank deposits.

It is also surely not in America’s interest to dilute the hard-won international consensus against terrorist groups like Al Qaeda by stretching the term to include a section of Tehran’s official armed forces....

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International asset freezes and foreign travel bans directed at Revolutionary Guard leaders and their business partners are certainly deserved, and would make real sense as part of a program of international sanctions and coupled with a clear American offer for serious negotiations. By themselves they are futile....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/opinion/16thu1.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. The Kulture of Konservative Klowns (again)

[Felix Mala]

2. chosen a particularly blunt instrument ...

That has characterized their foreign policy from the beginning, even before 9/11. Words like "nuance" and "diplomacy" mean nothing when you're always pushing an extreme, narrow-minded worldview.

[Peace Patriot]

3. It's interesting what contortions the newsrag that brought us the Iraq war has to go to

to justify a hostile attitude toward Iran that requires negotiation...

"Iran's many dangerous behaviors." Uh, let's see...

1. Its "nuclear ambitions."

Yup, they've got nuclear China and nuclear Russia needing their oil. They've got nuclear America lusting after their oil, and invading, slaughtering, torturing and destroying civil order in their neighbor state to get THEIR oil. They've got nuclear Pakistan a stone's throw away, full of jihadist turmoil and harboring CIA/Al-Q in its border areas. They've got nuclear Israel, beneficiary of billions of dollars in American military aid, and hotspot of American NeoCon (nuke them back to the Stone Age) foreign policy. They've got a history in their living memory--if not in ours--of the US/UK/Israel (all nuclear powers) toppling their new democracy in 1954 and inflicting them with 25 years of torture and oppression under the horrible Shah of Iran.

Any government in these circumstances that did NOT have "nuclear ambitions" would be irresponsible. How can it hope to protect itself? This is not a "dangerous behavior." It is a DEFENSIVE behavior. Iran has shown no territorial ambitions--none!

Further, who are the ones profiteering from nuclear technology and spreading it all over the world? Who are the ones WITH territorial and imperial ambitions? First among them is the U.S. And it pisses the U.S./NeoCons off that they can't just grab Iran's oil and install another Shah. The irony of ironies! WE drove Iranians into the arms of the mullahs, in the first place. Now we want to topple THEM, because they've done exactly what the Iranian people (the men anyway) wanted and needed them to do: They've created a strong and insular society that is NOT RUN BY A FATCAT SULTAN OR MONARCH who can be bought by the western powers.

With a U.S. government that has been seized by fascists and NeoCons in alliance with war profiteers, Iran MUST protect itself. There are no indications that its "nuclear ambitions" are crazy or imperial. The crazy imperialists are the ones they are afraid of.


2. Its "sectarian meddling in Iraq."

Okay, WHO invaded Iraq and smashed it all to pieces? WHO--with the NYT as its chief propaganda organ--triggered a sectarian civil war in Iraq?

If China somehow invaded Mexico, slaughtered half a million Mexicans, and smashed the Mexican government and society all to pieces, and the U.S. then "meddled" in Mexico in support of whichever insurgents they could ally themselves with, in order to throw a hostile power out of this neighbor state, would this really be "meddling," or would it be SELF-DEFENSE?

After what the U.S. did to Iraq, to call WHATEVER Iran is doing in Iraq "meddling" is Wonderlandish hypocrisy. Iraq is in chaos. It is occupied by a hostile western giant. BOTH political parties in that hostile western giant are now on board for killing Iraqis until they sign over their rights. And the NYT says that IRANIAN "meddling" is a "dangerous behavior"?!

Well, it may look that way to U.S. corporate billionaires who are greedy for oil and utterly ruthless and conscienceless in how they get it. The trouble is that the NYT, a purported newspaper, is here advocating THAT view. Iran, the "meddler." Jeez.


3. "...missiles to Hezbollah...arming the Taliban and others in Afghanistan."

Give me a break. WHO is the biggest arms dealer on earth? It ain't Iran. Not even close. WHO "lost" 200,000 assault rifles and military pistols in neighboring Iraq, in the midst of a civil war that didn't have to happen? It wasn't Iran. WHO was shoving thousands of weapons out of helicopters and flying away? Not Iran. WHO gave missiles to Iran, in exchange for hostages, and timed it to help Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, way back when? The same NeoCons who are allied with the worst creeps and gangsters in the Middle East NOW--people like Ahmed Chalabi and notorious Iran/Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. WHO is larding billions and billions and billions of dollars in military aid on Saudi Arabia, on Israel (nuclear), on Pakistan (nuclear, and unstable), on the UAE (where Halliburton is now headquartered), on Kuwait (another monarchy), and--except for Israel, on every despot east of Turkey that cooperates with the U.S./Bush military and U.S. corporate exploitation (horrors like Uzbekistan). WHO sold nuclear technology to North Korea? WHO sells it and trades in it everywhere? Not Iran. WHO has been arming the Colombian military and associated rightwing paramilitary death squads for an oil war to topple the democracies of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and RESTORE fascist dictatorships in South America? Not Iran. WHO has the most guns on earth, in every home, in every glove compartment? WHO are the war profiteers and the instigators of war? Not Iran. WHO outed an entire U.S. WMD counter-proliferation network, putting all of its agents and contacts around the world in danger of getting killed--people who were monitoring and STOPPING the spread of dangerous weapons? WHO sold Saddam Hussein chemical weapons?

Oh, you say, a lot of this **U.S.** weapons trade is against the law, is criminal enterprise that the U.S. can't entirely control, is driven by war profiteers inside and outside of government who corrupt officials, influence policy and try to protect their "businesses"?

It is as wrong and inaccurate to blame the GOVERNMENT of Iran for weapons to Hezbollah, or to the Taliban "and others" in Afghanistan (--good God, WHO armed and empowered the Taliban and Al Qaeda IN THE FIRST PLACE?!)--as it is to blame the U.S. government for every U.S. weapon traveling the world, and there is FAR LESS evidence against Iran as a weapons purveyor of any significance (none, in fact), than there is against the government of the United States, for which there are volumes of evidence that it is the world's chief weapons supplier--and the chief instigator and fomenter of war.

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This lame and lying shit that the NYT is spouting--Iran's "many dangerous behaviors"--even as they SEEM TO BE calling for sanity in dealing with Iran, makes me sick. What about Israel's "many dangerous behaviors"--bombing Beirut, killing thousands of innocent people, smashing the delicate Lebanese peace settlement government; developing nuclear weapons; caging and severely oppressing Palestinians; allying itself with the hated Bush Junta? Are the U.S. and Israel not to be held to account for THEIR "many dangerous behaviors"--far, far more dangerous than anything Iran has done. WHAT has Iran done that the U.S. hasn't done magnified a thousandfold?

I loathe these lies, this disinformation and this hypocrisy. It has led us to where we are now, standing at the edge of WW III.

"Dangerous behaviors," my ass. We KNOW who is guilty of "dangerous behaviors" at the risk of all life on earth. And if all life on earth suffers "the cold and the dark," we KNOW whose fault it will be. Not Iran's.