Posted on 06/19/2003 2:39:32 PM PDT by knighthawk
The next explosion you hear may be Iran. The country is ready to blow, in more ways than one. While the world's attention focused on neighbouring Iraq, two trends have developed, or rather ripened to maturity, in Tehran. The first is an attempt by the ruling clerical regime to acquire nuclear capabilities. The second is an attempt by a home-grown reform movement to change or topple the clerical regime.
Neither process is new. Both have been bubbling underneath the surface of more sensational events in the region. In the coming months, though, news of Iran (along, perhaps, with news of North Korea) may well replace al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the front pages.
Protesters in Iran are a genuine cross-section of society. They question the fundamentals of the theocratic state, set up by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at the time of the Islamic revolution of 1979. Simply put, they no longer want their country to be ruled by mullahs. Some object to clerical rule on secular grounds; others on religious grounds, because they regard theocratic claims to infallibility as blasphemous.
The mullahs are fighting back, using vigilantes in addition to the official apparatus of the state. This weekend, for instance, vigilantes stormed two student hostels, one affiliated with Tehran University and the other with Allameh Tabatabai University, injuring about 50 students. Other students have reportedly disappeared. At the same time, Iran's rulers have been stepping up their nuclear development program. According to intelligence sources, Iran has received shipments of Rodong missiles from North Korea in recent months.
Iran's nuclear gambit finally got the attention of even the European Union. Recently in Luxembourg, the EU's foreign ministers not only lined up behind the United States in expressing "serious concern" over Iran using its atomic energy program to acquire nuclear weapons, but went as far as to endorse the idea of a pre-emptive strike against states developing weapons of mass destruction. Though the foreign ministers hedged their backing of pre-emptive war with a requirement that such actions be blessed by the Security Council of the United Nations, it was still a major departure. U.S. President George W. Bush's much-derided "cowboy doctrine" was put on the table as an option by Europe.
This is especially ironic in light of the latest twist in the arguments of leftist opponents of the war in Iraq. Recently some ex-doves have sounded a hawkish note, suggesting in op-ed pieces and letters to editors that they would have gladly supported military measures to topple Saddam Hussein, if only President Bush had asked them to wage war to free the Iraqi people rather than to eliminate alleged chemical and biological weapons that turned out to be illusory.
What can one say, other than that the left knows no shame? To begin with, while the mass graves of Saddam's murderous regime hadn't been televised around the world until after the war, their existence was no secret. Everybody knew, or ought to have known, that Saddam was a tyrant; it hardly required Mr. Bush to say so. But the point is, he said it anyway. He said it repeatedly, offering it as one of his reasons for regime change in Iraq. In his 2002 speech at the UN alone he said it about five times.
"Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal," Mr. Bush said. "If we fail to act, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission," he said. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, as required by Security Council resolutions," he said. Mr. Bush argued that if the UN meets its responsibilities, "the people of Iraq can shake off their captivity." And so on.
Those who now claim they would have supported a war to free the Iraqi people, but opposed it because they didn't think the Bush administration was right about Saddam's weapons, may be shameless, but their intellectual dishonesty is less important than their obtuseness. They're still missing the key point. Liberating the Iraqi people may have been a "great moral cause" as Mr. Bush put it, and "a great strategic goal," but it wouldn't have justified a war by itself. What justified the war against Saddam was the same consideration that would justify a pre-emptive war against the mullahs of Iran.
No, it isn't the repressiveness of their regime. It's not the students brutalized by vigilantes at the Hemmat and Chamran hostels. It's not the hundreds that have been arrested during the recent demonstrations or even the dozens who have disappeared. Rather, it's what President Bush said at the UN in the fall of 2002.
"The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons," said Mr. Bush, talking of Saddam, "is when, God forbid, he uses one." That was the key consideration for the coalition's war against Iraq. It will be the key consideration for a pre-emptive war against Iran as well, should it come to that.
Let that be a lesson to all. Beware the secretaries union!
But now we've had weeks
of media-scum debate
that Iraq didn't
have naughty weapons...
Even if Iran has them,
Bush won't be believed.
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