Dick’s Fantasy Airstrikes on Iran
11 August 2007 12:29 am by Taylor Marsh
Via Avedon, who is not Atrios, we get the perfect video to go with the latest Dick story.
It’s not that the Dick wanting to launch airstrikes against Iran lede is new or anything. Or that the talking point that all of our problems in southern Iraq are due to the Iranians is something we haven’t heard before. But how many times are the neocons going to float this story?
Behind the scenes, however, the president’s top aides have been engaged in
an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran’s support for Shiite
Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney
several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps
in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.
At some point the White House has got to come to grips with the fact that saber rattling isn’t a foreign policy tactic that actually works, especially after Iraq and during an election season that has the Americans incredibly war weary. It certainly isn’t going to work with Iran. It also has the added benefit of aiding our enemies because it makes us look like frauds trying to promote Iraq II, the Tehran series. But say we did launch an airstrike against targets in Iran. Got that picture? Now load up screen two. The minute after the Bush-Cheney Iran airstrike happens, what it unleashes in the broader Middle East makes carnage look like a food fight. Screen three is our soldiers in Iraq being assassinated one at a time, then en masse. Load the sound track.
Never mind that in the background of this latest Dick story we have the reality that cross-border action between Iran and Iraq has been happening for years and years and years. It’s called their history.
Dick also can’t possibly believe an airstrike helps with broader U.S. foreign policy goals. It’s about something else entirely, which Bush reiterated this week in his press gaggle. Neoconservativism taken to the next step; spreading democracy the goal. Elections rule, cue the trailer. Never mind that “democracy” and those elections are actually going against the U.S. right now; that is, when elections aren’t stacked from the outset against the people. Not very exporting America, now is it?
One of my favorite parts of the article goes like this:
The United States is “becoming more focused on Iranian influence inside Iraq,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks with the Americans. “And we don’t want Iraq to become a zone of conflict between Iran and the U.S.”
Anonymity, I bet. Is this a joke or what? Regardless, I’m not laughing. Stupid rules these days.
