Oops–I’m sorry, I got it backward. It’s America that, under the Bush administration, is doing the dramatic expanding and they’re doing it inside Iran. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse the bad guys.
U.S. Is Said to Expand Covert Operations in Iran
Plan Allows Up to $400 Million for Activities Aimed at Destabilizing Government
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 30, 2008; A02
On the other hand, suppose it was Iran admitting publicly to the goal of destabilizing America? Would we be more than a little ticked-off? It just corks my bottle that the United States swaggers through what used to be international diplomacy, with two guns strapped to its belt and its chin stuck out.
Well, Ryan, thanks for the careful parsing. You have denied that U.S. forces are not operating in Iran and that’s a huge relief to almost no one, because the use of U.S. forces is not the charge. “. . . ranging from spying on Iran’s nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country’s ruling clerics,” is the charge.
Your defense is sort of like Reagan telling us U.S. forces were not involved in the Iran Contra disaster–which would have been true (with the exception of a single disgraced Marine colonel).
I suspect that Congress gave its approval to this nefarious adventure in the hope that Bush-Cheney-Addington would busy themselves until the Bush presidency finally limps back to the ranch, without a major military assault on Iran. George has the country unilaterally under that threat and by country I mean America and not Iran.
- further damaging an already strained relationship with Pakistan
- putting those ‘we help’ under the spotlight, so Iran can conduct sweeps and throw all our buddies in prison
- providing fuel for the ‘American infidel treachery‘ label Iranian President Ahmadinejad likes to pin on an otherwise popular America
As for the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, they are indeed enemies of the current Iranian regime, but they’re a mixed-bag at best. These guys were formed as an armed struggle against the Shah of Iran, capitalism, and Western imperialism. Ah yes, the clean-hands guys (those who still have both hands), now devoted to a democratic, secular and coalition government in Iran. When was the last time you heard of an Islamic fundamentalist organization claiming to be pro-West and pleading for funds and weaponry?
Does Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan ring a bell? Wasn’t he in the thick of things as an American ally-supported by Charlie Wilson’s clandestine CIA funding when we armed all these tribes to throw out the Russians?
So now we’re making another move, as stupid, transparent and damaging as the Iran Contra affair (for which a whole bunch of Reagan politicos went to prison) in order to take the largest democracy in the Middle East–a country that has wide American support among the youth that dominate the populace–and throw gasoline all over it in the hope that the conflaration will singe some leaders we don’t like.
Is it worth it if we can only escape a Bush attack on Iran? Maybe, but once a country submits to extortion by its own administration, it’s the finest and most accurate definition of ‘slippery-slopes’ I can imagine.