Tweet
Iran
Undoing Iraq by Attacking Iran
Jacob Hornberger’s Commentary
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 -- President Bush is complaining, without irony, that Iran is interfering with the internal affairs of Iraq.
Perhaps it is finally dawning on the president what the regime change his invasion has wrought for Iraq — the ouster of an anti-Iran regime and the installation of a pro-Iran regime.
After all, keep in mind that this was the precise reason that the first President Bush did not order U.S. troops to go all the way to Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War and why U.S. forces stood aside as Saddam massacred Shiite and Kurdish insurgents after the U.S. encouraged them to rebel against Saddam: the first President Bush did not want to install an Islamic Shiite regime in Iraq that would align itself with Iran and, thus, was willing to accept the continuation of Saddam’s regime.
Yet, that is exactly what his son’s invasion has accomplished — the installation of a radical, brutal, Islamic Shiite regime that has aligned itself with Iran. Moreover, like Saddam’s regime, the new regime is torturing and killing insurgents, only this time the victims are Sunnis instead of Shiites and Kurds.
As I pointed out in a July 15, 2005, article entitled “The Pentagon: Islam’s Newest Department of Defense,” that means that U.S. troops have been and are killing and dying for Islam and for a regime that has aligned itself with a nation that President Bush is now contemplating attacking. If President Bush does in fact invade Iran, it might well surprise lots of Americans to learn that Iraq sides with Iran in the conflict.
So, why would the Islamic regime in Iraq continue to want U.S. forces to remain in Iraq? To continue killing their enemy — the Sunnis, who are now the insurgents who refuse to accept the legitimacy of a regime that was installed compliments of a foreign invasion. Here’s just the most recent example of the cozy relationship that now exists between Iran and Iraq, even while President Bush continues to rattle the sabers at Iran. At the very end of a recent article on CNN.com entitled “White House: Can’t Rule Out an Attack on Iran” is the following revealing blurb regarding the Pentagon’s arrest of five Iranians after a recent U.S. attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in northern Iraq: “Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he phoned his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, on Friday to assure him that steps were being taken to free the five. In a written statement, Zebari said he told Mottaki that he hoped the incident ‘would not affect the brotherly relations between the two peoples and the two neighbor countries.’”
And don’t forget this July 12, 2005, Washington Post article in which Iraqi Defense Minister Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi “hailed the military agreement with Iran as a crucial step toward repairing relations between two countries that were at war from 1980 to 1988.”
Neo-cons are advocating war with Iran in part because of the increasing influence and power that Iran has in the Middle East. Isn’t it ironic that the neo-cons are now advocating a new war, this time on Iran, in order to undo the results of their war on Iraq? Just another day in the life of the U.S. government’s pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy.
Undoing Iraq by Attacking Iran
Jacob Hornberger’s Commentary
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 -- President Bush is complaining, without irony, that Iran is interfering with the internal affairs of Iraq.
Perhaps it is finally dawning on the president what the regime change his invasion has wrought for Iraq — the ouster of an anti-Iran regime and the installation of a pro-Iran regime.
After all, keep in mind that this was the precise reason that the first President Bush did not order U.S. troops to go all the way to Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War and why U.S. forces stood aside as Saddam massacred Shiite and Kurdish insurgents after the U.S. encouraged them to rebel against Saddam: the first President Bush did not want to install an Islamic Shiite regime in Iraq that would align itself with Iran and, thus, was willing to accept the continuation of Saddam’s regime.
Yet, that is exactly what his son’s invasion has accomplished — the installation of a radical, brutal, Islamic Shiite regime that has aligned itself with Iran. Moreover, like Saddam’s regime, the new regime is torturing and killing insurgents, only this time the victims are Sunnis instead of Shiites and Kurds.
As I pointed out in a July 15, 2005, article entitled “The Pentagon: Islam’s Newest Department of Defense,” that means that U.S. troops have been and are killing and dying for Islam and for a regime that has aligned itself with a nation that President Bush is now contemplating attacking. If President Bush does in fact invade Iran, it might well surprise lots of Americans to learn that Iraq sides with Iran in the conflict.
So, why would the Islamic regime in Iraq continue to want U.S. forces to remain in Iraq? To continue killing their enemy — the Sunnis, who are now the insurgents who refuse to accept the legitimacy of a regime that was installed compliments of a foreign invasion. Here’s just the most recent example of the cozy relationship that now exists between Iran and Iraq, even while President Bush continues to rattle the sabers at Iran. At the very end of a recent article on CNN.com entitled “White House: Can’t Rule Out an Attack on Iran” is the following revealing blurb regarding the Pentagon’s arrest of five Iranians after a recent U.S. attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in northern Iraq: “Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he phoned his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, on Friday to assure him that steps were being taken to free the five. In a written statement, Zebari said he told Mottaki that he hoped the incident ‘would not affect the brotherly relations between the two peoples and the two neighbor countries.’”
And don’t forget this July 12, 2005, Washington Post article in which Iraqi Defense Minister Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi “hailed the military agreement with Iran as a crucial step toward repairing relations between two countries that were at war from 1980 to 1988.”
Neo-cons are advocating war with Iran in part because of the increasing influence and power that Iran has in the Middle East. Isn’t it ironic that the neo-cons are now advocating a new war, this time on Iran, in order to undo the results of their war on Iraq? Just another day in the life of the U.S. government’s pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy.
Comment