The end of Iran
OMFG. I feel so sorry in advance for the Iranian people. They are for it. The war drums are not just beating; they are getting deafening. When a crazy fucker like Michael Ledeen is taken seriously, you know that the shit and the fan are going to get acquainted.The scariest thing in Ledeen's ravings is this:
Lopez: Was Iran involved in 9/11?
Ledeen: I don’t know. It’s possible, but certainly unproven. The most tantalizing factoid is the story of Ramzi bin al Shibh, the logistics officer for the 9/11 operation. He went to Iran for a month in late December, 2000, and then he returned to Iran less than a week before 9/11.
Yes, that's right. They pounded "Saddam was responsible for 9/11" to get the sheeple behind invading Iraq. Now it's "Iran was responsible for 9/11".
Ledeen doesn't know much about Iran. How can anyone who does say this:
Iran, not a single individual, is getting more dangerous. Ahmadinejad is the mask currently worn by the regime.
Iran, like most places, has several factions that jostle for power. Ahmadinejad is not particularly popular with the most powerful, but won the popular election for president. Not understanding that is the mark of someone who doesn't really have any grasp of Iranian politics.
He also says:
Lopez: Who are the dissidents from Iran we should be supporting? How can we?
Ledeen: They are the Iranian people, probably upwards of 80 percent of them, more than fifty million. We should broadcast to them, assemble strike funds for them, get them laptops, servers, anti-censoring software, etc.
Which simply isn't true. What Westerners don't understand about people in the Middle East is that many of them fear modernity and hate the West. They see us as purveyors of porn, worshippers of material culture, godless, ugly people who will destroy their native cultures if we are allowed to.
Iran has its supporters of modernity, of course. But suggesting that they are 80 per cent of the country is ludicrous.
But this is just the wiffling of a rightard with no clue. It gets scarier, because I think this is a trial balloon for the neocon line on Iraq:
Lopez: So does bin Laden and crew work for Iran? Have they always?
Ledeen: I don’t know about “always.” Certainly they have worked closely with Iran for quite a while. I think the Iranian domination of al Qaeda started when we destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The key leaders ran to Iran and have mostly been there ever since.
If you were to write a list of things Al Qaeda would like to see, the destruction of Shia Iran would not be all that far behind the removal of the US from the Middle East. The idea that bin Laden "works for" Iran is as credible as the idea that he "works for" the US.
Hang on though. He did used to work for the US! And truth is, it's tons more likely he still does than it ever will be that he works for Ahmedinajad.
But it gets worse. Remember how when we were on our way into Iraq, the right lied that we would be welcomed with open arms? How about this for deluded:
Lopez: If we bombed Tehran tomorrow, what might happen?
Ledeen: There is no intelligent answer to that question, except: we’d kill a lot of people. there’s a recent poll according to which the general attitude is, if you’re going to bomb us to bring down the regime, that’s O.K. but if you’re going to bomb us to shut down some nuclear facilities, we’re against it.
But I have no idea if those polls are reliable. it makes sense to me, but I’m not in Tehran.
If it makes sense to you that the Iranian people would welcome being bombed as an approach to ridding them of a "regime" many of them support, and a president many of them voted for, you should not be given the ear of those in power, you should be restrained for your own safety and that of others.
posted by Dr Zen @ 2:01 pm
5 Comments:
They see us as purveyors of porn, worshippers of material culture, godless, ugly people who will destroy their native cultures if we are allowed to.
Which is of course true.
It's too bad that modernity has come to be confused with decadence, but it's easy to see how it might happen in people's minds. While freedom may be good as a concept, its results are frequently disgraceful.
Black Comedy at its best, you just have to laugh, that or slit your wrists.
After the Iraq fuck up i can't see the American people (despite 90% of them having no higher Brain function) falling for the Iran Al Keyda line.
But what does that matter Bush will do exactly what his puppet masters tell him to do anyway.
i can't see the American people ... falling for the Iran Al Keyda line
But they will vote in a Democrat, and three years later it will be evident (outside the US if not inside) that nothing had changed, that the same program was in place only wearing a different face. Don't believe Dem "anti-war" rhetoric. The country has been controlled by a single set of interests for a long time. That I have sometimes agreed with those interests doesn't change it or excuse it.
"That I have sometimes agreed with those interests doesn't change it or excuse it"
Nor does it excuse you, and everyone like you for whom world domination is more important than the good of the people in it.
What's sick and utterly disgusting is how detached this discussion about bombing became from anything human. I mean, they talk about killing people and openly suggesting that there are some lives that are expendable. For some reason in this twisted society, if one talks about planning to kill one person in secret, he is taken to prison, but these assholes talk about killing thousands of people en masse, and they are smiled and nodded to. Like, well, you can't make cakes if you don't break any eggs, so long as I know, of course, that my eggs are safely stashed away.
It makes me want to tie this fucker (and all who agree with him) down and show him images of war and death he's so casually discussing Clockwork Orange-style. The problem is, though, I'm not sure it would help. I'm not sure anything would help, save dropping him in the middle of an empty town and then dropping a bomb on it.
I'm just bemused at the presumption that it should be America's business who rules Iran. People like Don have totally bought into the imperial story. It's all a bit "White Man's Burden".
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