February 16, 2006

Sometimes, Condi, the work of the Secretary of State is to lessen pressures throughout the world. Your boss’s ‘bring ‘em on’ mentality has us stretched to the breaking-point militarily.

What better way to take the political heat off a litany of failures and reversals than to take on another war? If Karl’s timing is right, the invasion of Iran will occur a month or so before the November elections.

That would be September of this year. Good weather for desert warfare. A reminder to the electorate not to change political horses in the middle of a stream. No matter that it’s a stream of errors, duplicities, mismanagement, tactical blunders, buck-passing, corporate greed, profiteering and chaos.

A case can be made, Madam Secretary, that pressure outside America is already at a maximum, what with

• Egypt canceling promised elections
• Hamas winning the national election in Palestine
• Sharon on his death-bed and the opportunists sharpening knives
• Saddam running his own trial in Iraq
• Muslim rage inflamed by a series of cartoons
• Iraqi militants keeping up the carnage

Not to say that we’re out of harm’s way in our own country, what with the pressure of

• An industrial base on its knees
• Congress in the midst of national disgrace
• Constant edginess about another possible terrorist attack
• Our own national trauma on our hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast
• An administration that has no viable base of popular support

So, what was in your mind when you asked Congress yesterday to provide $75 million in emergency funding to step up pressure on the Iranian government. Expanding radio and television broadcasts into Iran? Promoting internal opposition to the rule of religious leaders?

What have you and the Prez been smoking?

A Secretary of State is supposed to be stateswomanlike. Staggering around the world, slashing at hornet’s nests is not stateswomanlike.

Take a breath. Sit down and get your feet up. We tried this ‘support of dissidents’ in both Iraq and Afghanistan and then, when some more immediately important political whim caught our eye, we left them, exposed, vulnerable, hung our to dry.

Talk to the Kurds. A lot of people died. People who believed what America told them, put their lives on the line and watched as their families were chopped up into little pieces before their eyes, their towns obliterated, the earth covered over.

You were at Berkeley, the expert on Russia. This is not Berkeley and it's not Russia, a country we're not handling all that well either.

Our present mistaken adventure has Iraqis and Afghanis once again with their lives on the line, their families blown up in the markets, their towns obliterated, the earth covered over and it’s not Saddam this time, it’s us.

Saddam is busy dominating the Iraqi court, running his trial.

We will leave as soon as we can leave. Sooner, if it serves the politics. And, when we’re gone, we will have left behind a lesson in what happens to countries who are powerless to overthrow their oppressors.

And they are all powerless.

Think about that, Condi, before you take your $75 million and conduct another anthropological experiment. This is not Berkeley.

Iran is an undamaged country, with a substantial middle class and a working infrastructure. Like so many other misguided countries with inferiority complexes, they’re working toward a nuclear capability to make themselves proud, to be a player.

Thereby squandering resources that could be better used in advancing their commercial interests. A poor choice, but theirs.

They’re a Muslim country, Madam Secretary, held down and smothered by a Mullocracy. Over 75% of Iranians are under the age of twenty-five. Their society is already tottering and poised for change, conversant with and attracted to Western culture and ideology.

Leave them to it.

The last thing Iran or the Middle East (or America) needs at the moment is a politically insecure president, desperate to recover his image and frantic over his legacy, attempting to effect ‘regime change’ yet again.

I have yet to understand why Iran, a country three-quarters of whom love everything Western, is such a devastating nuclear threat, while Pakistan, a country 99% of whom hate our guts, has an acceptable nuclear capability.

Your and W's world-views are simply astounding.

Iran, left to its own devices, is an unraveling Mullocracy, moving inexorably in a direction away from the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. The Rice ‘slashing at hornet’s nests’ foreign policy will coalesce every last evil influence in Iran against the United States.

A war, while not inevitable, is highly likely in these circumstances and here-we-go-again; an American blitzkrieg, destroyed infrastructure, civil collapse, insurgent guerilla warfare and yet another country we can’t begin to repair.

All under a presidency that claims itself to be answerable to no one in time of war.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today