09/03/07 "ICH"
-- -- On July 11 this year congress loaded and
pointed a gun at Iran in the form of Lieberman’s
amendment to the Defense Authorization act (S.AMDT.2073,
amending H.R.1585 and S.AMDT.2011). That was more than
six weeks ago, yet the most pivotal feature of the
amendment, and indeed of history in the making, has gone
entirely unremarked: It is a demonstrable non-sequitur.
Claiming that Iran
is complicit in the murder of US soldiers, the amendment
is a crucial link in an unrolling geopolicital chain of
events. Yet it depends entirely on a fallacious
inference smuggled under sobering rhetoric. The crux is
quoted for reference below from points a17 to b2.
(Prior points
accuse Iran of a direct or indirect involvement in
neighboring and fellow Shia-dominated Iraq to an extent
dwarfed by analogous actions of the US in any war-torn
Latin American country.)
“(17) On January
20, 2007, a sophisticated attack was launched by
insurgents at the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination
Center in Iraq, resulting in the murder of five American
soldiers, four of whom were first abducted.
(18) On April 26,
2007, General Petraeus stated that the so-called Qazali
network was responsible for the attack on the Karbala
Provincial Joint Coordination Center and that ``there's
no question that the Qazali network is directly
connected to the Iranian Qods force [and has] received
money, training, arms, ammunition, and at some points in
time even advice and assistance and direction''.
(19) On July 2,
2007, Brigadier General Bergner stated that the United
States Armed Forces possesses documentary evidence that
the Qods Force had developed detailed information on the
United States position at the Karbala Provincial Joint
Coordination Center ``regarding our soldiers'
activities, shift changes, and defenses, and this
information was shared with the attackers''.
(20) On July 2,
2007, Brigadier General Bergner stated of the January 20
Karbala attackers, ``[They] could not have conducted
this complex operation without the support and direction
of the Qods Force.''
(b) Sense of
Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the murder of
members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign
government or its agents is an intolerable and
unacceptable act of hostility against the United States
by the foreign government in question; and
(2) the Government
of the Islamic Republic of Iran must take immediate
action to end all training, arming, equipping, funding,
advising, and any other forms of support that it or its
agents are providing, and have provided, to Iraqi
militias and insurgents, who are contributing to the
destabilization of Iraq and are responsible for the
murder of members of the United States Armed Forces.”
Given the recent
history of executive decisions and legislation based on
dubious information, it would be foolish to simply grant
a17-a20, yet even if entirely true, it is plainly
insufficient grounds for b1. That US soldiers were
murdered by agents of Iran does not follow from a17-
a20, which at most implies that such murder, in four of
five cases subsequent to abduction, was committed by a
group receiving Iran's support and direction with
respect to the tactical operation.
That the Iranian
connection extended to involvement in the specific
operation, as opposed to support and direction via prior
non-specific funding and training, is not entailed by
a17-a20. But even presuming direct Iranian involvement
in the operation, a possible or probable scenario is
this: during the operation one US soldier was murdered
without Iranian intent or killed in action while the
other four were subsequently murdered instead of
duly treated or released by the group which collaborated
with (or even thereby acted as) Iranian agents during
the tactical operation. Indeed, this would
be the natural assumption given the chilling implication
of the words ‘four of whom were first abducted’.
Hence no
description in the amendment provides license to infer
“the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces
by a foreign government” as per the "sense of congress"
related in b1. Bear in mind here that as the potential
pivot of past and future history, this egregious defect
of the amendment is the very antithesis of a fine point.
Mark also that b2
is in the classic mould of ‘Saddam must immediately
comply with our dictates (regardless of any false
presumptions thereof).’ Lieberman didn’t even try to
tone down the reminder that history is repeating in an
atrociously short cycle. Iran is effectively ordered in
b2 to leave every combat-relevant aspect of its beset
Shia-dominated neighbor to the US, Israel’s champion.
Being diplomatically absurd from any but a disingenuous
angle, b2 is thus crafted to be violated according to
its own hypocritical terms, and so surely will be.
(Hypocritical: the
US army destabilized Iraq and makes the Iraqi security
forces in its own image. Such high standards of
chaos-induction render militia and insurgency noble by
default, insofar as ignobility is an unusual achievement
for resistances as opposed to occupiers).
This amendment
went through 97-0. Having inclusive ideals, do
democrats feel obliged to take FOX propaganda seriously
because it works on a minority?
The mandate of the
most recent election was to stop all this insane
warmongering. The approval rating for Congress is at an
all-time low. Yet Democrats, quite able to join these
two dots, remain intensely eager to displease and even
to risk our species for a cynical 2008 election
strategy: “Let republicans dig their own grave. The
deeper the hole the better.”
