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The 'Great Satan' Strike Out
By Robert Scheer
05/03/08 "HP" -- -- Are the media dumb or just out to lunch?
Sorry to be intemperate, but how else can one explain the meager
attention paid to the truly historic visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq? Not only is he the first Mideast
head of state to visit the country since its alleged liberation,
but the very warm official welcome offered by the Iraqi
government to the most vociferous critic of the United States
speaks volumes to the abject failure of the Bush doctrine.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!On Tuesday, Condoleezza Rice reiterated the
administration's position that Iran is behind the turmoil that
has engulfed the Mideast from Beirut to Baghdad and, most
recently, Israel, where what she claims are Iranian-supplied
rockets have totally destroyed the belated Bush peace plan.
There is also the matter of Iran's nuclear program, which
President Bush condemned once again over the weekend. But what
leverage does the United States have over Iran when, as the
image of Ahmadinejad holding hands with the top leaders of Iraq
demonstrated to the world, we have put the disciples of the
Iranian ayatollahs in power in Baghdad? There is no face-saving
exit from Iraq without the cooperation of Tehran, and the folks
who call America the "Great Satan" now hold the high cards.
How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a U.S. president who
has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was
able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road
that U.S. dignitaries fear to travel. His love fest with Iraq
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran's side
against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of
the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad's
claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not.
Nor did the Iraqi leaders take exception to Ahmadinejad's
insistence that the U.S. has only brought terror to the region
and that the continued American presence is the main obstacle to
peace. On the contrary, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
pronounced his talks with fellow Shiite Ahmadinejad "friendly,
positive and full of trust." Video of Talabani, who asked that
Ahmadinejad call him "Uncle Jalal" after holding hands and
exchanging kisses with the Iranian president, was broadcast
throughout the region.
Saddam Hussein went to war with Iran, but George W. Bush has
given his Iranian foes a Shiite-run ally. Iran is now a major
trading partner of Iraq that has offered a $1 billion loan, the
border is increasingly porous as religious pilgrimages have
become the norm, and many investment projects supervised by
Iranians are in the works. Instead of isolating the "rogue
regime" of Iran, the Bush administration has catapulted the
theocrats of Tehran into the center of Mideast political power.
There can be no peace, whether in Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq, without
the cooperation of the ayatollahs of Iran. If that was the
intention of the neoconservative cabal that led Bush into this
folly, its members should be tried for treason.
That was, however, obviously not what the neocons expected from
the invasion of Iraq, which they engineered in the wake of 9/11
with a much rosier scenario in mind. The saying that there is no
need to attribute to mendacity what can be explained by ordinary
stupidity aptly defines the neoconservative folly. Clearly the
neocons were conned by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi, the rogue
banker accused by the CIA of slipping U.S. secrets to Tehran,
into believing that a "liberated" Iraq would advance democracy
in the region, not to mention the security of Israel. That the
opposite has occurred is no big problem for them as they emerge
with their careers intact.
The leading neocon publicist, William Kristol, has even been
rewarded for never getting it right with a premier spot on the
New York Times opinion pages, so yes, in the punditry business,
one does fail upward.
But for Bush, his signature issue, the battle against terrorism,
is a shambles. The terrorists are very much on the rise in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Bush neglected for an Iraq
sideshow that has cost over a trillion dollars and tens of
thousands of lives. But the long-run price will be far higher,
with the blowback from the massive instability that he has
engendered in the region.
When Bush has finally retired to that ranch, cutting sagebrush
to his heart's content, his all-consuming smugness might ever so
subtly be troubled by the memory of a father who knew best, and
who warned against the terminal foolishness of seizing Baghdad.
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