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julescrittenden.com
A Greater Iranosphere
Joe Lieberman lays out the case on Iran, but stops short of painting the full picture. Here’s his take on Iran at WSJ:
While some will no doubt claim that Iran is only attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq because they are deployed there–and that the solution, therefore, is to withdraw them–Iran’s parallel proxy attacks against moderate Palestinians, Afghans and Lebanese directly rebut such claims.
Iran is acting aggressively and consistently to undermine moderate regimes in the Middle East, establish itself as the dominant regional power and reshape the region in its own ideological image. The involvement of Hezbollah in Iraq, just revealed by Gen. Bergner, illustrates precisely how interconnected are the different threats and challenges we face in the region. The fanatical government of Iran is the common denominator that links them together.
The whole thing here. Lieberman is the clearest-thinking, most principled Democrat on Capitol Hill, which is why, technically, he isn’t one any more. He lays the case out against Iran well. Here are some things he didn’t say.
We are engaged in an evolving, multi-generational war. It’s about oil, though not in the way the disengagement camp likes to say it is. It’s about ideology, domination and imperialism, but in exactly the opposite way that the disengagers like to say it is.
Those who want to disengage precipitously and pretend that we don’t face real threats in the Middle East start with the premise that Saddam Hussein was never a threat. History shows that is patently false. Saddam repeatedly tried to control as much of the world’s major oil supply as possible, and there is nothing to suggest he was done with that project. His apparent lack of large stockpiles and active WMD programs was a temporary setback. Saddam’s not a threat anymore.
Iran has the same ambitions. Right now, Iran is a technologically backward economic basketcase, but Iran understands that if it can humiliate and drive out the wavering superpower and control the world’s major oil supply, that won’t matter.
Another false premise put forward by the disengagement camp is that we fight for oil, and if we cut our dependence on foreign oil, we won’t have to fight. It is an isolationist argument that ignores some fundamental realities. Cutting dependence on foreign oil and developing cleaner, renewable energy sources may be good things for economic and environmental reasons, but accomplishing them will not solve our problems in the Middle East.
Even if we did not use a drop of Middle Eastern oil, the oil fields there would remain some of the most strategically important real estate in the world. Once Iran controls them, Iran will have significantly more influence over Europe, China, Russia, Japan, Africa, etal, than it has now. Iran, which has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis and tens of thousands of Arabs on its hands from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq, possibly as far afield as Lockerbie, will be on the way to becoming a world power. A murderous, autocratic Islamic fundamentalist third-world power, but a world power.
Disengagement advocates think we are naive and wrong to push democracy on people who are not ready for it, who may not want it, who have other cultural values. Some elements of those arguments may be true, though the evidence of the Muslim thirst for democracy and good government is evident from Lebanon to Baghdad to Kabul and even to Gaza … frustrated and sometimes tragically misguided though the choices have sometimes been. Small steps have been taken among our allies, from Kuwait to Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia, and there remains the real threat, as in Gaza, that radical Islamists and terrorists can use the ballot box to gain power. Fortunately, for the evolution of the region, Gaza now stands as a flaming example of the consequences of choosing poorly.
The spread of democracy in the region under the Bush administration has been imperfect and in some cases violently challenged. By Iran and its proxies, largely, as Lieberman notes. But it represents a significant leap forward, and it is necessary to look at the alternatives to Western-sponsored democratization projects to see what is at stake and why continuing this difficult project initiated by the Bush administration is in our vital national interest.
Iran is the power that seeks to fill the vacuum that would follow our exit. A false democracy that is in fact a theocratic dictatorship. A terrorism-supporting world power that seeks not only economic and military domination, but spiritual and cultural domination of the region and the world. Quick show of hands. Who would like to see a greater Iranosphere? |
