US helping Iran
I'm glad I'm not the only one picking up on this. Glen Greenwald has a great post today on how US actions in the Middle East have helped Iran enormously. Particularly our actions in Iraq:
If we're going to get anywhere, we can't be so blatantly incoherent and self-contradictory in our actions. Step one: impeachment. (There's certainly sufficient legal grounds from the illegal wiretapping rulings alone). I just can't see Bush and his circle getting their heads screwed on straight in time to get a coherent foreign policy going. Even a policy I disagreed with would be better than this shooting ourselves in the foot and boosting Iran's regional stature project in which we are currently engaged.
Iraq is a war that is saddled with more incoherent premises than can be counted. Yet the most baffling part of it has to be that the more we succeed in stabilizing the new government and empowering majority rule, the more we hand over to our arch Iranian enemy (the New Hitlers) control over large parts of that strategically vital country. Thus, the principal result in exchange for all the lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered is to ensure that Iraq will be ruled by those most opposed to U.S. interests.But it's not just our actions in Iraq that benefit Iran. The other forgotten war, in Afghanistan, has benefitted them, too. The Guardian has an article on a recently released study by Chatham House (I don't know anything about that organization) spelling out the consequences of our recent actions in the region:
I think the worldview of the Bush administration makes any progress in the Middle East impossible. It wants contradictory things: Middle Eastern states that are both democratic and pro US-Israel. They want to diminish Iran's influence, but also want to diminish Iran's neighbors. They want to use military force on a nation to get it to like us more. (That worked so well when Al-Qaeda attacked us, didn't it?) They want the backing of the world community, but also want to go it alone and not be encumbered by the tedious process of building alliances and forging consensus. They want more leverage with Iran and Syria, but back Israel's military actions unconditionally, even when a large number of Israelis think those military actions were misguided.In particular, Iran has now superseded the US as the most influential power in Iraq, regarding its former adversary as its "own backyard". It is also a "prominent presence" in its other war-torn neighbour, Afghanistan, according to Chatham House's analysts.
The report said: "There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East.
"The United States, with coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran's regional rival governments - the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in April 2003 - but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."
If we're going to get anywhere, we can't be so blatantly incoherent and self-contradictory in our actions. Step one: impeachment. (There's certainly sufficient legal grounds from the illegal wiretapping rulings alone). I just can't see Bush and his circle getting their heads screwed on straight in time to get a coherent foreign policy going. Even a policy I disagreed with would be better than this shooting ourselves in the foot and boosting Iran's regional stature project in which we are currently engaged.
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