Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Chicago Tribune
June 16, 2008 By Georgie Anne Geyer
WASHINGTON—Step over to your globe of the world, or get out your atlas, and look up Iran. You will find it to be a huge blob deep in the Middle East, bordered by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia and—of course!—our very own Iraq.
Then move your finger to the next country to the west, Iraq. There you will find a smaller country, its shape oddly contorted and looking, from a geographical viewpoint, more vulnerable. It is surrounded by Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and—of course!—what our leaders, in their wisdom, have decided is our most implacable enemy in the world, Iran.
Our warnings to enemy Iran never end, as is surely the case when that ferocious decider, George W., decides upon a nemesis. Even this week, as the Europeans welcomed President Bush to the U.S.-European Union summit, having apparently wearied of hating him for the Iraq War, he was still attacking Iran. To bolster his own hatred for the Persian Shiite state, he was urging the Europeans to step up financial sanctions against it and to deter companies from signing deals with the energy-rich state.
On those very same days that Bush was in Europe, the American-sponsored Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was visiting Tehran. Strange, you might initially think. Yet, stranger still when you see the friendliness between Maliki and the quintessentially odd Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his talk of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.
In fact, the talks came as (1) Tehran was pushing for greater military cooperation between the two countries, and (2) Iraq was facing the end of the UN mandate authorizing the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and thus becoming deeply critical of that presence.
Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted in The Washington Post as saying of the two countries' friendship, "Iraq's ambition to build a strong military calls for further cooperation with Tehran, and for Baghdad to draw on its neighbor's defense potential."
A leading Iranian journalist, Ahmad Zeidabadi, of the magazine whose title is translated as Today's Citizen, saw even deeper meaning. Some Iranian political groups, he wrote, "look at Iraq as an ally, which because it is majority Shiite, should be on Iran's side and thus change the balance of power in the region toward Iran's favor against the U.S."
Ah, but, you observe sagely, was it not we, at the cost to date of 4,000-plus American lives, tens of thousands of Americans wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and other dead, who have put this Iraqi regime in place? Surely our Iraqi friends will not ally themselves with our "enemy"? Surely they must still remember a million casualties themselves in their horrible 1980s war with Iran, and see our "visit" into the area as a liberation?
Well, start by taking out the "surelys."
For immediately after his June 8 visit to Tehran, Maliki and the leaders we put into place in Iraq began days of acrimonious public debate in Baghdad in which Iraqi politicians denounced what they said were American demands to maintain indefinitely nearly 60 bases in their country. Moreover, top officials called for a radical reduction of the U.S. military's role there and said that American troops should be confined to military bases unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance. One senior Shiite politician close to Maliki proclaimed: "Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore."
To sum up, Iraq and Iran are growing closer and closer. The two regimes see their interests increasingly intertwined. It turns out that, if the American invasion and occupation have done one thing, they have pushed Iraq and Iran together and made them forget the 1980s. In short, they have finally found common ground—against us.
The White House would say this is a terrible thing, that the Iraqi regime is elected, democratic and hopeful, while the Iranian regime, though elected, is an aggressive, vicious regime that seriously threatens Israel and the world with potential nuclear weapons.
But the more painfully realistic analyst would simply say of the unity between these two neighboring countries, "Why not?" Look at the geography. Do we really expect the Iraqis, with their history of great civilizations destroyed from outside, to deal more easily with invaders from far away than with the country next door, made up of common Shiite relatives and friends?
Liking one country or another has nothing to do with a realistic foreign policy; creating one leader or another has even less to do with it, because those interventions create only resentment and resistance of the kind that is now rising in Iraq against us. But publicly respecting regimes, even when they are not respectable, is the way to work, step by step, to replace men such as Ahmadinejad, who is not even supported by the majority of Iranians, with more amenable leaders. As it is, our policies provide his mad intentions with form and promise.
It seems so obvious, when you think about it, but it is not at all obvious to our leaders. They still want to think they are liberators, when in fact they are looked upon in Iraq and Iran more as the direct descendants of the British colonialists who ruled that region for so long. That is why Maliki goes to Tehran and is welcomed; that is why Ahmadinejad goes to Baghdad and is cheered.
Get out your map. It's really quite simple.
Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.
June 16, 2008 By Georgie Anne Geyer
WASHINGTON—Step over to your globe of the world, or get out your atlas, and look up Iran. You will find it to be a huge blob deep in the Middle East, bordered by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia and—of course!—our very own Iraq.
Then move your finger to the next country to the west, Iraq. There you will find a smaller country, its shape oddly contorted and looking, from a geographical viewpoint, more vulnerable. It is surrounded by Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and—of course!—what our leaders, in their wisdom, have decided is our most implacable enemy in the world, Iran.
Our warnings to enemy Iran never end, as is surely the case when that ferocious decider, George W., decides upon a nemesis. Even this week, as the Europeans welcomed President Bush to the U.S.-European Union summit, having apparently wearied of hating him for the Iraq War, he was still attacking Iran. To bolster his own hatred for the Persian Shiite state, he was urging the Europeans to step up financial sanctions against it and to deter companies from signing deals with the energy-rich state.
On those very same days that Bush was in Europe, the American-sponsored Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was visiting Tehran. Strange, you might initially think. Yet, stranger still when you see the friendliness between Maliki and the quintessentially odd Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his talk of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.
In fact, the talks came as (1) Tehran was pushing for greater military cooperation between the two countries, and (2) Iraq was facing the end of the UN mandate authorizing the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and thus becoming deeply critical of that presence.
Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted in The Washington Post as saying of the two countries' friendship, "Iraq's ambition to build a strong military calls for further cooperation with Tehran, and for Baghdad to draw on its neighbor's defense potential."
A leading Iranian journalist, Ahmad Zeidabadi, of the magazine whose title is translated as Today's Citizen, saw even deeper meaning. Some Iranian political groups, he wrote, "look at Iraq as an ally, which because it is majority Shiite, should be on Iran's side and thus change the balance of power in the region toward Iran's favor against the U.S."
Ah, but, you observe sagely, was it not we, at the cost to date of 4,000-plus American lives, tens of thousands of Americans wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and other dead, who have put this Iraqi regime in place? Surely our Iraqi friends will not ally themselves with our "enemy"? Surely they must still remember a million casualties themselves in their horrible 1980s war with Iran, and see our "visit" into the area as a liberation?
Well, start by taking out the "surelys."
For immediately after his June 8 visit to Tehran, Maliki and the leaders we put into place in Iraq began days of acrimonious public debate in Baghdad in which Iraqi politicians denounced what they said were American demands to maintain indefinitely nearly 60 bases in their country. Moreover, top officials called for a radical reduction of the U.S. military's role there and said that American troops should be confined to military bases unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance. One senior Shiite politician close to Maliki proclaimed: "Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore."
To sum up, Iraq and Iran are growing closer and closer. The two regimes see their interests increasingly intertwined. It turns out that, if the American invasion and occupation have done one thing, they have pushed Iraq and Iran together and made them forget the 1980s. In short, they have finally found common ground—against us.
The White House would say this is a terrible thing, that the Iraqi regime is elected, democratic and hopeful, while the Iranian regime, though elected, is an aggressive, vicious regime that seriously threatens Israel and the world with potential nuclear weapons.
But the more painfully realistic analyst would simply say of the unity between these two neighboring countries, "Why not?" Look at the geography. Do we really expect the Iraqis, with their history of great civilizations destroyed from outside, to deal more easily with invaders from far away than with the country next door, made up of common Shiite relatives and friends?
Liking one country or another has nothing to do with a realistic foreign policy; creating one leader or another has even less to do with it, because those interventions create only resentment and resistance of the kind that is now rising in Iraq against us. But publicly respecting regimes, even when they are not respectable, is the way to work, step by step, to replace men such as Ahmadinejad, who is not even supported by the majority of Iranians, with more amenable leaders. As it is, our policies provide his mad intentions with form and promise.
It seems so obvious, when you think about it, but it is not at all obvious to our leaders. They still want to think they are liberators, when in fact they are looked upon in Iraq and Iran more as the direct descendants of the British colonialists who ruled that region for so long. That is why Maliki goes to Tehran and is welcomed; that is why Ahmadinejad goes to Baghdad and is cheered.
Get out your map. It's really quite simple.
Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.