Thursday, January 18, 2007

We don't talk to evildoers

Did the Warpresident create the Iranian impasse in order to justify another war? According to the BBC, aides to the former Secretary of State Colin Powell say that back in 2003, Iran offered to make essentially the concessions Bush is demanding. In exchange for ending its hostility and support of terrorism we were asked to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an anti-Iranian insurgency, was allowed by Saddam Hussein to base itself in Iraq before the American invasion.

Powell's State Department apparently recommended that we go along with the deal, which might well have ended Iranian supported insurgencies in Iraq and Iranian funded militants like Hezbullah elsewhere, but predictably Dick Cheney's White House shot it down. The world might have been a little better today, a war in Lebanon averted and Iraq closer to becoming a functioning country, but we seem poised for an all out war with Iran and this story, if true, raises questions.

If the invasion of Iraq was conceived as a gateway to a war with Iran, one could see why peace would be anathema, why persuading Iran to make it's nuclear program transparent and its militancy cease would be a stumbling block for the Halliburton Crusade. If Cheney actually believes that we are fighting the devil, are at war with "evildoers" and that negotiation is heresy, one can conclude that the problem in Washington is not incompetence but delusion - and of course they could simply be a bunch of bumbling, stupid, greedy, power intoxicated and incompetent fools. I report, you decide.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a theory that GWB and company's motivtion for invading Iraq on the cheap was to make their thinly veiled plans for Syria and Iran more doable - resource-wise.

Anonymous said...

I'v allways thought oil was the subject

Anonymous said...

I'v allways thought oil was the subject