Monday, February 27, 2006

Invade Iran and Syria, quell Iraq and annex parts of the Middle East

Bring back Imperialism

by Ferdinand III

Democracies prefer to sleep than engage in energetic change. Pacifism and wanting to be left alone are strong impulses in a wealthy, narcissistic body politic. Asking a modern nation state to support foreign intervention in the face of political, media and elite disagreement and excitable opposition is extraordinarily difficult. Invading Afghanistan and then Iraq were the necessary first steps in a 10-20 year process of regime changing the fascisms that dominate the Middle East and our oil supplies. There are three good reasons to quickly pacify Iraq and Afghanistan through the complete destruction of any and all opposition and then launch strikes at Syria and Iran and topple these odious regimes. We need to secure our oil supply; destroy terrorist financing and networks; and resuscitate our imperialist hold on a geo-politically important area. In short we need to annex parts of the Middle East.

Iran and Syria are serious problems that cannot be ignored. Iraq will NEVER be stabilized while boy band leader Assad and his gang rule Syria; and the obnoxious fascist Ahmadinejad infects Iran. Recent events bear this out. On Feb. 22, terrorists bombed the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The attack shocked Iraqis and infuriated Shiites. Yet the Iranian government sought to direct public anger toward Washington. ‘Supreme Leader’ Ali Khamenei blamed "intelligence agencies of the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists." Iran's Arabic-language al-Alam television repeated the accusations on Feb. 23. al-Alam is particularly influential among poor Iraqis who cannot afford a satellite dish. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), a movement aligned to Tehran, blamed U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for the attack. "Certainly he is partly responsible for what happened."

As the WSJ and others have reported, while journalists concentrate on the daily flow of blood and decapitations, Iraqis describe a larger pattern in which U.S. officials have failed to acknowledge let alone address. It is of course the political and military failure to stop foreign meddling. Step-by-step, Iranian authorities are replicating in Iraq the strategy which allowed Hezbollah to take over southern Lebanon in the 1980s. The method of control is quite similar; first use a military insurgency, then economic ties and then information and media control and propaganda. Iran and Syria have long supported terror in Iraq – even that which is directed against Shias. Iranian agents are active in funding and aiding terrorist elements in Iraq and there are strong ties between various ‘insurgency’ groups and Iran – predictably around money as well as the common goal of driving America out of Iraq.

I have never understood this about the current war in Iraq: if you want to win, is it not wise to eradicate external support? And if you want to destroy Iranian and Syrian involvement does this not necessitate military action against these regimes? Instead of dumb debates about leaving Iraq or troop write downs how about a debate on how to seal off Iraq’s borders, deal with Iran and Syria and wipe out 50.000 more Islamic fascists – the number that now lie dead in Iraq thanks to US firepower. We need a forward plan for dealing with Iran and Syria before Iran gets a nuclear bomb, and before Iraq descends into further chaos.

Another good reason to wipe out the 2 fascist regimes that border Iraq is oil. What the war in Iraq has done is give the US the platform to break this cartel. Whether the US will do so is another matter. One of the worst foreign policy disasters in the past 100 years was allowing a vital economic resource to be controlled by an ideology that is pagan; anti-Western and violent. That nescient and short term policy miscalculation will forever haunt us. Breaking OPEC is a step in the right direction. A second step is the French response to Iran’s blackmail threat that it will shut down the Persian Gulf. The French have threatened a nuclear retaliation if Iran were to cut off oil shipments from the Gulf. This is the right approach. At some point we will need to militarily intervene in the Gulf to protect our economic well – being.

I see nothing wrong in that. Military intervention to secure our oil will allow us to develop in parallel new technologies; keep our economies growing; and stop us from sending ‘petro-dollars’ to fund fascism in the Arab world. It is a policy long overdue.