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Iran: Truth Hits Everybody

What to do when another founding member of the axis of evil triumverate is thought to have WMD (but really this time)?!?

No doubt the ed. board @ New York Times lit up (“Why Not Strike Iran?“)

Clearly, the newspaper reading public is getting obese with the hand-to-mouth fear-mongering. With a side of lies. (biggie-sized). I’m pretty sure Ecclesiastes had other ideas when he spoke of overindulgence and the fat economic lifestyle.
The Sunday Telegraph:

Seven buildings have been erected around the concealed centrifuges which Western governments fear will be used to manufacture weapons-grade uranium at the Natanz site, 200 miles south of Teheran.

And Secretary Rice is just deciding NOW that it might be a good move to transfer high level, Arabic-speaking foreign service officers to the Middle East? A satellite photo does not reveal a secret, but it certainly communicates what no U.S. diplomat or able translator has been able to.
It is nice to see that she’s been cleared by the bosses to actually do something proactive, albeit a lifetime too late… not unlike John Kerry finally taking off the gloves and appearing to have regained feeling in his cojones after his 2004 lead role in “The Grouch that Gave away the Century.”

It’s hard to imagine, as one “career foreign officer” posts, that Rice’s tough talk isn’t anything but hot air.

The U.S. has accomplished little since deposing Saddam, and our mission has been severely stalled by a disorganized enemy with little firepower. Clearly, as Democracy Arsenal, Cirincione @ Carnegie and other clear-headed individuals will write this week: There is no need for military strikes against Iran. Not only is there no need, but it would be distastrous to our already vulnerable homeland, government andn troops. Just what the enemy wants. Spread freedom Mohamed ElBaradeiby bombing a country who’s Mickey Mouse rockets wouldn’t even make it to the Dead Sea. And, Iran is at least three times as populous as Iran with an internet-crazed public that is bent on dissent.

With this negative-track-mind administration its all about the oil. As long as we’re wearing out the merry-go-round in their backyard, Ahmadinejad, Zarqawi, et all will toy with us until they break us.

I’m banking on the cool head of Mohamed ElBaradei, recipient this past October of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to miraculously bring reason back to U.S. foreign policy.

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Afghanistan: The Forward Lateral

The suicide attacks of 2006 in Afghanistan, coinciding with an increase of NATO-led forces in the area, serve as harsh reminders of the unfinished business left behind when the United States shifted its focus in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) to Iraq (based on a series of uncorroborated claims).

When U.S. troops attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, they had the backing of many allies in the war on terror including the United Nations. However, months later, when Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the disasterminds of U.S. foreign policy decided to change course and invade Iraq, the rogue Taliban had not been defeated as imagined, they merely slipped into obscurity; taking refuge in the mountainous borderlands of Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Thus began a series of foreign policy fumbles reulting from the U.S. determination to militarily implement rapid regime change without providing support and logistics necessary for rebuilding. It even appears that some U.S. politicians are prepared to give up on Iraq entirely and start over again with (gulp!) Iran (Krauthammer and Ledeen, among others, think a showdown is inevitable), as USAID today paints a picture of an out-of-control Iraq, replete with “social breakdown” and criminal “free rein.”

So now as the UK has begun displacing some of their troops in Iraq to help lead the NATO mission in Afghanistan, a U.S. envoy is warning them to be prepared for violent opposition from Taliban forces.

Hamid Karzai is left to his own devices to foil future attacks and has launched an investigation to find “where the militants are getting their resources, their support and where they are coming from,” and protests are underway at the site where 26 where killed and dozens injured near Kandahar on Monday.

Holland has pledged to send over 1,000 troops to Afghanistan, but not without a grudge to bear:

Dutch Commander General Dick Berlijn said on Wednesday:

“The actions of the Americans have had little or no effect. The Taliban was dealt with – and that was very necessary – but the country is no more stable as a result….”

Even pacifist Sweden’s mission in the country has recently been threatened:

“[Al-Qaeda] had a focus and direction against Sweden that we hadn’t seen before and were coupled with a criticism of Sweden’s participation in Afghanistan…” — SAPO Security Chief Dagens Nyheter.

There are reports of at least 20 suicide bombings in Afghanistan in these first 17 days of 2006 alone, including an attack near Kandahar Sunday, killing a senior Canadian diplomat.

While President Bush continues insisting that “everything changed” after “September the eleventh,” it is as a result of hasty U.S. policies an actions in the four years since that have led to a dangerous deterioration in worldwide faith in United States’ foreign policies and goals abroad.

Afghanistan is not a forgotten war, at least not outside of the U.S., as UN Security Council President Augustine P. Mahiga of Tanzania has announced an international conference later this month in London to ?provide a solid framework for the next stage of reconstruction.? But it seems that America’s poor handling of the Afghan situation has only left a bitter taste and has inspired fear not in the enemy, but in our NATO allies left to clean up the mess.

And by the way, What’s up with Osama bin Laden?