Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran by Tony Karon

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Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran

Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had, as they neared Baghdad, been fired on by an artillery unit using shells filled VX nerve gas — an attack that would have lasted minutes before a U.S. aircrew had taken out the battery, and may have brought a horrible death to a handful of American soldiers. Imagine, further, that the conquering troops had later discovered two warehouses full of VX and mustard gas shells. And later, that inspectors in a science lab had discovered a refrigerator full of Botulinum toxin or even anthrax.

The Administration and its allies in the punditocracy would have “proved” their case for war, and the media would have hailed President Bush as the kind of Churchillian visionary that he imagines himself to be. And goodness knows what new adventures the Pentagon ideologues would have immediately begun planning.

Now, ask yourself, had the above scenario unfolded and the “case for war” (on the terms accepted by the media and the Democrats) been proven, would Iraq look any different today? Would it be any less of a bloodbath; any less of a quagmire for U.S. troops; any less of a geopolitical disaster; any less of a drain on U.S. blood and treasure? Would the U.S. mainland or U.S. interests and allies worldwide be any safer today? In short, would the Iraq invasion seem any less of a catastrophic strategic blunder had the U.S. discovered some caches of unconventional weapons in Iraq?

The answer to all of those questions is obviously no.

And it’s from that point that we must begin our discussion on Iran, and the media’s role in preparing the American public for another disastrous war of choice. The “necessity” in the American public mind to go to war in Iraq was established through the mass media — a failure for which there has been precious little accounting. But that failure runs far deeper than is typically acknowledged even by critics: It was not simply a case of the media failing to properly and critically interrogate the spurious claims by the Administration of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction capability. Sure, even the likes of France and Germany suspected that Saddam may, in fact, have still had a few piles of chemical munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq war. The point, however, is that they did not see these as justifying a war. They recognized from the outset that invading Iraq would cause more problems than it would solve.

The more important failure of the U.S. media, then, is its failure to question the basic proposition that if Iraq had, indeed, had unconventional weapons, then an invasion and occupation of that country was a wise and prudent course of action.

Of course many of the decision-makers in the U.S. media in the wake of 9/11 were scared and confused, and looking for John Wayne-style authority figures for comfort — read back now and you’ll find some astounding toadying up to the self-styled tough guys of the Administration: Bill Keller’s wet-kiss profile of Paul Wolfowitz in the New York Times suggested to me a man playing out Robert Mitchum’s epiphany in The Green Berets, the jaded liberal recognizing the harsh truths of John Wayne’s approach to making the world safe for freedom. And Donald Rumsfeld’s loquacious buffoonery created a comforting sense of certainty among a liberal media intelligentsia suddenly desperate to embrace an imperial mythology, and in the case of the George Packers and Peter Beinarts, to render it profound as a narrative of global liberation. Others simply preferred to avoid anything that might have demagogues branding them “un-American,” for fear of losing ad dollars.

That may help explain the failure, but it does not excuse it.

The fact that carnival barkers like Kristol and Beinart continue to be touted as having opinions worth heeding on these matters is ample evidence that the media has either learned little, or else is more dedicated to a kind of edutainment vaudeville than in empowering the American people to make informed foreign policy choices.

Beinart, in a mawkish attempt to account for himself in the excellent Bill Moyers documentary Buying the War, offers up this little gem: “The argument in the fall of 2002 was not mostly about the facts, it was about a whole series of ideas about what would happen if we invaded.”

Exactly. The fact that Beinart and company were wrong on the facts was only part of the problem. More importantly, it was their ideas about the use of force and its consequences that proved so disastrously flawed. And most of the decision-makers in the mainstream media did not bother to challenge the basic proposition that if Saddam had certain categories of weapons, then an invasion was necessary and beneficial.

The very idea that there are certain categories of weapons that draw down a red mist over rational discussion of geopolitical options is an exceedingly dangerous one — that should be one of the key lessons drawn from Iraq. And that’s exactly what’s being cooked up over Iran, too.

The very same crew of neocons and liberal hawks and the Israeli political establishment and its allies in Washington, are goading America to attack Iran. They insist Iran is going hell for leather to acquire nuclear weapons, and allowing it to do so represents a mortal threat to the West, Arab moderates and Israel. And just when a convenient excuse was needed for the U.S. failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, wouldn’t you know it, it’s those darn Iranians “interfering”. Don’t even think about discussing, what, are you Neville Chamberlain or something? Don’t you know it’s 1938 all over again?

Of course, not all of it is as plain silly as the paragraph above.

(For the record:
# First, there is no evidence that Iran is actually building a nuclear weapon; merely that it is building a civilian nuclear energy program with all elements of the fuel cycle permissible under the NPT that would, in fact, put nuclear weapons easily within reach should they opt to build them.
# Second, even if Iran did possess nuclear weapons, the idea that it would use them to initiate a conflict in which Tehran would certainly be destroyed is based on tabloid-style alarmism about the nature of the regime in Tehran — in fact, Iran’s Islamic Republic has long proved to be guided more by unsentimental realpolitik than by revolutionary fervor in the pursuit of its national interests and regional influence.
# Third, Iran is not “interfering” in Afghanistan and Iraq any more than the U.S. is; it has close ties with the dominant Shiite and Kurdish parties that represent three quarters of Iraqis, for whom its involvement in Iraq is welcome. Thus the recent rebuke to Bush by both Karzai and Maliki on the question of Iran’s role in their countries. Even the Administration’s claims that Iran is targeting U.S. troops in Iraq are largely unproven: In a remarkably shallow treatment of complaints about the New York Times coverage of the issue, its public editor concedes simply that the Times should have told readers of its previous coverage to provide “context” — there is no serious questioning of the contention that because Iran has been known to supply the know-how to build “Explosively Formed Projectiles” (EFPs), any time an EFP is used in an attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the perpetrators are an Iranian proxy. This is worth dwelling on, because it’s typical of the ignorance on various issues — the extent of President Ahmedinajad’s authority in Iran, for example — propagated by the Times. A simple technical exposition of what an EFP is reveals that the technology is easily copied by anyone with know-how and access to very basic munitions. It’s not an actual weapon; it’s a method of building an improvised explosive device to pierce armor. The idea that the use of EFPs in Iraq is automatically a fingerprint of Iran is ridiculous. Someone ought to tell the Times. And by the way, even if Iranian proxies were attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, that wouldn’t signal intent to undermine the Iraqi government; it would simply be an escalation of the secret war between Washington and Tehran. And that’s a war that this President, his deepest psychological scars laid bare by his failure in Iraq — a wound that the psychotic Dick Cheney will press and press — may be ready to escalate by launching an attack on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Indeed, it is not Iranian “interference” that Iraq and Afghanistan fear; it is being caught in the crossfire between the U.S. and Iran.
# 1938? Don’t make me laugh. Nazi Germany was the most powerful military nation on earth, and in 1938 it was poised to invade its neighbors. To make the same claim about Iran is just plain ignorant. )

The drumbeat for war against Iran is actually more subtle than it was in the case of Iraq: The Administration denies it wants war and insists it seeks a “diplomatic solution” to the standoff over the demand that Iran cease uranium enrichment. But by “diplomatic solution,” the Administration and its allies simply mean an Iranian surrender to U.S. terms as a result of non-military pressures. There’s no room to question, here, the basic assumption: (a) that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons; (b) that, as Senator John McCain put it, “the only thing worse than going to war with Iran is an Iran with nuclear weapons.”

McCain delivers that one as if it’s a last word, but it shouldn’t be. He’s trying to effect the familiar demagoguery of narrowing options in the way the Iran issue is defined in U.S. public discussion: If threats and sanctions can’t dissuade Iran from enriching uranium, then military action becomes the “last resort.” The idea that Iran enriching uranium is a “red line” is not questioned. An irreversible slide to war in the U.S. is being carefully constructed by those who are out to persuade the American public that if Tehran refuses to run up a white flag, military action — unfortunate as it may be — becomes essential. And the idea would be to have the outgoing U.S. Administration to do the job, its disregard for law (international and domestic) well established, as is its propensity to orchestrate disaster. The mythology last time around was that invading Iraq would transform the Middle East in a healthy way; this time it is that a “surgical strike” taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities or Revolutionary Guard facilities would settle the matter. Hardly. Iran would respond in an asymmetrical fashion, that would cost many thousands of American lives in Iraq and elswhere over the next decade, might disrupt world oil supplies and more. Together with the Iraq misadventure, it would ensure that the Bush Administration leaves a legacy that might be a latterday equivalent of the Hundred Years War between England and France; an open-ended conflict with the population of most of the Muslim world that the U.S. can’t really win.

So, the basic question on Iran should be exactly the same one the U.S. failed to ask on Iraq: Will military action against Iran leave the U.S. and its interests and allies in the Middle East in a more secure position or in greater peril. That, really, is the only question that matters.

There’s very little discussion in the U.S. media of why Iran might seek nuclear weapons, what alternatives it might have — and might choose to use should it be attacked — and whether the environment can be altered to persuade it that it doesn’t need nuclear weapons. What are Iran’s strategic needs, and can they be accomodated in a framework acceptable to others that at the same time accomodates its interests? And so on.

Intead, we’re essentially asked to believe that Iran wants nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and satisfy some sort of doomsday fantasy. The evidence for this is usually misquoted statements from President Ahmedinajad, and suggestions that he is personally inclined towards an eschatalogical world view (as if the same were not true for President Bush!). The fact is that Ahmedinajad does not actually rule Iran, and would never be in a position to decide on the use of nuclear weapons even if the portrait painted of him were true. Iran’s nuclear program has been in place for decades; Ahmedinajad is unlikely to survive the next Iranian election. (Yes, Iran actually holds elections, at least for the presidency — that may be one reason the presidency doesn’t run the country!) And the regime’s primary concern is to ensure its survival, a principle that governs even its proxy activities abroad — for example, it is conventional wisdom even on the right that Hizballah would attack Israel and U.S. targets in response to an attack on Iran; i.e. their purpose in the Iranian strategic doctrine is asymmetrical deterrence.

It would certainly be quite understandable in the strategic environment in which Iran operates to seek a nuclear weapon; some would argue they’d be stupid not to. After all, three of their arch-rivals, the U.S., Israel and Pakistan have such weapons. And they’ve seen such capability may have helped North Korea evade U.S. military action. The recent U.S. nuclear deal with India, moreover, underscores the fact that Washington is unashamedly selective in applying the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has always ignored the treaty’s premise, i.e. that other countries would refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons in order to allow those that currently have them to disarm. Disarm? The U.S. is the only nation ever to have visited nuclear terror on another nation, a war crime — yes, it is a war crime to deliberately target a civilian population — the discussion of which is quite simply taboo in America. Instead, in the U.S. it is still acceptable to talk of actually using nuclear weapons: Hillary Clinton castigates Barak Obama for ruling out their use against al-Qaeda in Pakistan or Afghanistan!

States do not pursue weapons systems as ends in themselves; and states are hardwired to ensure their own survival. It is to that end that they acquire weapons systems, to protect, enhance or advance their own strategic position and even up the odds against more powerful rivals. As everything from the Cold War to the current deal with North Korea demonstrate, the only way to avoid nuclear conflict is to address the concerns and fears on both sides that might spark such a conflict. Weapons systems are dangerous, but not as dangerous as the conflicts that might result in them being used. And we should also get used to the idea that the globalization of technology on the current strategic landscape makes nuclear weapons likely to become the norm among states — after all, the existing eight nuclear weapons states have no intention of relinquishing theirs, so why would any states that anticipate being in conflict with any of them refrain from pursuing those weapons when the opportunity presents itself?

It is the conflicts that fuel the drive for nuclear weapons that are more dangerous than the weapons themselves, and the problem of those weapons can’t be addressed separately from those conflicts. An Iran bombed to destroy its nuclear power plants would likely be far more dangerous to the U.S. and its allies over the next couple of decades than an Iran that had nuclear weapons within reach might be. The only way to diminish the danger of an escalating confrontation with Iran — which is what bombing its nuclear facilities would certainly do — is to address the conflict between it and its rivals directly, and seek a modus vivendi that can manage their conflicting interests. Iran has shown itself to be ready to engage in such dialogue; it is the Bush administration that has demurred.

At this stage, the U.S. media corps that facilitated the Iraq catastrophe ought to be asking the question, can the Bush Administration do any worse than it has already done in plunging the Middle East into bloody chaos and in destroying countless American and Arab lives — and doing irreversible damage to U.S. interests across the planet. The answer, of course, is yes, but only if the U.S. media once again enables it.

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15 Responses to “Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran”

1.


[…] Wesley Clark Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran » This Summary is from an article posted at Rootless Cosmopolitan on Monday, August 20, 2007 Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had, as they neared Baghdad, been fired on by an artillery unit using shells filled VX nerve gas — an attack that would have lasted minutes before a U.S. aircrew had taken out the battery, and may have brought a horrible death to a handful of American soldiers Summary Provided by Technorati.comView Original Article at Rootless Cosmopolitan » 10 Most Recent News Articles About John McCain […]
Posted by University Update - John McCain - Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran | August 20th, 2007 5:58 pm
2.

Tony,

Great column. You’re right that this is not 1938, and in fact, I think it’s more like 1913. We’re one bullet away.

Actually, I’ve been deeply worried about a potential war for a while now, but when I try to convince my liberal friends they are highly skeptical. They say that Bush is fast losing political power, that he’s a lame duck, and that once the march to war seriously gets started, people won’t buy it. How would you refute this (if you disagree)?
Posted by Shlomo | August 20th, 2007 6:05 pm
3.

[…] Zac Efron Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran » This Summary is from an article posted at Rootless Cosmopolitan on Monday, August 20, 2007 Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had, as they neared Baghdad, been fired on by an artillery unit using shells filled VX nerve gas — an attack that would have lasted minutes before a U.S. aircrew had taken out the battery, and may have brought a horrible death to a handful of American soldiers Summary Provided by Technorati.comView Original Article at Rootless Cosmopolitan » 10 Most Recent News Articles About Fergie […]
Posted by University Update - Fergie - Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran | August 20th, 2007 7:11 pm
4.

[…] Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, August 20: […]
Posted by Suckers born every minute at Antony Loewenstein | August 20th, 2007 8:26 pm
5.

Great post!

The consequences of an attack on Iran would be catastrophic for the US.

Yet I put its likelihood at over 50%.
Quickly the arguments for and against:

AGAINST: Sanity

FOR:

1. Bush’s redemptive strike. His “Osirak” will see him leave the stage with the glow of a military triumph. (Hillary or Mitt can clean up the mess.) Remember that the guy’s last “triumph” was March 2003. He has 16 months left for glory.

2. All the candidates (except Paul and Kucinich) will applaud. Triply so in fact: (i) in time of war, one cheers, not kvetches at, one’s C-in-C; (ii) Iran’s nukes”have to go”; (iii) AIPAC wants it.

3. Congress has already authorized an attack against Iran. In May the House tabled motions requiring Bush to seek congressional authorization for an attack. WIth the IRGC’s designation as a terrorist organization, the 9/11 Force Authorization is quite enough for Bush to do as he pleases. (Not that he’s ever let the constitution get in the way of his desires anyway)

4. The media hate a war of IEDs and blinded soldiers. But they love the video game sort that only the USAF and the Navy can provide. And think of the morale booster a coordinated flattening of Iranian military installations will give Chris Matthews a chance to tell us again how much women love this bombing campaign.

And then what?

Tony has it exactly right.

I thought in 2004 that the next president might withdraw from Iraq. Now I know for certain that he/she won’t.

If Iraq is Vietnam, then Iran might be Cambodia. Maybe before giving Adm Fallon the green light, Bush can have Dr K over to watch “Patton” together, the way Nixon did before bombing the living daylights out of Cambodia.
Posted by Bernard Chazelle | August 20th, 2007 9:08 pm
6.

[…] attitudes of America’s Beltway elites are on the question of war. Posted by Jim Henley @ 8:43 pm, Filed under: Main « « No Exit, Press Enter | Main| […]
Posted by Annals of the Iran-War Clown Car § Unqualified Offerings | August 20th, 2007 9:44 pm
7.

By re-electing Bush in 2004, the American people have reaffirmed my faith that they are ‘STUPID’ enough to be swayed away by another media blitz and another disastrous war campaign in the middle east. They still don’t have a freaking idea (they hardly care anyway) about the open wounds of the Arab hearts and minds, and what another war would mean to them. A democratic congress or senate can do nothing to stop this campaign other than threatening to stop supplying money for more war - and we all know the two words Dick Cheney has for them … !

Among the democratic candidates, no candidate has the guts to say anything constructive about Iran … and even less about mollycoddling Israel & Saudi Arabia with $50 billion in arms over the decade. It appears it has been already been decided and dictated what would happen. We are just watching the show. The next government (unless Kuchinich pulls a Bush) can’t do much to alter the foreign policy of this country. Joe Biden may have ’some’ plan for Iraq - but I’m surprised why no one asks him about Iran.
Posted by ASA | August 20th, 2007 9:44 pm
8.

Obama has always been my personal favorite, because of his inspiring message and because he favors reaching out to the Islamic World instead of bombing it. But his comments about Pakistan worry me. It seems that mainstream viewpoints on the War on Terror are ossifying, just as they did around unconditional aid to Israel.

ASA, you seem to like Dennis Kucinich, but do you really think he has the answers either? His “science of diplomacy” amounts to negotiating with dictators reviled by their people, and often completely divorced and insulated from the “wounds of the Arab hearts and minds.”
Posted by Shlomo | August 20th, 2007 10:37 pm
9.

Shlomo, didn’t want to use Tony’s space for our discussion - but just wanted to clear the idea that Kucinich is my favorite. He is not. I think he is too focused on middle America (his choice I guess) and little on the world. He would probably cut down foreign interaction - but the reason of my comment was whether any of the ‘mainstream’ candidates would take any serious step to change the overall military-threat-backs-up-diplomacy tactic of the US of A.

I am actually not a keen follower of US domestic politics. I am just appalled how the neocons seem to have a magic hat of tricks - and the know-how to keep the people of this country mesmerized. Nobody asks the right questions. No body! No journalist has the guts to grill a senator. When a country’s best news source is a fake-news comedy show (three cheers to Jon Stewart!) - what can you expect? Now I want to ask Tony - why can’t you air the same questions in your Time columns!!! You have to … journos like you are the last line of hope before all hell breaks loose again!!!
Posted by ASA | August 21st, 2007 12:28 am
10.

I wonder what the soldiers and officers in the military think about all of this? Surely some will refuse to press the button.
Posted by Chris S | August 21st, 2007 1:36 am
11.

Iran is KILLING OUR TROOPS with impunity! This CANNOT be allowed to continue! Iran is a state sponsor of TERRORISM! Iran is a LOOSE CANNON regime that is building nuclear weapons!

And here is the clincher; Deterrence requires that the adversary NOT be suicidal!

Hence, deterrence CANNOT work with Iran!

There is no point in delaying the INEVITABLE clash with Iran…the ONLY solution is to BOMB IRAN til they cry UNCLE!

Sung to the melody of the Beach Boys “Barbara Ann”…

BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN!
Posted by John Wayne | August 21st, 2007 4:33 am
12.

Yes, we know attacking Iran is stupid.

Let’s move beyond that.

Because it IS a done deal now.

Robert Baer in Time quotes an Administration official as saying that Bush absolutely WILL attack Iran at some point - if not because of the nonexistent nuclear weapons programs, than because of the nonexistent evidence for Iran “killing US troops.” (Amusing that the answer to “Iran killing US troops” is to allow Iran to kill MORE US troops! But I digress…)

The arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel are BRIBES - to Saudi Arabia to not criticize the US attack on Iran, and to Israel to actually be willing to INITIATE the attack on Iran (which Israel wanted the US to do so it would get the blame when things go badly - as they will, and Israel knows it, but doesn’t care as long as Iran is badly damaged as well.)

So the war is a done deal.

What are you going to do to stop it, given that you can’t get a Democrat to voice the word “impeachment”, and nobody in the US government is listening to any of you any more - if they ever did?

Let me spell out for the readers what is going to happen when Bush attacks Iran.

1) Iran will retaliate against US troops in Iraq. The scores of thousands of Iranian agents already in Iraq (according to Colonel Pat Lang) will coordinate with the Shia militias to cut US supply lines from Kuwait. Within ninety days, the US forces in Iraq will be out of water, food, fuel, and ammunition. According to military expert William Lind, there is a good chance we could LOSE - not be defeated, but LOSE - much of the US military forces in Iraq.

2) The war will drive the price of gas to $5, $10 or more per gallon. Have you thought about what your gas guzzler is going to cost you when this happens?

3) The cost of the Iraq war alone today is $10-12 billion PER MONTH. The added cost of the Iran war will be in the neighborhood of $20-30 billion PER MONTH.

4) China, pissed off at being cut off from Iranian oil and gas, will dump the US dollar, of which it holds trillions. Bye bye, US economy…Your job then will be worth squat…

5) Given the military disaster in Iraq, the exhaustion of the US military, and the shortage of things like ammunition, you can be sure that a draft will be instituted very quickly. Your sons and daughters WILL be going into the military, NOT to college - where they will die by IED and anti-tank weapons, because the Iranians will use the same tactics as the Iraqis are using and as Hizballah used effectively against the Israelis last summer.

6) US casualties will rise to hundreds or even thousands of dead, and tens of thousand wounded PER MONTH. That is, YOUR sons and daughters (unless you’re a politician, of course.)

7) It is possible that Arab terrorists will begin operating in the United States. After a few car bombs clean out Times Square (the US is MADE for car bombs!) and some suicide bombers blow themselves up on your transit station during rush hour, I suspect you’ll be more than willing to grant Bush his “martial law” statutes and even the cancellation of the 2008 or later elections “until the emergency is over”.

8) Iran will be devastated, hundreds of thousands or even millions of its civilians killed. Nonetheless, by following the Vietnam strategy and Fourth Generation Warfare, Iran will bleed the US militarily, economically, and geopolitically to death over the next ten years. It will make Vietnam and Iraq look like a walk in the park.

And this disaster is due to occur within the next six to 18 months.

So what are you going to do about it?

My prediction: nothing.
Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 21st, 2007 5:37 am
13.

We are talking about trying to stop attacks/invasion of Iran ( to no avail). Three years from now, we will talk of stopping attacks/invasion of Pakistan (to no avail, either). If we can possibly survive that, we will then be talking of stopping attacks/invasion of China. America is governed by madmen; end-times Christians, uber-paranoid Zionists, and morally blind partisan hacks. Talk will not halt this madness. The time will come soon, when we must take a stand.
Posted by richard vajs | August 21st, 2007 8:14 am
14.

Re: 1938
You have it backwards, we are the nazis.
Posted by f | August 21st, 2007 8:30 am
15.

Thank you, Tony, for an excellent analysis. My guess is that if we go to war with Iran, it will be through Cheney’s “end-run” scenario — e.g. 1) a “small” US attack on a Revolutionary Guard camp in Iran triggers an Iranian missile attack on a US base killing Am soldiers; or 2) Israel launches an attack in which US denies complicity but Iranian response to Israel and to US soldiers in Iraq causes multiple deaths. In any case of this sort, Bush could get a Congressional majority to vote for war on Iran the next day, and the full war would be on.
Our group in Cleveland, Cleveland Peace Action, believe that we are not powerless. We are meeting with Congressional and Senate staff and making several points:
1) Current policy (sanctions, accusations, threats and provocations) will put Congress in a political bind (see scenarios above) where most will have to vote for war on Iran.
2) We lay out the disastrous “day-after” results of a war, as one of the respondents did above, and in addition, point out that ALL our progressive domestic and environmental programs will go down the drain for years to come.
3) We make the point that we should NOT be forced into a “sanctions with pre-conditions” option vs. war: that experts have proposed workable deterence/inspection/security guarantee options which DO bring security to US, Israel AND Iran.
4) We ask for immediate passage of outstanding bills requiring Congressional approval of war on Iran - as a first step. We also ask for immediate Foreign Policy Committee exploration of these workable no-preconditions negotiating options; and Intelligence Committee exploration of real evidence for and against an Iranian nuclear program; also of Saudi/Jordanian aid to Sunni insurgents (which probably dwarfs Iranian military aid); and of US clandestine “meddling” in Iran, and to get these results out to the public.
5) We are putting letters and op-eds into our local media along these lines.
So far, we have had an “interested” hearing. Will we be too little or too late? Don’t know. Would like to hear from others on positive ideas — not just hand wringing.
Posted by Norman Robbins | August 21st, 2007 9:52 am