Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Russia Is Not Scared of Iran, Are We?

Today the AP ran a story with the headline, "Rice Says Iran is An Obstacle to US Goals In the Middle East." I am no apologist for Iran, but if they helped bring the Northern Alliance to the table in Afghanistan and they are re-building the infrastructure in Iraq - I kinda wonder what the US Goals really are.

Geography is stronger than rhetoric - the United States cannot isolate Iran in the Middle East any more than the United Kingdom can isolate Argentina in South America. The Iranians have money, technical know-how, and an interest in leading that part of the world - and outside the Iraq-Iran war, they have used those assets in peace.

Most of the story was just bs setting you up for the real story, that the US is backing off on European missile defense until Iran actually tests a ballistic missile. This is interesting because President Putin of Russia never believed the missile shield was about Iran in the first place.

The reality is that it is hard to tell what we are trying to do over there. We don't want "rogue" states with nukes, yet we offer to share nuclear technology with Egypt - home of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. We want peace and stability in Iraq, but we switch support between the Sunnis and the Shiites whenever one side gets too strong - keeping the battle raging in perpetuity. We hail the peacefulness of the Iraqi Kurd Autonomous Region, only to fail to go after the terrorist PKK there and forcing Turkey's hand. Guess what, the IKAR ain't peaceful any more. We give all this rhetoric about peace and stability in the region, while we send special forces into Iran to scout targets for a future attack.

The doublespeak would be sinister and diabolical if it wasn't for the fact that it feels like our foreign policy just doesn't make much sense at all.

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