6-15-07, 9:51 am
It is with increasing frustration that one notes the U.S. government making the same mistakes over and over again. Now we hear from Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Ind., CT) that America must consider attacking Iran. The Senator is apparently outraged that Iran is training Iraqis to kill Americans. A look at his statements on this topic is troubling:
“They can't believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans. We cannot let them get away with it.”
Mr. Lieberman is shocked at the notion that Iranians feel they have ‘immunity’ for killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Does America, one longs to ask him, feel it has immunity for killing Iraqis, overthrowing their sovereign government, depriving them of basic services, and causing up to two million of them to flee their homes? Is the world community letting the U.S. ‘get away with it?’ Certainly Congress is.
“…we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”
One’s memory is indeed short if one forgets the ‘good evidence’ the U.S. had that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction aimed at America and set to go off at any minute. As President George Bush told the United Nations on September 12, 2002: “Today, Iraq continues to withhold important information about its nuclear program -- weapons design, procurement logs, experiment data, an accounting of nuclear materials and documentation of foreign assistance. Iraq employs capable nuclear scientists and technicians. It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.” Based on that ‘good evidence’ the Iraq war was launched, resulting in the current disaster there that has increased the terrorist threat worldwide, caused untold suffering of the Iraqi people and thus far killed over 3,500 Americans and injured tens of thousands of others. Of course, that ‘good evidence’ all proved to be false. “If they don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing.”
Whose rules, one might ask, is Iran to play by? Is it the same set of rules the United States follows that allowed the U.S. to invade Iraq against the better judgment of its most trusted allies and the United Nations? Is it the same set of rules which America follows in its shocking treatment of prisoners? If Mr. Lieberman wants Iran to follow the same standard that the U.S. follows, one wonders what his objections are.
“I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.” What action would Mr. Lieberman suggest to stop Americans from killing Iraqis in Iraq? Does he point to the success the U.S. has had in bringing peace and democracy to Iraq as a model for how the U.S. military should proceed in Iran?
“By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers.” Any person of compassion mourns the death of each American or Iraqi killed in that nation’s deadly civil war. But one must wonder if Mr. Lieberman is aware that as many as three quarters of a million people may have been killed as a result of America’s illegal and immoral invasion. Is the death of 200 American soldiers by Iranians a crime to be responded to with carpet-bombing, but the deaths of nearly 750,000 Iraqis by Americans acceptable?
Political double-speak is nothing new to American politicians. The voters have become so imbued with it that they no longer notice it, and perhaps that is what the politicians spouting nonsense rely on; there is no need to make sense when no one is paying attention.
Although once a Democrat and now, after losing his party’s nomination in 2006, an Independent, Mr. Lieberman seems to take his cue regarding facts from the Republican Party: when facts are inconvenient, simply ignore them. Those facts, if only he would look at them, will clearly show the parallels between his disastrous statements on Iran and the results of recent past U.S. government decisions on Iraq. Until he, and others elected to represent the people of the United States, face those facts, the carnage in Iraq will continue. If Mr. Lieberman and those sharing his opinions prevail, the carnage will increase exponentially.
