Walking Softly and Carrying A Big Stick in Iran
Mike Banos
April 16, 2006
Any remaining doubts the U.S. and its allies, or the rest of the world for that matter, may have had about President George W. Bush?s real intentions in the Middle East have been effectively dispelled with his Man Friday?s insistence the War in Iraq has successfully quashed post-9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and would ultimately stamp out of terrorism everywhere in the globe.
It's better for us to fight terrorism offshore in Afghanistan and Iraq than it is for us to fight it onshore,? said U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch was one of Bush?s rivals in the 2000 Republican primaries for the U.S. presidency but since then has become one of his most trusted allies.
So when the U.S. mouths unequivocal support for its ?War on Terror? to allies like the Philippines, on stuff like the Balikatan Exercises, which of late has been on a ?calibrated pre-emptive response? mode to include actual U.S. combat missions against U.S.-identified ?terrorists? like the MILF and Abu Sayyaf, you can be almost sure there?s another of their ?low-intensity? conflicts about to blossom into another Afghanistan or Iraq. It?s the Monroe Doctrine all over again, albeit with George W. Bush instead of one Teddy Roosevelt doing the walking softly and carrying a stick much bigger than his predecessor did when he made the Philippines the U.S.? first and only colony.
The Washington Post recently reported that administration of US President George W. Bush is planning for a sustained campaign against the ayatollahs of Tehran that could include ?regime change.? When such buzz words are casually bandied about in high-level security meetings in the Pentagon, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and other cabinet committees involved in homeland security, you can be pretty sure it?s the run-up to a full-scale offensive a la ?Desert Storm? against the theocracy of the Mullahs in Tehran.
"We do not have a problem with the Iranian people. We want the Iranian people to be free," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a recent Senate testimony. "Our problem is with the Iranian regime."
US legislators have said that the use of force, subject to congressional approval, remains an option to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Why a planned Iranian atom bomb is considered a threat to global security but existing ones in the hands of India, Pakistan and Israel (all U.S. allies) are not, many cannot understand but can very well explain.
Because America has not curbed its insatiable appetite for oil (as admitted by President Bush himself), it is constrained by its Monroe Doctrine to ensure that its sources remain in friendly hands, which Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Tehran definitely are not.
Not many remember these days, but U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, on the pretext that Iran might fall under Soviet influence, orchestrated a coup in 1953 which overthrew the democratically elected nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
The real reason : Mossadegh?s nationalization of Iran's huge oil and gas reserves, resulting in a huge loss of profits for American and British oil companies which until then had been shamefacedly fleecing Iranians of the patrimony of their nation.
Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have historical reasons to suspect there is some ulterior motive behind the U.S. concern over its atomic program. What it is exactly remains to be seen but we?re pretty sure it?s something as mundane as gasoline.
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It's better for us to fight terrorism offshore in Afghanistan and Iraq than it is for us to fight it onshore,? said U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch was one of Bush?s rivals in the 2000 Republican primaries for the U.S. presidency but since then has become one of his most trusted allies.
So when the U.S. mouths unequivocal support for its ?War on Terror? to allies like the Philippines, on stuff like the Balikatan Exercises, which of late has been on a ?calibrated pre-emptive response? mode to include actual U.S. combat missions against U.S.-identified ?terrorists? like the MILF and Abu Sayyaf, you can be almost sure there?s another of their ?low-intensity? conflicts about to blossom into another Afghanistan or Iraq. It?s the Monroe Doctrine all over again, albeit with George W. Bush instead of one Teddy Roosevelt doing the walking softly and carrying a stick much bigger than his predecessor did when he made the Philippines the U.S.? first and only colony.
The Washington Post recently reported that administration of US President George W. Bush is planning for a sustained campaign against the ayatollahs of Tehran that could include ?regime change.? When such buzz words are casually bandied about in high-level security meetings in the Pentagon, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and other cabinet committees involved in homeland security, you can be pretty sure it?s the run-up to a full-scale offensive a la ?Desert Storm? against the theocracy of the Mullahs in Tehran.
"We do not have a problem with the Iranian people. We want the Iranian people to be free," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a recent Senate testimony. "Our problem is with the Iranian regime."
US legislators have said that the use of force, subject to congressional approval, remains an option to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Why a planned Iranian atom bomb is considered a threat to global security but existing ones in the hands of India, Pakistan and Israel (all U.S. allies) are not, many cannot understand but can very well explain.
Because America has not curbed its insatiable appetite for oil (as admitted by President Bush himself), it is constrained by its Monroe Doctrine to ensure that its sources remain in friendly hands, which Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Tehran definitely are not.
Not many remember these days, but U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, on the pretext that Iran might fall under Soviet influence, orchestrated a coup in 1953 which overthrew the democratically elected nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
The real reason : Mossadegh?s nationalization of Iran's huge oil and gas reserves, resulting in a huge loss of profits for American and British oil companies which until then had been shamefacedly fleecing Iranians of the patrimony of their nation.
Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have historical reasons to suspect there is some ulterior motive behind the U.S. concern over its atomic program. What it is exactly remains to be seen but we?re pretty sure it?s something as mundane as gasoline.
I N D N J C -
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