Hawks and Doves

This is insane. The Bush Administration is going to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

If imposed, the declaration would signal a more confrontational turn in the administration’s approach to Iran and would be the first time that the United States has added the armed forces of any sovereign government to its list of terrorist organizations.

What the hell is wrong with these people? The IRG are the armed forces of a sovereign state! By the United States’ very definition of terrorism, the IRG cannot be labeled a terrorist organization.

According to European diplomats, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned of the move in recent conversations with European counterparts, saying that a delay in efforts to win approval from the United Nations Security Council for further economic sanctions on Iran was leaving the administration with little choice but unilateral action.

I’m sorry but does unilateral action mean acting bat shit insane?

A move toward putting the Revolutionary Guard on the foreign terrorist list would serve at least two purposes for Ms. Rice: to pacify, for a while, administration hawks who are pushing for possible military action, and to further press America’s allies to ratchet up sanctions against Iran in the Security Council.

I don’t see how either of these actually get accomplished by this move. Ignoring the oxymoron embedded in the phrase “pacifying the war hawks”, all this does for them is give them one more excuse for war. “Well, we are fighting a war on terror and the IRG is a terrorist organization, so it only follows . . . ” Second, how does this put pressure on Europe? Are we threatening to do something so monumentally stupid that they have to appease us to prevent us from doing it? Is that our foreign policy strategy?

President Bush seemed to signal a tougher approach to Iran last week when he called attention to what American officials have said was an active role by the Revolutionary Guard in providing munitions, training and other support to Shiite militants who have been attacking American troops in Iraq. “When we catch you playing a nonconstructive role, there will be a price to pay,” Mr. Bush said of Iran during a news conference on Thursday.

You see. It all goes back to the munitions which Iran is supposedly supplying to the Shi’ite militias. Even though the Sunni insurgents are using them too and the United States has been for all intents and purposes training and supplying Iraqi insurgents through our training programs to a tune of $19 billion in tax payer money.

In taking aim at the guard, the administration is also trying to divide Iran’s population. During his news conference on Thursday, President Bush addressed the Iranian people directly. “My message to the Iranian people is, ‘You can do better than this current government,’ ” Mr. Bush said. “ ‘You don’t have to be isolated. You don’t have to be in a position where you can’t realize your full economic potential.’ ”

But dear Mr. Bush, you are a uniter not a divider. You really think this will get Iranians chanting USA in the streets? How do you think Americans would react if Ahmadinijad declared the United States Marine Corps to be a terrorist organization? After four and a half years stuck in Iraq do you still not get nationalism?

The decision would have little impact on American military activities in Iraq, where coalition forces already pursue fighters, advisers and financiers who support antigovernment forces, according to a senior Defense Department official. “We are going to go after any forces that are engaged in activities that are disruptive to the stability and security of Iraq,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the subject was pending administration policy.

Exactly. The only purpose for such a designation is to provide justification for a future military strike on Iran.

Update: Good diary about this on DailyKos by scardanelli.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under Iran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.