Obama Whitewashes Iran...President’s outreach evades the record of U.S. policy toward Iranian aggression.

[galtgulch]

www.aynrandcenter.org

Obama Whitewashes Iran

The President’s outreach evades the record of U.S. policy toward Iranian aggression.

By Elan Journo

In his address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said that “We cannot shun the negotiating table” in conducting our foreign policy. He’s previously elaborated that “if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” And Iran’s president Ahmedinijad tentatively welcomes “talks based on mutual respect and in a fair atmosphere.”

The shared idea, evidently, is that our conflict with Iran stems largely from a past failure to use so-called diplomacy to settle disputes. Alluding to George W. Bush’s supposedly tough policy, Obama has said he wants to restore “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years” ago.

Really? Thirty years ago this November, followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, who spearheaded Iran’s Islamic revolution, stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran and took the personnel hostage. President Carter gently admonished Iran, but ruled out military retaliation. Instead his advisors spent months dreaming up schemes to bribe Iran into releasing the hostages--while bending over backward to enable the regime to save face. In the end Khomeini’s Islamist theocracy collected a handsome payoff for its aggression, and concluded, rightly, that if attacked, America would crumple to its knees.

Was Obama thinking of the 1980s? In April 1983 Iran’s jihadist proxies in Lebanon rammed a truck bomb into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut; the Reagan administration responded by doing nothing. Months later, encouraged by Washington’s inaction, Teheran issued a kill order--via its ambassador in Syria--to its allied groups in Beirut. Early one morning, an Islamist suicide bomber set off a massive explosion at the barracks where U.S. marines were sleeping and killed 241 of them.

Reagan spouted hot air about not backing down--and soon after ordered the U.S. troops to bug out. The jihadists wanted America out, they slaughtered our troops, and we caved in and gave them what they wanted.

Osama bin Laden, like jihadists in Iran and elsewhere, viewed our response to the Beirut bombings as further proof that their ideologically driven war was a viable cause. And so, inspired by Iranian aggression, the anti-American jihad kept ramping up.

Maybe Obama meant the fabled halcyon days of the 1990s, when President Clinton tried to mend fences with Iran?

In 1996 a team of jihadists--financed and trained by Teheran--blew up the Khobar Towers building in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. Clinton’s administration learned that Iran was behind the attacks. But Washington brushed aside any notion of retaliating against Iran, in order to facilitate a “reconciliation” with that murderous regime. In an eerie parallel with today, Iran expressed its openness to U.S. groveling--an opportunity Clinton seized.

So, Clinton attended a speech by Iran’s leader at the U.N.; the administration also permitted the sale of much-needed aircraft parts to Iran, among other sweeteners. Granted the cover of respectability, Iran was emboldened to continue fomenting Islamist aggression and avidly pursue its then-embryonic nuclear program.

Obama’s appeasing diplomacy re-enacts the disastrous policy of the past. Our policymakers evaded Iran’s character as an enemy, and by rewarding its aggression with bribes and conciliation, they encouraged a spiral of further attacks.

No. Bush was no exception to this trend. After 9/11 his administration invited Iran--the leading sponsor of Islamist terrorism--to join an anti-terrorism coalition(!). Talk of an axis of evil was quickly abandoned, and Washington backed the European scheme to bribe Iran to halt its nuclear program. By late last year, there was talk of opening a U.S. Special Interests Section (a step down from an embassy) in Iran. Meanwhile Bush’s welfare mission in Iraq negated U.S. security and left Iran untouched to grow more powerful and resolute.

A genuinely new, rational policy toward Iran would turn away from the last 30 years and begin by facing up to Teheran’s ongoing proxy war against us.

Elan Journo is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on foreign policy. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Copyright © 2009 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

[Chris Grieb]

I remember reading that the Iranian government was very helpful after the 9-11 attack with the take over of Afghanistan. Somebody once said watch what somebody does rather than what they say.

Edited March 4, 2009 by Chris Grieb

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I can't think of much anything the USA has done right with respect to Iran. If ever there were proof that a false dichotomy does not work in reality, look at USA policy with Iran, starting with the Shah and going through the present.

The choice is not either USA-friendly dictator or Islamist dictator. There is a third option.

We cannot, with impunity, get in bed with one dictator to stifle another dictator. We cannot appease dictators, Islamist or USA-friendly. We must reject all dictators, starting with a refusal to do business with them. And refuse to give them a pulpit at our universities.

Dictators suck, even if they control some oil fields.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I can't think of much anything the USA has done right with respect to Iran. If ever there were proof that a false dichotomy does not work in reality, look at USA policy with Iran, starting with the Shah and going through the present.

The choice is not either USA-friendly dictator or Islamist dictator. There is a third option.

We cannot, with impunity, get in bed with one dictator to stifle another dictator. We cannot appease dictators, Islamist or USA-friendly. We must reject all dictators, starting with a refusal to do business with them. And refuse to give them a pulpit at our universities.

Dictators suck, even if they control some oil fields.

Michael

Unfortunately we are pathologically dependent on oil fields. The cure is to end the dependency. Insanity has led us to put the very existence of our industrial economy in the hands of tyrants, dictators and religious crazies.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

I keep having this fantasy where the President call in the oil producing countries ambassadors and then introduces them to John Galt. The President then says "Gentlemen in a few years because of Mr Galt's motor we wouldn't need you. Have a nice day."

We will probably not get there with wind farms and solar panels.

Edited March 4, 2009 by Chris Grieb