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Obama and Iran – The Democrats Select a Modern-Day McGovern
Guest Column | By Joel Himelfarb | June 12, 2008
Judging
from last week's address to the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), Sen. Barack Obama doesn't want voters to see him as
soft on Iran and its genocidal President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And he
certainly doesn't want people to see him for what he is: part of the
far-Seft fringe of the Democrat Party, an ideological ally of former
Sen. George McGovern. McGovern, who lost 49 states to President Richard
Nixon in 1972 (and his South Dakota Senate seat eight years later) has
endorsed Obama this year.
Last September, Obama was one of a
minority of Senate Democrats who couldn't bring themselves to condemn
the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - part of the
terrorist infrastructure directly involved in killing and maiming
American GIs in Iraq. But large chunks of Obama's AIPAC speech last
week sounded as if they could have been written by his Republican foe,
Sen. John McCain, who addressed the group several days earlier.
"The
Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the
region," Obama declared. "It pursues a nuclear capability that could
spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of
nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and
threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave; it
is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."
As a
description of the Iranian threat, Obama was on the mark. But just
three paragraphs later, Obama signaled that Tehran that it shouldn't
take his rhetorical flourish too seriously. For starters, President
Obama will make sure that Tehran needn't concern itself with 150,000 or
so U.S. troops next door in Iraq. "Keeping all of our troops tied down
indefinitely in Iraq is not the way to weaken Iran - it is precisely
what has strengthened it. It is a plan for staying, not a plan for
victory," Obama said in his AIPAC speech. Instead, he proposed a
"responsible, phased redeployment" (withdrawal) of U.S. troops in Iraq.
(Anytime a politician feels the need to specify that his or her
proposal is "responsible," voters should probably assume it's a bad
idea.)
Obama's idea is nonsense - dangerous nonsense. Leave
aside the fact that Iran began "strengthening" itself with conventional
and non-conventional armaments decades ago - long before President Bush
deposed Saddam Hussein. And Tehran has been building its local and
international terror networks ever since the 1979 revolution.
Does
Obama really believe that we strengthen ourselves by pulling out of
Iraq - in the face of a violent Iranian campaign to drive us out?
Following Obama's logic, the road to victory in World War II would have
been ceding the beaches of Normandy a few months after D-Day to Hitler
or the Vichyites. Perhaps Israel should have "redeployed" from the
Sinai Peninsula a few weeks after the Six-Day War. And maybe President
Lincoln should have done the same right after Gettysburg.
But in
the real world of the 21st century, Obama's withdrawal scheme would be
a tremendous victory for Ahmadinejad and Iran. The regime has employed
the IRGC (and, in particular, a branch known as the Quds Force) in
facilitating the flow of rockets and roadside bombs to Iraqi Shi'ite
and Sunni Jihadists. The IRGC reports directly to the country's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It operates its own air force, navy and
ground-force, and maintains its own special-forces units. The IRGC is
also involved in projects worth billions of dollars to build oil and
natural-gas pipelines.
Steven Perles, an attorney representing
relatives of some of the 241 U.S. Marines slain in the October 1983
bombing of their barracks in Beirut, told The Washington Times last
year that the U.S. government has electronic intercepts showing that
IRGC operatives drove the truck that carried out the bombing.
Ahmadinejad rose through the ranks of the group during the 1980s.
More
recently, however, the IRGC and the Quds Force have been involved in
aiding Hezbollah and Palestinan terrorist groups such as Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and in helping send rockets to the Taliban
in Afghanistan. Last year U.S. military officials in Iraq said that
Quds Force is bringing groups of up to 60 Iraqi insurgents at a time to
training facilities near Tehran, where they learn how to stage
kidnappings and use improvised explosive devices and rockets to kill
and maim American troops. American officials say the IRGC is
responsible for smuggling explosively formed penetrators into Iraq. The
EFPs, which can penetrate the armor of a Humvee, have accounted for
scores of American combat deaths.
On September 26, 2007, Sens.
Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut
Independent Democrat, introduced a nonbinding amendment to the defense
authorization designating the IRGC a terrorist group because of its
role in killing American soldiers. "The consequences of this Iranian
terrorism in Iraq have been immense and terrible for our men and women
in uniform and for their families and friends at home," Lieberman said
in explaining the need for the amendment. "According to LTG Ray
Odierno, the deputy commander of our forces in Iraq, Iranian-supplied
weapons were responsible for a full one-third of American combat deaths
[in July 2007].That builds on a similar record in preceding months. Let
me repeat that: Up to a third of the deaths of American soldiers in
Iraq in July were caused by sophisticated explosive devices used by
people trained in Iran, with those devices supplied by Iran. That means
the Iranians and their agents are killing our troops."
The
Iranians "understand - sometimes, it seems, better than a lot of
Americans do - that if American power collapses in Iraq, if we abandon
our allies" then "our position throughout the region will become much
weaker and Iran's position much stronger," Lieberman added. The Senate
- including well over half of the Democrats - voted for the amendment,
which passed 76-22. Obama, who was absent, said he opposed the
amendment because it could be used as pretext to invade Iran. Obama
denounced Kyl-Lieberman as "reckless" and criticized his chief rival,
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for supporting it.
But Obama's
assertion was patently false. As Lieberman pointed out, he and Kyl
removed that language from the bill to address those very concerns.
Even Sen. Richard Durbin, Obama's fellow Illinois Democrat (who had
already endorsed Obama for president), voted for the bill and said he
disagreed with Obama's argument against it.
However tough he
tries to sound when talking to AIPAC, Barack Obama's real sympathies
are with the George Soros/MoveOn.org wing of the Democrat Party.
FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor Joel Himelfarb is the assistant editor of the editorial page of the Washington Times.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
3 Comments | Post a Comment
Looks like tons-o-fun has it right smack dag on the button true! Way to go, tons - let’s hope others see the light!
Happypick:
Thanks for the endorsement. You are obviously a very bright person.
June 14 at 9:35 am | #1 | Link
Obama tailors his speech to his audiance. Nothing new in that for a politician. But for my money what he’s all about is Marxism. If you don’t think so, check out Liberation Theology, in which he has been well steeped. The words he uses have meaning and note how words like “collective” and “salvation” fall trippling from his tongue. I take him at his word. All his protestations to the contrary (he says he beieves in the free enterprise system)notwithstanding, he believes that our salvation is in “the collective.” Old wine in new bottles. It’s all the same old Marxists cant. No thanks, I’ll just take my Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness and make do.
Note well that we are not —not—guaranteed happiness, only the right to pursue it.