Writing for TheAmericanConservative.com, Daniel
Larison penned an excellent article entitled The Iranian People Are Not Our
Enemy.
Yes, I liked the title so much, I borrowed it for this column. Larison quotes
Ardeshir Zahedi and Ali Vaez in an op-ed
piece for the Washington Post. Zahedi is Iran’s former foreign
minister (1966-1971) and ambassador to England (1962-1966) and the United
States (1960-1962 and 1973-1979). Vaez is the International Crisis Group’s Iran
project director, based in Washington.
Larison begins by quoting Zahedi and Vaez:
Bullying
and crude threats will achieve little beyond entangling the United States and
the region in another senseless war while deepening the two countries’ 40-year
estrangement. The United States should strive for an Iran that is stable with a
strong middle class and highly educated youths connected to the moderating
influence of the outside world. The Iranian people want to restore the
friendship between Iran and the United States, two countries that enjoyed 123
years of cordial ties before 1979. But the path to their hearts and minds is
not through sanctions and military intervention.
Larison then writes:
The
Trump administration should follow these recommendations, but I fear it is so
far down the path of belligerence and confrontation that the president and his
officials wouldn’t know how to stop at this point. Most U.S. administrations
are loath to give up on failed policies even when it is obvious to everyone
else that they cannot succeed, and the Trump administration is more resistant
to admitting failure than most. If the president opts for de-escalation and
climbing down from the unrealistic and excessive demands that his
administration has made, we should encourage him in making that change and
support that effort at de-escalation. If he continues to follow the toxic
advice of Iran hawks to intensify the pressure campaign, he should be opposed
every step of the way.
If
we are capable of burying the hatchet with Vietnam, China, Japan, Italy, and
Germany within 20 years of fighting them or less, and if we could have normal
relations with the Soviet Union and its communist allies throughout the Cold
War, we can certainly have normal relations with Iran after all this time.
That last paragraph makes so much sense a fifth grader could
understand it. But we don’t have a fifth grader in the White House; we have a
kindergartener who only knows what his mommy and daddy tell him—and his mommy and daddy are Zionist
Israel and its American surrogates: evangelical Christian Zionists. And neither
Israel nor America’s Christian Zionists want peace with Iran.
Larison quotes Zahedi and Vaez again:
The
administration’s list of public missteps toward the Iranian people is as long
as it is regrettable. It includes preventing almost all Iranians from visiting
the United States; misstating the historic name of the Persian Gulf; failing to
express sympathy with Iranians after terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and
separatist groups; and, perhaps most consequentially, withdrawing from the
nuclear deal that remains popular in Iran and to which many there had pinned
their hopes for a better life.
These
mistakes have helped transform top-down anti-Americanism in Iran into a
bottom-up phenomenon. Nothing spurs a rally-around-the-flag effect among 83
million Iranians more than humiliation and threats of foreign aggression.
Of course, the U.S.
government isn’t going to express sympathy with Iran after terrorist attacks by
the Islamic State and separatist groups. The U.S. government (along with
Israel, Saudi Arabia and Great Britain) created, armed, financed and provided
military assistance to those terrorist groups.
Larison continues:
The Iranian people are not and never
have been our enemy, but our Iran policy doesn’t reflect that in practice. When the Iranian government
was aligned with the U.S., our government backed the regime despite the harm
that it was doing to the people. After the revolution, our government
reflexively backed Iran’s enemies in the hopes of getting at their government.
The effect was to cause massive suffering and death among the people. Our government regularly claims that
our quarrel is not with the people, but it is always the people that bear the
brunt of our policies. One of the main themes in U.S.-Iranian relations
over the decades has been our government’s inability or unwillingness to treat
Iranians with respect, and under the Trump administration that lack of respect
has turned into contempt. We see that with the travel ban and the indulgence of
the Mujahideen-e Khalq by prominent U.S. officials and politicians, and we see
it with the suffocating oppression of sanctions imposed on the entire country. Iranians are not our enemy, but our
government has insisted on treating them as enemies all the same.
Our policy should never be to suffocate
the civilian population of another country with ruinous sanctions. In addition
to being unjust and cruel, it hardens attitudes against the U.S. and provokes
stronger resistance. No genuine U.S. interests are served by immiserating tens
of millions of people for the actions of their government, and by inflicting
collective punishment on an entire nation our government commits a terrible
injustice that should shame us all. If the Iranian people are not our enemy, we
must halt the economic war our government is waging against them and pursue a
course of diplomatic and economic engagement instead.
Amen and Amen, Daniel.
Tell me, folks, when did the
terrible “terrorist” state of Iran shoot down a U.S. passenger jet and murder
nearly 300 innocent civilian passengers? You can’t remember? Well, you can’t
remember, because Iran did NOT shoot down an American passenger jet; it was
America that shot down an Iranian passenger jet.
The date was July 3, 1988. The
Iranian passenger jet was Iran Air Flight 655. The military
vessel that shot down that Iranian passenger jet was the guided missile cruiser
USS Vincennes, which fired two
SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles—from inside Iranian territorial waters, no less.
All 290 people on board were killed, including 66 children.
How’s THAT for an act of terrorism?
And just as Israel never
apologized for attacking and trying to sink the USS LIBERTY on
June 8, 1967 (killing 34 American sailors and Marines and wounding 174), the
U.S. government never apologized for downing Iran Air Flight 655 (killing all
290 on board).
Folks, which country is
sending spy drones and Raptor attack drones into another country’s airspace,
Iran or America? Which country is sailing military ships into another country’s
territorial waters, Iran or America? Which country is flying military attack
aircraft into another country’s airspace, Iran or America? Which
country has built dozens of military bases within a few miles of another
nation’s borders, Iran or America? Which country is sending
covert armies into another sovereign nation to disrupt communications and cyber
security and blow up facilities and assassinate government officials and
scientists? You know the answer: the United States (and Israel, of course).
And despite all we hear from
the propagandists in the federal government and mainstream media promoting
America’s “War
on Terror,” Muslims in Iraq, Iran or anywhere else had
absolutely NOTHING to do with the attacks on 9/11.
I hear people say that Trump should attack Iran because that
country shot down one of our drones. Really? That drone had no business being
in Iran’s territorial airspace. It was an act of aggression on America’s part.
What, pray tell, would America do if another country flew a drone into our air
space? If America has the right to defend itself from acts of aggression (and
it does), why does Iran not have the same right? It does.
Folks, all of the hatemongering and fearmongering against Iran
aside, the Persian nation has not invaded any country in an act of unprovoked
aggression in over 200 years. Iran was not even involved in Israel’s Six Day
War in 1967. And not only has Iran not attacked the United States (or Israel
either, for that matter), Iran poses absolutely NO threat to the United States.
And the only threat Iran poses to Israel is a defensive threat as Israel
constantly attacks Iranian assets across the region. If Israel was not such a
fanatical militaristic apartheid state, the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah would not
even exist.
Israel has launched hundreds (maybe thousands) of missile attacks
against Iranian assets in Syria and Lebanon. And please remember that Iran’s
forces are in those countries lawfully, having been invited by the respective
governments of those countries to help defend their people against the constant
attacks by Israel.
Do you not find it more
than interesting that Iran is home to more Jews than any other Middle Eastern
country outside of Israel? And do you not find it even more interesting that
those thousands of Jews in Iran believe themselves
to be freer and safer in Iran than they would be in Israel, the United States
or Europe?
This war against Iran is
not about the safety and security of the United States, and it’s not about
protecting the world against a “terrorist” state. It’s all about war for Israel
and the Federal Reserve. Iran is the last major Middle Eastern country that has
refused to submit to the Federal Reserve international banking cartel. That’s
what the war in Iraq (under G.W. Bush) and the war in Libya (under Barack
Obama) were about; and that’s what this war in Iran (under Donald Trump) is
about. As
USMC Major General Smedley Butler said, war is nothing more than one giant
money racket.
Plus, Rep.
Justin Amash is exactly right: Donald Trump does NOT have the
authority under our Constitution to attack Iran without direct authorization
from Congress. But who cares about the Constitution anymore? Not Donald Trump,
that’s for sure.
Paul
Craig Roberts opines about the traitorous Zionists in our government
(Pence, Pompeo and Bolton) who are directing America’s foolish and
unconstitutional war against Iran and the fact that America doesn’t have a
leader (read “president”) with the understanding or guts to stop it. Right on,
Paul.
Trump’s decision to not launch air strikes against Iran after it
downed the U.S. drone in its airspace was NOT an attempt at peace; it was a war
tactic. Trump knows the last thing the American people want is another war in
the Middle East. What Trump said about not wanting to kill 150 Iranians in
those air strikes is complete balderdash.
Donald
Trump drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Every 12
minutes! That means,
Donald Trump has dropped over 44,000 bombs each year in office. That
means, Trump has dropped over 110,000 bombs during his 2½ years in office. And
the vast majority of the victims of these bombings were innocent civilians.
Only 2%—that’s right, 2%—of those bombs killed so-called enemy combatants on
the DOD “kill list.” 90% of the time, his bombs killed innocent civilians. Astonishingly, the CIA’s own
documents report that 80% of the time, the people killed in America’s bomb
attacks are completely unidentified. In other words, they have no idea who they
are killing. But they keep killing them nonetheless. If only one innocent
person was killed in each of those 110,000 bombs that Trump dropped since being
in office, he has murdered at least 110,000 innocent people. Do you really
think that an additional 150 people dying in another U.S. air strike would mean
anything to this president? Hardly.
You watch: What Trump will do is authorize the Israeli/Saudi
terror groups in the Middle East to launch another false flag attack—one too
big to be overlooked—that will be blamed on Iran and that will “force” Israel
into a war with Iran. Then, Trump will announce to the American people that the
United States must enter the war to defend its “great ally” Israel. And Trump’s warmongering (and
Muslim-hating) evangelical Christian Zionist base will absolutely LOVE it.
Of course, where this war will lead and what Russia and China will
do is anybody’s guess. Dr. Roberts says we are facing Armageddon. He might be
right. If he is, won’t these
Christian Zionists be shocked when they discover that they weren’t raptured to
heaven ahead of time after all?!
Folks, the
Iranian people are not our enemy. Our enemy is those warmongering miscreants in
Washington, D.C., Tel Aviv, Riyadh and London.
P.S. This is the third notice that we are currently printing and
distributing the most important liberty documents in U.S. history. It’s
called THE
FREEDOM DOCUMENTS.
Want to honor Independence Day? Buy your family and friends a copy
of THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS. Help teach them what Independence Day is truly all
about—from the words of the men and women who were there.
This giant book is an excellent resource for high school and
college students—as well as homeschoolers. Pastors, teachers, physicians,
business owners, attorneys and judges have purchased THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS with
extreme satisfaction.
The Tennessee State Supreme Court ordered several copies of THE
FREEDOM DOCUMENTS. Plus, a county sheriff recently ordered
copies for each of his deputies. I believe you will be just as pleased as they
are with this wonderful compilation of American documents.
You can have these great documents at your fingertips in one
beautifully bound, easy-to-read format. These are the documents that gave birth
to the greatest free nation on earth. Again, nowhere else can you find these
documents complete in one volume under one title. And our supply is very
limited and will not last long.
This offer will only last a few more days. Order THE
FREEDOM DOCUMENTS now!
To read my initial column explaining THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS, go
here.
© Chuck Baldwin
*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute
these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may be made by
credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:
I also have many books and DVDs available for purchase online.
Go here:
To subscribe to my weekly columns, click here:
