[NYTr] The voice of evil at Columbia?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven L. Robinson 

CounterPunch -September 24, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/dols09242007.html


Your Main Enemy is at Home

Ahmadinejad and Columbia

By Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood

The voice of evil is coming to Columbia.

That's what you've heard if you read a newspaper or turned on the
television in the last five days. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
is a fanatic whose extreme beliefs and quest for a nuclear arsenal are
the main threat to world peace today. His very presence, some say,
constitutes hate speech. Politicians from both parties have lined up to
condemn the event.

On the surface, the demonization of Ahmadinejad may seem like a natural
reaction to his political statements and repressive policies. But the
media campaign should be taken with a grain of salt. The U.S. needs a
new bogeyman. The war in Iraq is a dismal failure for Washington, and
now Iran is now an even bigger obstacle to American domination of the
Middle East. The U.S. is laying the groundwork for a possible attack on
Iran which would be even worse than the nightmare that they have
inflicted on Iraq. In this context, Americans are not helping the
people of the Middle East by protesting Ahmadinejad.

Why has the president of Iran become a cartoon villain in American
politics? He's a repressive ruler who holds reactionary views, but the
same is true of many dictators and monarchs that the United States has
supported, such as the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and the House of Saud.
The U.S. is not a principled opponent of repressive governments. The
real origins of the recent saber-rattling lie in Iraq.

The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 expecting to take over quickly, without
complications. The new Iraq would serve as a loyal client state, a
massive source of oil, and a permanent base for controlling the rest of
the Middle East. Four years later, the American military is still
struggling to secure anything outside of its Blackwater-fortified Green
Zone. The number of attacks against U.S. soldiers keeps rising. Iraqis
widely support the resistance. The Americans can't even control their
puppets. The situation looks so bad for the U.S. that they rely on
ethnic militias whose loyalty is tentative at best.

This failure has magnified the threat that Iran poses to American
interests in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic is the only major
oil-producing country in the area not under U.S. control, and it has
benefited from the quagmire next door. The U.S. could never have formed
a government in Shiite-majority Iraq without Iran-friendly parties like
SCIRI and the Islamic Dawa Party.

The U.S. undeniably has an interest in regime change in Iran. It's
become fashionable among presidential candidates -- Republicans and
Democrats -- to say that "no option is off the table," but in reality
the costs of an invasion are extraordinarily high and there is still no
consensus in Washington about how to deal with Ahmadinejad's regime. On
the other hand, it's never too early to start spreading lies and
misinformation. In late August, Bush accused Iran of trying to
destabilize Iraq and of posing a threat to the entire region. This
takes a lot of nerve coming from the man who invaded the country and
overthrew its government. The glaring reality is that the largest group
of foreign fighters in Iraq is the 130,000 American troops.

Bush goes on to claim that Iran is the main threat to peace in the
Middle East. The main thing destabilizing the Middle East is the U.S.
interference. They have created a refugee crisis of Iraqis on par with
the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Millions of people
have been driven from Iraq and now struggle to survive in neighboring
countries such as Syria, Jordan, and Iran. In addition, the U.S. gives
6 billion dollars a year to Israel, a country which has regularly and
recently attacked its neighbors.

The claims against Iran echo the lies that Bush used to justify the
invasion of Iraq. In the lead-up to the war, we were told that the
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he threatened his
neighbors, and had links to terrorists. Today we are hearing that
Ahmadinejad has weapons of mass destruction, he threatens his
neighbors, and has links to terrorists.

We are constantly reminded that Iran's president is a fundamentalist
tyrant. He is a right-wing politician with backward ideas, but the
portrayal of Ahmadinejad as a lunatic terrorist falls back on racist
stereotypes of Muslims. This clash of civilizations argument serves as
a justification for endless war on the world and fuels attacks on Arabs
and Muslims at home.

As long as the U.S. is in the Middle East, Ahmadinejad's hand is
strengthened against his political opponents within Iran. An invasion
would be even worse, causing repercussions that could make the Iraq war
look like a minor skirmish in comparison. Protesting Ahmadinejad in New
York during his visit to the U.N. will only push us closer to such an
outcome. If you care about human rights in the Middle East, your main
enemy is at home.

[Monique Dols is a student in the School of General Studies and employee
at Columbia University and Dylan Stillwood is an Alumnus of Columbia
College, 2002. They can be reached at: monique.dols at gmail.com]