Alan Caruba / Jun 28, 2009

In the more than four decades of the Cold War following World War Two, a cadre of specialists called “Kremlinologists”, academics, diplomats, and military, developed for the purpose of figuring out what the Soviet Union was doing and how best to counteract it. As often as not, they were wrong. The fall of the Berlin War came as a surprise to them, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

Now we are watching the same thing occur as various “experts” struggle to tell us what is happening in Iran, the latest world threat, and why.

 

What I really want to know is why the President of the United States thought it best not to “meddle” with a nation that had taken American diplomats hostage for 444 days, was funding two Middle East terrorists organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, and striving mightily to become a nuclear power with which to threaten the region and the world.

 

President Obama’s muted and belated response to the protests in the streets by thousands of Iranians, the best hope for that nation’s future, was a national and international disgrace. If America will not speak out for liberty and support a popular uprising for democracy, who will? 

 

My friend, Amil Imani, an Iranian-American who has forcefully spoken out for regime change in his former homeland, has posted a petition calling for an end to the slaughter of Iranians who only want what we in America and the West have, freedom.

 

You can add your name at http://www.petitiononline.com/ai2d2009/petition.html

 

Addressed to the leaders of the free world, the citizens of the world, and even to the Secretary-General of the useless United Nations, Imani states what we all know. “The mullahs and their mercenaries are wasting precious human life to maintain themselves in power through terrorizing the population.”

 

Islam is not democracy. It is a political system called a theocracy. The clerics rule and, in effect, they only answer to Allah. Turkey, an Islamic nation, has maintained secular rule by splitting off Islam from governance. Other Islamic nations hold “elections” but it is understood by their citizens that they are rigged, that those who rule them, secular or not, are corrupt, and protest gets you put in jail or dead.

 

One Middle Eastern nation that fashioned a working democracy, Lebanon, has been struggling for decades to throw off the dictators that would rule them, whether it is Syria or Hezbollah, a terrorist group of Palestinian terrorists whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel.

 

Imani’s petition calls on “the free governments of the world, as well as all other businesses, organizations, and individuals to enlist in a non-violent campaign of ending the reign of terror of the belligerent clerical regime.”

 

Towards that end he seeks to protect the lives of Iranians through “a comprehensive program of assistance to all democratic Iranian opposition groups, both inside and outside of Iran, in their struggle to accomplish the regime change themselves.”

 

“Proclaim wide and far, the cardinal reason for taking these measures against the mullah’s reign of terror is to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons, the threat they pose to the region as well as the world, and the stimulus they provide for other nations to develop their own nuclear arsenal..”

 

There are a number of other proposals in the petition which I urge you to read and sign, but the issue to my mind is the failure of the United States, that is to say our President, to demonstrate any understanding of the fact that one cannot “negotiate” with a “Supreme Leader” intent on having nuclear weapons with which to threaten the region and the world.

 

That “Supreme Leader” and his minions subscribe to a Shiite myth of a “Twelfth Imam” who can only return to rule the Earth after widespread death and destruction has paved the way.

 

Little known and underreported have been the discussions underway between Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as to “strategic” actions they can take to secure the safety of their nations and to bring down the Iranian regime before it achieves nuclear status. Let me repeat that roster. Israel! Egypt! And Saudi Arabia!

 

America has the misfortune to be led by a President who has been fixated before and since election on a diplomatic resolution to the enmity between Iran and America. He apparently thinks he can talk them out of securing nuclear weapons. That is never going to happen. Israel knows this. Egypt knows this. And Saudi Arabia knows this.

 

Obama’s willful ignorance and personal arrogance is going to keep the Iranian people enslaved and get a lot of people in the region and beyond killed.

 

The Iranian mullahs are a pestilence that must be eradicated and removed from power. History teaches this lesson. A nation’s sovereignty is not an excuse to permit its leaders to plunge the world into war.

 

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com, the website of The National Anxiety Center. 

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