I’m delighted that my friend and colleague John Bolton has joined me in a call for attacks on the terrorist training camps in Iran, from which killers are sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill American and allied soldiers. I have always seen this as legitimate self-defense. Iran is waging a proxy war against us, Iraqi and other Coalition forces, Lebanese forces, and Israel. There is every reason to respond. It is not legitimate for the mullahs to provide arms, money, intelligence, training and safe haven to their various killers without suffering any consequences; that is the ultimate sucker’s game for us to play, as I have been saying for years.
Fouad Ajami says the same thing, although not as specifically. Let’s hope the White House and the Pentagon finally get serious about engaging in a war that has been running for nearly thirty years.
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Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West
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15 Comments
1. mjr007:Michael, you’ve been right all along. John Bolton GETS IT!!!
In The Terror Masters you corrected pointed to Iran as the puppet master in all of this. We need to surgically strike the training camps and weapons factories in Iran now. In doing so, we send an unequivocally clear message to the Supreme Ayatollah Homeini that this will NOT STAND!!!!
A big fan in St. Louis.
May 6, 2008 - 2:09 pm 2. John F Not Kerry:I have to think we have film of movements in and out of Iran of people and weapons, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ML:
Yes, I think we are finally getting on top of the intelligence regarding Iran. Not even the CIA can deny the evidence.
May 6, 2008 - 9:30 pm 3. kourosh:Guys, guys. The evidence has been always there. I guess nobody cares about the evidence. Following report is yet another evidence.
I have come to the conclusion that either the will to confront Khomeinists is not there, or the decision has not been made (read the permission is not obtained from Europe yet) how tom deal with the enemies of civilization, the free world, and the US.
There are few points to make the attached report though. First, as you know Satan was an angel too. What I mean I guess is, terrorists can be smart too particularly when they are cut with their hand in the cookie jar.
In this case 3-4 terrorists are arrested. Their main excuse is actually very funny. They claim they were looking for “Jesus Trail”. The word is “Meraj” in Farsi / Arabic. But they end up in “Merab”. Forget about the fact that the claim of Jesus trail is totally in opposite direction of where they were taking pictures of. In addition, the guys who claims he is married to a Lebanon’s women, live with friends (other terrorists) who live in an apartment in an area controlled buy Lebanon Hez-Bol-Ah terrorists. Even funnier is their claim of being students in Lebanon Universities (were the language is Arabic). The fact is, they know nothing about the language. I guess, as it is customary in Islamic Republic of Terrorists (IRT), certain so-called students are given degree based on the level of their involvement with terrorist activities. Mostly they are awarded Doctorate degree based on their contribution to the State of Terrorism. For example, the university (in Narmak Tehran), which Ahmadi-Nejad claims to receive a doctorate degree is hardly qualifies for granting MS degree. Now here is the link:
http://www.irwomen.org/spip.php?article5560
Make up your own conclusion
May 7, 2008 - 11:03 am 4. kourosh:Correction:
Please note the correct link to the above article is:
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/05/iranians_arrest.php
May 7, 2008 - 11:09 am 5. kourosh:Correction:
Please note the link to the above artice is:
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/05/iranians_arrest.php
Sorry for the mistake.
May 7, 2008 - 11:10 am 6. jvon:This will not happen before the election. It would be disastrous, and have the opposite of the intended effect, since it would be used to put a Democrat in office.
Patience…
May 7, 2008 - 11:33 pm 7. Curt:I fear that by bombing Iranian training and bomb manufacturing sites, the Iranian Quds forces would retaliate by directly attacking Iraqi/Coalition targets inside Iraq.
With our army/marines already stretched thin, and the surge buildup ending in July anyway, the results would be terrible.
It would be better to respond to Iran’s interference asymetrically. Specifically, turn the Iranian freedom fighters currently sequestered in Iraq loose on them, and assist/arm minority groups in Iran suffering under Tehran’s rule.
In other words, implement the Reagan option.
May 8, 2008 - 9:02 am 8. Gary Ogletree:Hitting training camps would naturally provoke a violent response. Maybe that is what is needed before we can rally the nation to take out the Iranian nuke program, air force, navy, Hamas, Hezbollah, sleeper cells in Dearbornistan, etc., whatever thay can hit back with. At the same time we need to fully arm and support those Iranians who are fed up with the Islamic State. With luck we wouldn’t have to occupy the country to bring down the Mullahs. Trouble is, we don’t have the leadership it would take to defang Iran. Neville Chamberlain is the PM in the western world.
May 8, 2008 - 10:03 am 9. j green:When Curt refers to “the Iranian freedom fighters currently sequestered in Iraq” he refers to the MEK, a terrorist organization designated as such on the State Department’s list. Most of the people in Iran oppose the regime, but they oppose the MEK even more fiercely because the MEK fought for Iraq and killed Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War.
Furthermore, before the 1979 revolution, the MEK aided and actively supoprted the revolution which overthrew the Shah. They even killed American stationed in Iran in those days.
The MEK are basically socialist mullahs. They have a sophisticated PR network that seems to have convinced some on the Hill that they are a democracy-seeking opposition to the Islamic Republic, but don’t believe them.
Incidentally, all of this aside, they really don’t have much of a fighting force anyway. They have a small number of aged “fighters”.
For these reasons, and others not mentioned herein, this is not a really serious option and the Iranian people would never accept it anyway.
May 8, 2008 - 10:03 am 10. Ardeshir Dolat:I also believe the only targets for the US to hit inside Iran is the Revolutionary Guards Corps bases, barracks and their other affiliates and associates: the hand and arm of the regime. Once this is done the regime will collapse. Targeting nuclear sites will only weaken the regime’s position in relation to the international community but they will remain strong inside the country. In fact, I sense that Iranians have some attachment to their nuclear facilities: They have paid for it by suffering literally starvation for the last 30 years. They will resent rather than love the US for leaving the regime to remain only to bring more misery and commit more atrocities.
Destroy the thugs and not the Iranian future.
May 8, 2008 - 10:34 am 11. Ira Zad:Well, every time we have revved up the rhetoric in the past to give the appearance that we are planning to confront the Iranian regime in a meaningful way, we have all been disappointed. It seems that over and over this president and this state department keep choosing appeasement over decisive action on Iran. And over and over, the people who really care about what happens to Iran and want to see regime change take place get it from both sides: On one hand we get mocked by far left loons for our weakness towards Iran, and on the other, we keep getting disappointed by our own administration’s lack of action.
Unfortunately, as much as I agree with John Bolton, anything that he has insisted on publicly in the past 3-years on Iran and/or N.Korea has not happened. His hollers have fallen on deaf ears and have almost become a contrarian sign that nothing of the sort will happen. Again, sad but true.
So pardon me if I do not want to get my hopes too high on any kind of ’smoke’ rising from Washington about getting serious in confronting the Tehran regime. Seems it was all just posturing before the ’sweetened’ incentives package was presented by 5+1 to Iran, which was immediately and categorically rejected by Iran. Another Condi Rice appeasement Grand Bargain golden dream bites the dust.
Sure, there has been a lot of rhetoric again as of a month or two ago against Iran, lots and lots of hand waving by various generals, dog and pony shows showing Iranian-made weapons, Iranian terrorists killing our soldiers in Iraq, etc. But as the old saying goes: “What are you gonna do about it?”, or more precisely, “What have you done about it for the past 28 years?” The answer remains to be a deafening “nothing much” in history books.
With our weakness towards Iran, no wonder that the Islamist sympathizer, anti-American sleeper B. Hossayn Obama’s puppet masters have chosen this year to try to conduct an internal Coup d’etats from inside the US system. Khomeini always said :”Get/Defeat them from within their own system.”
Mullahs may be somewhat scared now, but they also know fully well that our hands are tied and we have been compromised by our own timid policies towards Islamic Fascism and its head in Tehran. They have been there, done that, and they are emboldened like never before in their evil history.
Sure, we may finally and reluctantly (”But Dick, Do I have to?”) drop a bomb or two here and there on supposed Quds Force and IRGC bases, but a meaningful confrontation with the Tehran regime with the goal of decapitating and destroying it completely? I am not holding my breath on that, Are you?
ML:
no way
May 8, 2008 - 11:55 pm 12. winston:Bomb Iran and free its people…
May 9, 2008 - 1:35 pm 13. Michael Lonie:Freeing the Iranians will take much more than bombing, just as freeing the Iraqis did.
The Bush Administration is exhausted. Seven years of guerilla politics by the Democrats, coming on top of the strain of having to fight a real war, have worn it down. We can expect no new ideas or initiatives from the Bush Administratioin.
I see at least two moves we ought to make. Indeed, we ought to have made them years ago, but did not. First we ought to be waging an information war, broadcasting the news to the Iranians and others and putting the American viewpoint to them. We have done this but little, and often the radio broadcasts have concentrated on entertainment. The people in charge have mostly not understood that they are in a war and that they need to put America’s side forward. We need to pit our big ideas against our enemies’ big ideas.
Secondly we ought to have guerilla forces of our own, mostly locally recruited but led and trained by US Special Forces troops. These ought to be making raids into Iran and Syria to ambush RCG units, raid training bases, and other guerilla warfare jobs. I suspect we could get very far with the disaffected Arabs of southwestern Iran, and the RGC has more or less taken over the place so there should be lots of valid, military targets to strike. I do not suggest terrorism. But we ought to be able to make the region too hot for the RGC. Patrols in the mountains can also ambush RGC and their Iraqi trainees coming into Iraq. I hope we are already doing this, but I think we should do it in Iran too.
This is not enough, of course. The Iranian people must ovethrow the Mullahs, before the latter provoke a nuclear war that will get the Iranians fried in the exchange. Save for some very brave people, most Iranians do not seem to want freedom enough to do this.
If the Dems get in and cause us to bug out from Iraq the Iranian Mullahs will run wild. The Dems will have proved that if you just hurt America enough, and that actually not very much, we will run home, just like Osama bin Laden said so long ago. The falling camel attracts many knives.
We cannot stop this war by running away, and we cannot win by standing on the defensive (since we would have to defend literally everything), but can win only by seeking out the jihadists and killing them abroad, and persuading their fellows that liberty and prosperity in the modern world is preferable to troglodytic religious fascism.
May 11, 2008 - 9:23 pm 14. Nash:we you are looking to roots of conflicts in Middle East you can see hands of Iranian regime.
May 13, 2008 - 7:01 am 15. Bahram:meanwhile you need cut the roots not branches.
bomb of Iran=Freedom in Middle East. that is set.
Can some one please direct me to this evidence of Iranian interference?
I have increasingly that feeling that this is the same story like Iraqi WMDs… specially after Pentagon realized the tons of supposedly Iranian weapons were actually not Iranian a few weeks ago, as I’m sure you know the story.
ML:
Bahram, this seems like a pretty good summary: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2008/05/19/concerning-iranian-weapons-in-iraq/
May 25, 2008 - 2:24 am