Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 10:11:06 AM
Has anyone else noticed a movement on the left to rehabilitate the Iranian government? I don't know if it is an election year move to make McCain look like a warmonger and Obama the sainted negotiator messiah, or if it is an attempt to provide cover for the eventual withdrawal from Iraq and negotiation with Iran, but it seems clear the left is dead set on making us believe that Iran is a peaceful democracy, just like us, which has been unjustly slandered by the US.
I first noticed it in the
Greenwald column I mentioned
before, after his efforts to revive the myth of the "Israel Lobby" and blame them for, of all things, the defeat of Howard Dean, he launched into an absurd description of public opinion polls from Iran.
As I said when I first read it, public opinion polls of totalitarian countries, even when conducted by "impartial outsiders" are meaningless. In states with secret police, the poll will always show a lot of support for the beloved leader, that is inevitable. Still, Greenwald decided to milk these polls for all they are worth, showing that Iranians think their leader is just a swell guy, the US is an evil government with good people, and generally, Iranians think a lot like the left wing of the Democrat party, except with a religion.
Now I read in David Limbaugh's
most recent column of one of Obama's defense advisors talking of rethinking the way we look at Iran. Marshalling all the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh, he talks about how we need to look at things differently, apparently meaning we need to just ignore those efforts at developing nuclear weapons.
Then again, this is not a new effort. Last year we had
the NIE which was the
opening salvo in the Iranian rehabilitation program. Claiming that oil and
natural gas rich Iran would obviously pursue nuclear power for electrical generation, they gave the uranium enrichment program their seal of approval, saying it obviously had no military applications (ignoring that enriched uranium doesn't care how it is used). And, as no one seemed to notice
other intelligence experts who said the report was
dubious at best, the press has continued to press the party line that Ahmadinajhad is in no way pursuing nuclear weapons.
I have to wonder how this looks to an outside observer. A president declares he intends to destroy Israel, that the US is his foe. He pursues a nuclear weapons program, and yet the nation he has named his implacable foe does everything it can to ignore this, to pretend he is a reasonable, responsible member of the world community.
Actually, I know how it looks to an outside observer. I know we aren't supposed to say it, but it looks like Munich did in 1938. Except with nuclear terrorism.