The United States government has been hyping a supposed link between Iran and al Qaeda operatives, positing in particular that a “safe haven” in Iran exists as “six terrorist operatives form a network that funnels money and personnel from the Gulf to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan via Iran.” Leaving aside the limited evidence ever given for such accusations, has America any right to condemn others for engaging in exactly the behavior it engages in every day?
Coincidentally, Iran condemns the U.S. for supporting anti-Iranian terrorism all the time. Do the accusations have merit? Take, for example, recent moves by U.S. officials to remove Mujahedin-e Khalq from its terrorism registry, which would qualify it to receive U.S. funding, despite what Iran calls “a compelling record of terrorist activities.” Also note that U.S. officials during the Bush administration “suggested re-arming MEK and using it to destabilize Iran.” Is this not actively supporting and attempting to provide safe haven for terrorism? Or take instead the “cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, targeted assassinations, and proxy wars that have apparently been under way in Iran.” Do these qualify as acts of terrorism? No, because they are committed by America.
Let’s broaden the analysis. At this very moment the U.S. is actively supporting and fighting a war in Libya on behalf of a rebel group who has been committing acts of terrorism and reportedly has ties to al Qaeda. In Somalia, U.S. money and weapons are indirectly funding the U.S. designated terrorist group al Shabaab. In Afghanistan, U.S. money and weapons have also been funding insurgent groups deemed terrorists by the U.S. government. In Colombia, the U.S. is not only funding and arming paramilitary terrorist groups with atrocious human rights violations, but is also funding the corrupt government who commits horrible acts of state terror on the Colombian people.
If any of this qualifies as funding and cooperating with terrorists – and it quite obviously does – I’m not really sure where the U.S. gets off criticizing Iran for allegedly doing the same thing on a comparatively infinitesimal scale. It’s also important to note that my parallels have been kept mostly to non-state terror, but if we include the state terror America supports it begins to reveal America’s well earned place at #1 top supporter of terror on planet Earth. Even still this barely scratches the surface.
It should also be noted that this isn’t merely about hypocrisy and being principled and consistent. American policy is currently in violation of its own laws which prohibit providing material support or resources to terrorists. This means America should be in the process of prosecuting its own leadership, instead of, say, attempting to justify aggressive actions against Iran for behaving just like America.
Most of the newest wild charges against Iran come from David Cohen at Treasury. He is just an updated version of Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Abe Shulsky and their ilk that created the pack of lies that helped justify the attack against Iraq. Most of these men are Zionists and are willing to lie on behalf of Israel. My proposal for a Constitutional Amendment would be that no elected or appointed official in the US Government can have dual citizenship with another country. We have certainly seen the damage that occurs, time and again, with Senator Joe Lieberman.
oh course the us supports terrorism, the us foreign policy has been “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” and regardless of who my “friend'” is or what their motivations are or true allegiance lies, as long as we have a common enemy, the us is in favor of supporting them.
this goes back probably further than ww2, but ww2 is the best example to start with with the soviet union. as long as the us and soviet union both hated Hitler, they were allies and best buddies ever, but as soon as that common enemy was gone, they were the devil incarnated. and the cold war just solidified this policy. as long as you weren’t deemed a communist or a sympathizer with one, you were a friend.
anyone remember a time when Saddam was in the us good side because he didn’t like iran?
The Israel First crowd is behind a lot of this- every one of them needs to be hauled into court for prosecution. Deny, deny, deny, and when denial doesn't work, smear, smear, smear, and when THAT doesn't work, in their playbook, it's probably a good day to launch an air strike.
One of the hardest pulls ever is going to be convincing the American public that THEIR government is guilty of that which they accuse others. When it became obvious during the height of the Iraq invasion that the US troops were guilty of war crimes and that the leadership officials all the way to Bush43 were guilty of ordering the actions and creating the environment that caused those war crimes to occur what did the American public do? The majority turned on their TVs to watch Survivor and American Idol and promptly forgot about it or at a minimum, wrapped themselves in the flag and demanded that Americans would never commit war crimes, especially those elected (or appointed) because, well, because they are our leaders and American leaders would never do that. American leaders had the best interests of the American people in their hearts and would never do anything to impugn the honor and integrity of our heritage, blah, blah, blah…To accuse the American leaders of such crimes makes the accuser a terrorist sympathizer and very, very unpatriotic – unAmerican. So, the media, complicit in the coverup, stopped running stories of the crimes and the people were spared the dirty details. And lo and behold, they forgot. Hey, it's all good now. And the Hopes that came with the election of Obama were quickly dashed when he declared that his administration would "look forward – not back."
In another comment elsewhere the idea of a Citizen's War Crimes Trial might be a good idea if it could be pulled off without ideological intent. Just the facts. It's still a good idea.
As for a constitutional amendment requiring dual citizens be excluded from government service – I'll sign it. There should never be any question regarding the allegiance of any government official – ever.
PMOI / MEK is not a terrorist organization, as was said by the British and European high courts total of seven times, by the U.S. court of justice last year and recently by the French court in June 2011 which denied all charges of terrorism about this organization. Don't forget that the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world is the iranian regime.
the mek is not a terrorists organization! their purpose is to have freedom and human rights in iran. the real terrorist is the iranian regime who killed/executed millions of people! some one has to fight against this inhuman regime! so the mek are involved in it! so delete them from the FTO !!