COLUMN: 10-24-2007

The drumbeats of war can once again be heard in the distance under the auspices of very questionable circumstances. And once again, the regime in question exists as a direct result of the poor judgment of our leaders over the past 50 years.

Whereas we propped up the militaristic Saddam Hussein regime throughout the 1980's and then were "surprised" when he used his idle military to wage war on Kuwait (after we had supported his cruel war on Iran for 8 years), the Iranian regime is the direct result of the interventionist CIA policies of the 1950's. The Bush administration (and all other recent administrations) always neglects to mention this fact when they mention Iranian crimes dating back to the 1979 revolution and hostage-taking of Americans. They conveniently forget that it was our overthrow of their democratically-elected regime in order to install the Shah and get cheap oil that lead to decades of cruel dictatorship by the Shah and that the Americans in Tehran were only taken hostage after our government refused to turn over the fleeing Shah for prosecution for his crimes. (In fact, the rich elite who robbed Iran of all it's wealth from the 1950's until the 1979 revolution continue to live an extremely prosperous lifestyle in America and use this wealth to influence American policy.)

Even if you ignore the historical aspects of the entire situation, it's clear that the same ideologues who led us into Iraq under false pretenses are now rushing to do the same with Iran before time runs out on the Bush administration, whose insulated inner circle allows for easy manipulation by these warmongers. We must not allow them to cause us to lose all of our credibility as a nation, which will take decades to repair, especially in the face of the rising undemocratic powers in Russia and especially in China.