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February 17, 2007

The Left Turns Evidence Against Iran into Evidence Against America

By Robert Tracinski

At an extraordinary press briefing in Baghdad over the weekend, US military officials declared war with Iran. Or rather, they declared that Iran is waging war against us--while they re-affirmed that we are not waging war in return.

The briefing revealed extensive evidence for what everyone already knew: that Iran is providing weapons and training to the insurgents who are killing American troops in Iraq. Specifically, Sunday's press conference focused on "explosively formed penetrators" or EFPs, a kind of sophisticated explosive capable of blasting through armored humvees and even tanks. According to a New York Times report:

[T]he direct physical evidence presented on Sunday was extraordinary.

The officials said the EFP weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a "kit" containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts--like a shaped, concave lid that folds into a molten ball while hurtling toward its target....

But then the officials went much further.... "We have been able to determine that this material, especially on the EFP level, is coming from the IRGC-Quds Force," said the senior defense analyst. That, the analyst said, meant direction for the operation was "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government."

The "IRGC-Quds Force" is a wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps--the wing that is responsible for supporting international terrorism--and it reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei.

None of this is much of a surprise. It has all been on open secret for years. What was new in this press conference was that the story was made more concrete. Reporters were shown the actual explosive devices provided by Iran--and US officials assigned a specific death toll from Iranian action: 170 American servicemen killed in the past two and a half years.

In a rational world, when the agents of one government--men who take orders from that government's top leader--conspire to murder the soldiers or citizens of another government, that is an act of war. But the Pentagon officials at this press briefing did not announce an American bombing campaign against Iran, a blockade on Iranian oil exports and gasoline imports, or raids on military bases and terrorist training camps inside Iran. They reported Iran's acts of war against us, but announced no acts of war in return.

Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise, either. We can add the 170 American soldiers killed by Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq to the 19 American airmen killed in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and the 241 killed in the Marine barracks bombing in 1983, as well as the Americans kidnapped and murdered in Lebanon in the 1980s and the Americans held hostage in Tehran in 1979.

It's all part of a pattern going back 28 years: the Islamic Republic of Iran is waging a global terror war against the United States, and the United States consistently fails to fight back.

President Bush has essentially continued that policy, using the new evidence, not as justification for a direct attack on Iran, but as justification for an indirect Cold War II strategy of slightly increased sanctions, arrests of Iranian agents inside Iraq, and the psychological pressure of an extra carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf.

According to the New York Times, "Administration officials say their approach was carefully calibrated to focus on concerns that Iran is providing potent weapons used against American troops in Iraq, not to ignite a wider war." But isn't Iran already waging that "wider war" against our troops?

If you want to know why the Bush administration is responding so timidly, all you have to do is look at the reaction to this new evidence in the mainstream press and among the Democratic leadership in Congress.

Presented with news that Iran is making war on America in order to drive us out of Iraq, the leaders of the House responded by granting Iran's wish: they scheduled a vote against sending more troops to Iraq, as a preliminary feeler for legislation de-funding the war.

The mainstream left has reached the dead end of its Iraq policy. For three and a half years, the whole of the Democrats' Iraq policy has been to demagogue the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Ignoring the fact that there was abundant, reasonable evidence that Saddam had these weapons--a bluff he went to great pains to keep up, even among his own generals--the left has used the absence of the weapons as a bludgeon against the Bush administration.

But in seeking to destroy Bush, they have set a far wider precedent. The smear that Saddam's WMDs were a "lie" is now being used to prevent any assertion of America's military power in the world. It is being used to force America into global retreat and passivity. Having started out with the desire to destroy Bush, the left has ended by committing itself to the defense of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

As former administration official Philip Zelikow puts it, "People have lost their moorings." They have lost any rational sense of who the real enemy is in this war.

Thus, for example, the press has credulously reported intelligence estimates that Iran is still five to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon--estimates that are based on unproven, overly rosy assumptions--yet they express "skepticism" when shown the Iranian serial numbers on the sides of bombs used to kill American troops.

Everyone is prone to the error of making judgments according to a double standard--but it is usually a double standard that favors oneself or one's friends. The left has brought us the new innovation of a double standard that favors one's sworn enemies. And so the same New York Times report that highlights the vague "skepticism" of administration critics describes one official as warning that "the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence."

If we're presented with evidence of an Iranian hand in attacks on American troops, who is it who needs to be pressed to quit stonewalling and provide some answers? The Pentagon--or the Iranian government?

This whole twisted approach is summed up in today's lead editorial in the New York Times. The Times editors write:

Before things get any more out of hand, President Bush needs to make his intentions toward Iran clear.

If Iran is fueling the conflict in Iraq, which nation should be called upon to offer guarantees of its peaceful intentions? The United States--or Iran?

The Times writes:

[P]erhaps in time, the administration will be able to prove conclusively that the weapons came from arms factories in Iran. But the officials offered no evidence to support their charge that "the highest levels of the Iranian government" had authorized smuggling these weapons into Iraq for use against American forces.

When CIA analysts were wrong about Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles, we were told that the president must have deliberately lied. When Iraqi POWs were beaten up by MPs at Abu Ghraib, we were told that the Secretary of Defense ought to resign. But if US troops are being blown up with explosives straight from Iranian arms factories, the mainstream media is suddenly at a loss to say who should be held responsible.

The Times continues:

[T]he Iraq war has...so shattered this president's credibility that shrill accusations and saber rattling are far more likely to frighten the allies America needs to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions than to change Tehran's behavior.

If Iraq reflects the kind of chaos Iran can create when armed with high explosives, let alone with nuclear weapons, then whose "saber rattling" should frighten our allies? George Bush's mild policies--or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's millenarian madness?

Reaching a crescendo of absurdity, the Times concludes:

If Mr. Bush is truly worried about Iran fanning Iraq's ever more bloody civil war--and he should be--he needs to stop fantasizing about regime change and start trying to find a way to persuade Iran's leaders to help rein in the chaos in Iraq.

And if Mr. Bush is worried that Americans no longer believe him when he warns of mortal threats to the country--and he should be--he needs to start proving that he really understands who is most responsible for the Iraq disaster. And he needs to explain how he plans to extricate American troops without setting off an even bigger war.

If Iran is fanning the flames of a sectarian conflict and deliberately targeting American soldiers, which is the rogue nation that threatens to set off a war? The United States of America--or the Islamic Republic of Iran?

John Kerry thinks he knows the answer to that question. At the world economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, in the presence of Iran's ambassador, he recently described America as an "international pariah." Like Kerry, many on the left are driven by the conviction that America is the source of the world's problems--and so they ignore any evidence that terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships might actually be responsible.

And so we see the editorial board of the New York Times reasoning that the enemy's attacks are evidence of the need for America's retreat--and telling us that we should give up on regime change in Tehran and focus on the far more important task of humiliating our own chief executive back in Washington, DC.

Is it any wonder that, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was interviewed by Diane Sawyer--who wore a headscarf for the occasion, like any good dhimmi--Iran's president expressed confidence that he is safe from attack. And he was clear about who he expected to protect him: "There are wise people in the US that would stop such illegal actions."

This is what happens when allegedly "wise" journalists and politicians decide that their own nation and its leaders are the enemy. They turn themselves into the servants and protectors of our real enemies.

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