Let’s put Israel aside for a moment, and take a look at Iran from a strictly American perspective. They have clear nuclear ambitions, have been linked with the production and distribution of IED’s that have maimed and murdered our soldiers in Iraq, and have imprisoned three hikers for alleged espionage (okay, even I must concede that if you hike from Iraq into Iran for leisure, you may be asking for trouble). Recently, a Christian minister has been sentenced to death by Iranian clerics acting as judges because the Christian minister refused to renounce his faith in Jesus. Incredibly, this is not some medieval craziness (actually, it kind of is), but an occurrence in the year of our Lord 2011! Just this week, an actress has been given 90 lashes for acting in a movie about drug abuse and discontent. And you may recall that Iran's president maintains there are no homosexuals among it’s populace and that the September 11 attacks were carried out by the US government.
Just yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder detailed a plot where members of Iran’s Quds Force, an "elite" military unit of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, attempted to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate a Saudi Arabian ambassador on US soil, and bomb several embassies here and abroad.
Those are some pretty incredible developments. But there are two things I find particularly absurd:
First, in reading through the comments following a New York Times article about the Iranian assassination plot, I was struck with the number of American commentators who took the position that Holder’s account was at best “suspicious” and at worst a fabricated story meant to justify another war. The comments went on to argue that such a war could help the current administration maintain power while creating new sources of economic stimulus via the military industrial complex. At least one comment I read mentioned Halliburton.
Have we all gone mad? Thoughts like these were once on the fringes of society, but here in America in 2011, such incredible doubt, skepticism, self-hatred, and animosity have become almost mainstream! What once held us together as a nation has so degraded that I am genuinely concerned that the America my children will inhabit will bear little resemblance to the great nation I knew as a child.
The second absurdity that came out of today’s news is that Iran’s "Supreme" Spiritual Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ("AAK"), commended the Wall Street Occupiers. In sympathizing with the movement, he stated that the treatment of the Occupiers "is not seen even in underdeveloped countries with dictatorial regimes." During my visits with the Occupiers last week, I failed to notice any that had been subjected to 90 lashes, or senteneced to death because of the religious beliefs they may hold. They must have been occupying another part of the park.
AAK continued by predicting the movement "[u]ltimately. . . will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West."
Absurd indeed.
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