Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

The AEI's attack dogs jump onto the 'Iran hostage crisis' bandwagon

Damian Lataan | 03.04.2007 15:21 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Terror War | World

The attack dogs at neoconservative headquarters in Washington, DC, are at it again. They have seized on the ‘crisis’ that was brought about by the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines by the Iranians inside Iranian waters to call again for confrontation and war against Iran.

The attack dogs at neoconservative headquarters in Washington, DC, are at it again. They have seized on the ‘crisis’ that was brought about by the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines by the Iranians inside Iranian waters to call again for confrontation and war against Iran.

Two of the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) most unwavering and repulsive warmongering lunatics, David Frum and Michael Ledeen, have each jumped on the bandwagon of hate to take advantage of the current stand-off between Britain and Iran in order to further their cause of getting the US to attack Iran thus leaving Israel free to deal with their immediate neighbours, Syria [1], Hizbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza and West Bank, all of whom rely on support from Iran.

Frum’s frothing at the mouth contribution [2] opens with: “The Iranian seizure of 15 British naval personnel is an outrage--and an opportunity.” The ‘opportunity’ he refers to is the opportunity to encourage the Europeans to take up the challenge of making some tough sanctions decisions against Iran. But he also writes toward the end of his piece that: “Since 9/11, Europeans have pleaded with the U.S. to rely on sanctions and diplomacy rather than force. Fine. Let's see some sanctions then--real sanctions, not the wrist-slaps imposed till now.” Since Frum just knows that that isn’t going to happen, then the real meaning of Frum’s use of the word ‘opportunity’ comes into play – ‘if you can’t come to sanctions then support a strike against Iran’.

Frum also exposes both his hypocrisy and his obsessive paranoid Islamaphobia in his piece. He reckons Iran “…forced the captured female sailor to wear the Islamic hijab, a violation of her Geneva Convention right to practice her own religion.” Frum compounds his paranoid obsession about Islam by trying to use the headscarf the female prisoner is wearing as some kind of demonising symbol when he asserts: “…let's broadcast one more time that image of Faye Turney, cloaked against her will in that black headscarf of subordination and humiliation.” The hypocrisy is in the way that Frum, a supporter of the horrors of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, attempts to glibly mention that Iran’s prisoners are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.

For the lunatic fascist neocon Michael Ledeen [3], it’s not so much hypocrisy and paranoia that sets the pace in his rant; it’s his arrogance, which is just another of those values, together with hypocrisy, that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’. He berates the British because they didn’t fight to gain their freedom before capture and then rubs it in by relating a story about a similar border That's all you need to know, really. The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources) incident in which American servicemen were involved. They, of course, escaped capture by fighting back. The implication is barely disguised.

For Ledeen the reason for Iran’s actions is straight forward: “The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources).” Ledeen’s arrogance is supreme. For him the capture of Iranian intelligence and military officers by the US is quite legitimate despite the fact they are part of the Iranian diplomatic corps in Iraq but for the Iranians to capture coalition forces renders them to be likened to wolves or animals that have captured their prey. It doesn’t for one moment occur to Ledeen that it is the US and Britain that is on land that doesn’t belong to them and who are in places where they are not wanted.

Hypocrisy and arrogance; the hallmarks of all true warmongering neoconservatives.




References:


[1]  http://lataan.blogspot.com/2007/01/iran-last-big-stumbling-block-to-right.html

[2]  http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25875,filter.foreign/pub_detail.asp

[3]  http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25847/pub_detail.asp

Damian Lataan
- Homepage: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2007/04/american-enterprise-institutes-attack.html

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. The claok of humiliation — sb

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech