"Regime Change in Iran" - Weekly Standard (via PNAC) - 08/2002

[Miss Chybil]

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iran-072902.pdf

Though Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan,
Israel, and Iraq have commanded our attention
since September 11, it is always good to
remind ourselves that the most consequential
country in the Muslim Middle East is
Iran. This has been true, with a few intermissions, for a
thousand years. And since the victory of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and his revolution in 1979, Iran has held
center stage in the current Muslim drama: How will God
and man interact in a modern theocratic state? Will the
Western idea of individual freedom, which has been gaining
ground in Iran for over a hundred years, triumph over
the Islamic injunction to submit oneself to God’s law in
virtually all matters public and private? Would the notion
of individual rights, always present in the intellectual
storm that produced the Iranian revolution, congeal and
allow a separation of church and state where the democratic
franchise, not the Holy Law or a cleric, becomes the
final arbiter of politics? And could the dictatorial dispensation
of the entire Muslim Middle East—no democracy
except in secular, half-European Turkey—conceivably be
shattered by the state whose religious raison d’être has
been the most explicit?

The Bush administration—and it is perhaps accurate
here to underscore, the president himself more than his
foreign-policy team—appears to be trying to grapple seriously
with an American response to tyranny in the Muslim
world, particularly in Iran. The president’s “axis of
evil” speech, his July 12 address on Iran, the subsequent
delivery of this statement in Persian over Voice of America
radio by the National Security Council’s Zalmay
Khalilzad, and the Captive Nations Week proclamation of
July 17 have revealed a man who obviously believes that
certain Western ideas have universal range and roots. The
president, who is probably the most sincerely religious
commander in chief since World War II, has stated repeatedly
that faith does not countenance despotism, that Muslims,
too, have the right to “liberty and justice . . . the
birthright of all people.”

Stepping away from the “realist” world of his father—
where a vision of regional stability, not a belief in individual
liberty and democracy, drove foreign policy—George
W. Bush has sliced across national borders and civilizational
divides with an unqualified assertion of a moral
norm. The president declared, “The people of Iran want
the same freedoms, human rights, and opportunities as
people around the world.” America will stand “alongside
people everywhere determined to build a world of freedom,
dignity, and tolerance. . . . America affirms . . .
its commitment to helping those in captive nations
achieve democracy.” These are, at least to Iranian ears,
truly revolutionary words for an American president. One
has to go back to Woodrow Wilson to find an American
leader who so clearly directs his message far outside the
West. And Wilson’s call for self-determination, made in
the declining years of European empire, addressed collective,
“national” ethnic aspirations more than the liberal
rights of individuals.

Though the president’s “liberation theology” is obviously
a work in progress (as, if we remember, was Reagan’s),
the philosophical borders of the president’s views
are sufficiently clear that it will be difficult for those in his
administration and in the media who are disturbed, if not
terrified, by Bush’s creed to walk back the policy. They
will, no doubt, try. The State Department of Colin Powell
will endeavor to introduce a bit of opaqueness into the discussion,
striving to keep open the possibility, deeply cherished,
it strongly appears, by the director of policy planning,
Richard Haass, that U.S. and Iranian officials can
somehow sit and talk. For State, sitting and talking with
foreign dignitaries is usually an end in itself, imbued with
a non-negotiable moral goodness. (Presidential spokesman
Ari Fleischer will, of course, have the unenviable task of articulating the contradictory public truces
between State, the Pentagon, and the White House, which
will make it appear that the president is trying to alter his
original language, if not his intent.) And the president
may well be lazy, cautious, or somewhat confused about
turning his ideals into a consistent, effective policy. For
example, preaching liberty, the rule of law, and democracy
for Palestinians on only one bank of the Jordan river is an
odd, if not unsustainable, rhetorical position. Yet despite
the unorthodox, public way foreign policy is being made,
and unmade, in this administration,
it seems clear that the
president isn’t going to stop his
Reaganesque approach. The
possible contradictions in the
president’s actions are unlikely
to blunt the revolutionary edge
and appeal of his message in the
Middle East.

more... http://www.newamericancentury.org/iran-072902.pdf

[applegrove]

1. All I can say is these people were/are scary.

:scared:

[Miss Chybil]

2. The plan rolls forward no matter what. nt