Iran, Another False Enemy

Politics / US Politics Dec 30, 2011 - 02:45 AM By: Stephen_Merrill

Is Iran truly a country so bent on murdering innocent Americans it embraces its own nuclear annihilation, unlike any other nation now or previously, utter, complete defeat at war?

This is the claim made by the pro-warfare wing of the Republicrat Party, seven out of eight candidates seeking the Republican nomination for President. It is a given within this frightened circle that Iranians are willing to commit mass suicide as a people just to make a negative point about the freedoms enjoyed in the United States.



The warfare candidates in their many words on the subject betray little personal knowledge of Iranian history or proclivities. The main evidence cited in favor of a US military attack on Iran is the rants of the staged showman of the mullah empire, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even he has never stated that Iran is willing to die as a nation just to launch one nuclear attack of its own on Israel or the United States. With an impoverished economy, a strong protest movement, no known weapons of mass destruction and no direct capacity to deliver a nuclear missile even close to Tel Aviv, Iran seems an odd nation for the West to be so frightened of.
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It was only fifty years ago the US Congress- Industrial-Pentagon Machine attacked demon North Vietnam for its war to reunify the nation, split apart by WWII and by years of French imperial domination. In 1964 it was a plain certainty in Washington, D.C. the Vietnam War the nation was prosecuting was the unfortunate burden of Americans, especially young people subject to the military draft. The alternative was to have Communist China and the Soviet Union consume all of Southeast Asia within its godless, combined empire. This would lead to the communists winning the global cold war in the end. Even the United States may eventually fall to the Soviet-Sino monolith. Therefore, this was a quite necessary war in Vietnam, well worth fighting.

After the US ended its puppet government in South Vietnam and withdrew, North Vietnam quickly unified the country by force in 1974. What occurred thereafter was quite different from the Pentagon’s longtime vision.

Vietnam engaged in three land wars with China, its traditional enemy. Rather than falling to communism, Southeast Asia became the center of globalization, free trade and capitalism. The Soviet Union never exercised influence again in Southeast Asia after the Americans withdrew from Vietnam. The Soviets went on to their own disastrous foreign invasion in Afghanistan. At times during the 1980’s it appeared the Soviet Union was on the brink of war with China.

The government of Ho Chi Minh still rules Vietnam today under so-called communism, now as a de-facto ally of the United States. If there were any negative effects on the United States by the unification of Vietnam under Ho Chi Ming, none are apparent, despite our wasting of untold lives and treasure for more than a decade. The fears and dire predictions could not have been more wrong.

Learning no lessons from the Vietnam fiasco, the US in 2003 went on to invade another nation, Iraq, based on unfounded fears. The US withdrawal this year from Iraq has been followed by the prospect of immediate civil war and chaos across the ethnically divided nation we leave behind. No actual gains from the Iraq War can be cited. Had he not been deposed by the US invasion of Iraq already, Saddam Hussein would have been the most unlikely Middle East dictator to survive this year’s Arab spring revolutions.

Is the new saber-rattling fixation on Iran by US leaders setting America up for yet another disastrous foreign war based on false assumptions? Is a trumped up new war with Iran the way the coming implosion the US dollar is going to be covered over by our failed elite?

Iran: Crossroad of Empires:
Center of Learning, Arts and Diplomacy

Human civilization was born to present knowledge along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in Mesopotamia, circa 10,000 B.C, Assyria and Babylonia, present day Iraq and Iran. Millennia later, the region also came to be called Persia by European geographers. The proper name of the nation, Iran, was firmly established diplomatically across the world in 1935.

A warrior people known as the Menes were the first to consolidate the Iranian plateau and the surrounding regions. As an ethnic group the Menes were called “Aryans”, more like Vikings than Mongols. Largely under the rule of King Cyaxares (633-584 B.C.), the Medes finally put an end to centuries of war. The Menes victory at Niniva in 612 B.C. destroyed the remnants of the archenemy Assyrian Empire. See http://www.art-arena.com/medes.html The Menian Empire at its peak stretched from Turkey to Afghanistan.



Another warrior people led by Cyrus the Great (559-530 B.C.), starting in Iran, built the greatest empire known to the ancient world. The last ruler of the Medes, Astyages, was defeated and captured by Cyrus in 549 B.C. Cyrus’ armies went on dominate most of the Middle East, including Egypt and parts of Europe. The empire was named after Cyrus’ mentor, the Achaemenian Empire.

Cyrus’ imperial successor, Xerxes, led the invasion of Greece beginning in 481 B.C. in retaliation for an Athenian attack on the forces of Emperor Darius at the Battle of Marathon a number of years earlier. Despite the heroics of the King Leonidas led Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, Xerxes’ armies marched through the whole of Greece sacking Sparta and Athens. See http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-pla...ect-background

There was something quite unique about the Achaemenian Empire for its deadly brutal times. Cyrus did not engage in the mass extinction of defeated peoples as practiced by all earlier dynasties. Cyrus and his successors allowed a degree of self-governance in defeated lands, even allowing local religions to remain in place. Many of the cities captured by the Achaemenians greeted the new emperor as a savior. As recounted in the Old Testament, Jewish leaders in Samaria, fighting for survival among hostile peoples, referred to Cyrus as the “Lord’s Annointed” for his peaceful ways. See http://www.christiancourier.com/arti...lical-prophecy Cyrus was a builder of cities and the guarantor of safe commerce between nations.