Conquest and Defense

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"Weaker countries are forced to build armies to defend themselves" That's what Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Feb. 02.

“We seek the disarmament of the big powers. We claim that the big powers’ chemical and biological weapons must be destroyed along with their nuclear weapons. Weaker countries are forced to build armies to defend themselves from possible enemy threats instead of education and welfare. What kind of a system is this?” he said. “They think that they can rule the world through bullying”


There may well be a legitimate concern that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. Bush wants us to believe it: "The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons." he warned in January. Yet, his own 'intelligence' officers have told us that Iran doesn't have the materials or the capability to develop them.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told the Senate Intelligence committee on Feb.2 that Iran probably does not yet have nuclear weapons, nor has it obtained the material central to producing them. Still, Negroponte called Iran's program a matter of "highest concern."

The most revealing argument that the Bush administration has made against Iran is their reference to Iran's oil and the influence Iran gains by trading with regional actors like Russia and Pakistan. Negroponte said in the hearing that key oil-producing states are increasing their leverage.

"Record oil revenues and diversification of its trading partners are further strengthening the Tehran government." Negroponte warned the senate committee.

Oil was also on Negroponte's mind as he blasted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his increasing relationship with Iran. Chavez "is seeking closer economic, military and diplomatic ties with Iran and North Korea," he said. Negroponte worried aloud in his statement that Chavez is looking to dump the U.S. as an oil trading partner in favor of customers like Russia and China. Although the U.S. presently gets about 60% of Venezuela's oil exports, Venezuela reportedly plans to double their exports to China by the end of the year.

What Negroponte also said in the hearing was that Iran has a stockpile of ballistic missiles, to, as he admitted, repel foreign assaults on their country. A further 'threat' from Iran that he expressed was the government's hostility to the United States and its interests. Perhaps the fear and distrust of American intentions for Iran would cause them to aggressively defend themselves from any interfering attack, but Iran has not threatened America outside of its own borders.

So, what the Bush administration has so far presented to the nation as justification for their proposed subversion of the elected government in Iran, and the raising of the possibility of retaliatory action against what they assert is Iran's 'ambition' to develop nuclear weapons, is a weak, imperialistic argument based on Bush's imagined right to dictate our agenda to countries in that region at the point of our nation's military force.

As anti-American as Iran's new leader appears, the only threat that our government can acknowledge him making against the U.S. is to defend Iran's borders from foreign invasion; our invasion, or assault on their sovereign nation. His country is supposed to resign themselves to Bush's hunger for conquest, or else defend themselves against the possible U.S. assault with forced, sometimes violent expressions of basic principles of freedom, liberty, and self expression which Bush disregards as obstacles to his consolidation of power. Just like in Iraq.

We are mired in the muck we created in Iran's neighbor, Iraq. There is no more room for marches to victory, no government to smash down, no statues left to fell. There are no more people left to conquer there - save the phantom of al-Qaeda whose name is adopted by and bequeathed to the resistance. The people of Iraq are already under thumb. No new appearance by Commander Bush aboard another aircraft carrier in a flight suit can be crafted out of the quagmire.

Iran is an old frontier of antagonism for the U.S., and a new one for the progression of Bush's new world imperialism. A reactive element there once held our citizens and the Carter presidency hostage, gifting the militarist Reagan with their release the day of his inauguration. It may be understandable that Bush would look for some validation of his own militarism there as well. But, if we don't stop him he will, like a belligerent stepchild, break whatever should not be broken there and create whatever chaos he can to justify his manufactured imperative to clean it up again.


Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law;
’Till superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shar’d the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conqu’rors, slaves of subjects made

-Alexander Pope

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