Monday, February 06, 2012

Genocide Enablers

In the run up to World War II there was a cottage industry of people who simply would not believe in the evil intentions of the Nazis regardless of the plain as day facts of the matter, including the very words of the Nazis themselves which were discounted as being unimportant. "Oh sure," the America First crowd intoned, "the Nazis say they want to annihilate the Jews, but they don't really mean it."

Of course, the Nazis did mean it.

Flash forward to a short piece penned by historian Niall Ferguson: Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a New Six-Day War



It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful preemptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.

There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran....

5. A nuclear-armed Iran is nothing to worry about. States actually become more risk-averse once they acquire nuclear weapons.

....

The responsible nuclear Iran. Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy ... because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction? Presumably this would be in the same way that, if German scientists had developed an atomic bomb as quickly as the Manhattan Project, the Second World War would have ended with a negotiated settlement brokered by the League of Nations.

I'm not sold on all of the points Ferguson makes in his piece, but on this I am absolutely convinced. You have to take the stated goals of the Iranian regime seriously. Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel



The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine...

Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.

In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.

These are the people many in this country want to have atomic weapons - or at least do not wish to stop them acquiring them. To wit (though it is a crime against the English language to use the word in connection with the moronic site linked here):



What is the evidence, exactly, that Iran’s political elites are irrational or indifferent to the survival of the regime? Apart from the not-very-thinly-veiled racist implications (scary Muslims! Probably suicide bombers!), there’s nothing here.

This denial of the theocratic impulses to suicide attacks has to be denialism on the scale of those that deny the Holocaust happened. No one could get this accidentally wrong. There is no room for intellectual integrity in the making of such a claim. None. So ignorance cannot be an excuse.

As for the absolute faith this fool places in the idea that the religious leadership in Iran does not believe in their own millennial faith... well the word "blithering" comes to mind.

I hate to break it to people, but the German leadership class in 1938 absolutely believed in the idea of a German "master race"; the Russian leadersip class in 1920 absolutely believed in the idea of a "vanguard party leading the oppressed classes"; and the leadership elite of theocratic Iran absolutely believe "Armageddon" requires the destruction of Israel. The first two example led to the deliberate killing of over ten million human beings.

And that's not even counting the war dead.

In the face of extremist ideology you cannot assume they don't mean what they say. Well, you can, but it marks you as a scumbag of the fist order.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Icon,

Did you know that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Iranian Republic, issued a fatwa declaring nuclear weapons to be "un-Islamic"? Since you put so much stock in the beliefs of "the religious leadership in Iran," you must find this new information quite comforting. You no longer have to worry about living in a nation of "genocide enablers."

Did you know that the United States was already fighting Germany before the Nazis committed to the "final solution" at the Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942? Thus, the "American First crowd" did not dither while the Nazis boasted about their plan to annihilate the Jews.

Some one who links to World Net Daily probably should not complain about linking to a "moronic site." World Net Daily is justly famous as being a hothouse for right-wing conspiracy theories, including the notion that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen (and now that Iran is hell-bent on annihilating Israel).

By the way, if you don't like the current Republican presidential contenders, who would you prefer? Mitch Daniels? Paul Ryan? Sarah Palin? Jeb Bush? Mel Martinez?

Rich Horton said...

I linked to World Net because Memeorandum posted the link. Got a problem with it, take it up with them.

But if you like you can read Martin Peretz of The New Republic's take: http://www.tnr.com/article/tel-aviv-journal/100795/obama-foreign-policy-middle-east

"I was stunned when I saw no place else but in The Jerusalem Post a story about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s strategic counselor, Alireza Forghani, having written an essay on “the legal and religious justification for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people....

"Forghani is not a nobody. He was governor of Kish Province, aside from being a tactician and strategist for the Supreme Leader. His incendiary essay has been analyzed by the intellectually reliable think tank MEMRI in its “Inquiry and Analysis 793,” published on February 7. Read it all; it’s a hair-raising experience. Some newspapers in Europe published accounts of the incendiary document. The New York Times, “the paper of record,” did not mention it. But if you’d read the Times in those days, the Holocaust also hadn’t happened."

The link to the MEMRI analysis is: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6058.htm

I'm sorry anon, but you are wrong and foolish.

Anonymous said...

Icon,

You don't offer much defense for linking to World Nut Daily. Marty Peretz is not a good source either. He is an infamous Islamophobe and anti-Arab racist and war-monger to boot.

The National Intelligence Estimate made by the 17 American intelligence agencies, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the Iranians themselves, and the IAEA all say that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon at this time. That's good enough for me.

You still have not engaged the question of the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran repudiating the possession or use of nuclear weapons and the killing of innocent people. This seems to be quite important.

Anon

Rich Horton said...

OK so the New Republic is publishing "Islamaphobe"

Thanks for playing, you can collect your parting gifts at the door.

Either you show me proof that Forghani didn't write that essay, or I need to assume that you agree with its content.

Anonymous said...

Icon,

The New Republic is owned by an Islamophobe and anti-Arab racist, aka Martin Peretz. In a notorious recent example (a Sept. 4, 2011 column in TNR) Peretz asserted that Muslims don't value human life, are soft on terrorism, and consequently should not be permitted to freely exercise their religion 1st Amendment be damned. Substitute "Jews" or "Catholics" in the quote and tell me that is not bigoted.

"But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

So yes, TNR is not just publishing Islamophobic articles, an Islamophobe was its editor-in-chief and owner until recently.

The fact that you refuse to engage the substance of my point i.e., that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., the IAEA, and the Iranians themselves all say that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, suggests to me that you have already made up your mind.

I frankly don't think Forghani's views are very important. Ali Khamenei is the leader of Iran. His views are important. Should Iran have believed that the United States was about to attack when Senator John McCain sang "Bomb, Bomb Iran" in April 2007 during the early phase of the presidential campaign and then won the presidential nomination of the Republican party? Politicians in the United States and Iran say extreme things meant for domestic consumption that do not reflect the actual foreign policy of the nation in question.