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Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Johnnie B. Byrd :: Townhall.com Columnist
Iran, John McCain, and the 'Great Satan'
by Johnnie B. Byrd
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On Monday evening, September 10, 2001, former U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL) addressed the Republican caucus of the Florida House of Representatives at our regular Monday night dinner in Tallahassee.

Senator Mack departed from his usual “less taxes, more freedom” speech and gave us a “fire-side chat” on another subject - American foreign policy. How opportune that turned out to be.

The good Senator outlined the mutually exclusive foreign policies of “peace at any price” and “freedom at all cost.” He stressed that having inherited a free country at great cost, America’s destiny was to let freedom “ring” in our troubled world, at all cost.

Mack pointed to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 as a case study in the stark dichotomy presented by these two polar opposite philosophies. He cited Iran’s release of the American embassy hostages within minutes of Reagan’s taking office as the expected result of a “freedom at all costs” foreign policy.

Senator Mack’s words still rang in our ears the next morning as 9/11 catapulted us into the war against Islamic extremism.

Today, can Republicans continue to make the case that a peaceful world, in any sense of the word, is only achievable through a Republican president faithful to Reagan’s philosophy of ‘freedom at all cost’?

Or, will Hillary and Obama lull a fickle and risk-averse American public into seeking “peace at any price” with its false hope of security through appeasement of our enemies?

Indeed, unless we are naïve we must acknowledge that the Iranians are asking themselves the same question. Based upon recent news stories it is reasonable to assume behind the scene conversations in Iran may sound like the following:

[Setting: Tehran, in a palace meeting room with large conference table around which are seated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic; Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Gen. Mohammed-Ali Jafari; and Foreign Minister Mottaki.]

Ahmadinejad: “Supreme Leader, it is time to unleash the forces of Islam upon the Great Satan whose fleet waits like a lamb for slaughter in the Persian Gulf! We stand on the threshold of victory against the Enemy of Islam, whose peoples have no stomach for a fight! Listen to General Jafari.” Continued...
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About The Author

Johnnie Byrd is a lawyer and host of “Johnnie Byrd’s Weekend” heard on WGUL-AM 860 in Tampa Bay, FL.
 
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Reply # 1
Date: Feb 20, 2008 - 7:08 PM EST
Subject: Feh.
You are an idiot if you see death threats and actual murders as shades of grey. It is not blustery confrontationalism to demand that others refrain from threats and assualts; it is self-preservation.

We turned down the offer of "help" from Iran for the same reason sane people turn down offers of a free meal from Hannibal the Cannibal: i.e. such offers are only vanishingly likely to be legitimate.

It only take one side to start a war, and Iran wants to kill us. They are killing our military in Iraq, and they are readying themselves to kill as many more of us as possible. They will undertake as deadly a sneak attack as they can arrange in the hopes that such an attack will prove fatal and unanswerable. Nearly every action that they have taken since I was ten years old supports this contention and practically none argue aganist it.

Talking is not going to dissuade them, because talking won't make us dead. Preventing them from obtaining the capability of launching that first strike is all that protects us, and jaw-jaw clearly isn't going to do it.

They either put and keep their hands where we can see them, or we should physically destroy their capabilities of attacking us.

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Reply # 2
Date: Feb 20, 2008 - 4:16 PM EST
Tim
"Death to America" means nothing absent the meaningful ability to act on the threat.

Again, and I do not know how many times I will have to say this, the choice is NOT between doing "nothing" and nuking Iran. That's a false dilemma people kepp bringing up because it makes them feel tough. Reality is much more complex.

Don't complain to me because the great military hero Colin Powell said that Hussein was contained. Well, go ahead, becuase it is clear now that we have bene in Iraq for years that he was indeed contained and had little or no capacity to threaten anyone. And he wasn't going to get it either, despite the continued fantasies of right wing chickenhawks.

The problem with the blustery, confrontational mindset you evince is that it tends to blot out very real options. For example, Iran was very helpful to us in Afghanistan and could have been very helpful to us in Iraq. We turned down offers from Iran that would have been much to our advantage becuase people like you were seeing the world in black and white, unable to recognize a shade of grey if it bit them in the butt.

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