Let’s just put the following in the category of “no duh.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday blamed the United States for the spread of terrorism in the Middle East, saying America’s dual post-9/11 wars — and its alliance with Israel — allowed extremist ideologies to flourish.
“If we did not have the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the United States’ unwarranted support for the inhumane actions of the Zionist regime against the oppressed nation of Palestine, today the terrorists would not have an excuse for the justification of their crimes,” Rouhani said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
That’s obviously not something an American politician is allowed to say or acknowledge, and, in fairness, it isn’t warranted to blame Americans for the moral atrocities of other people. What we did caused the sectarian warfare in the Middle East but this doesn’t excuse or absolve people who are engaged in that sectarian warfare.
The Iranian president and his government have their own share of responsibility for what has gone on Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
Israel, too, is too convenient as a whipping boy. When I find any government in the region that has treated the Palestinians with kindness or fairness, I’ll let you know. These regimes treat their own citizens worse than their livestock and the refugees worse than that. And then they act appalled at what Israel does. It’s very convenient for them to have their people agitating against a foreign rather than a domestic power.
So, yeah, I’m impatient with lectures from people like President Rouhani. He can stick a sock it in as far as I am concerned. But that doesn’t mean that what he said isn’t basically accurate.
George W. Bush ruined the Middle East. It wasn’t a healthy region in the first place, and it couldn’t endure Bush’s “freedom agenda.”
