Fareed Zakaria has a rather thought provoking article in the current Newsweek. Here’s a quote:
The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.
Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
“Islamofascism” looks like the new enemy identity when the (especially FOX) news is on. Yet it is as much of a fraud as the WMDs of Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the Iraq mess. Bush is even using “Islamofascism” in his speeches now.
So we are moving to add a missile defense shield in Europe, which gives the Russians an excuse to come back against us… the Cold War returns?
And if Bush does get us back into the Cold War won’t he achieve his ultimate goal of returning us to 30 years ago?
