Who`s Behind the Proxy Wars?
Iran is conducting a proxy war against
the United States in Iraq,
declared Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.
How? Gen. David Petraeus explained. The
Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and
Hezbollah are arming, training and directing the Shia
militia fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Basra and
firing rockets into the Green Zone. Said Petraeus, the
Quds Force is responsible for killing hundreds of
American soldiers.
If true, these are acts of war from a
privileged sanctuary. And Bush would be as justified in
attacking these Iranian base camps as was Nixon in
ordering U.S. forces to clean out the North Vietnamese
sanctuaries in Cambodia.
While there is no reason to question the
truth of what Petraeus and Crocker allege, this proxy
war raises a question. What is Tehran`s motive?
Iran, after all, is the principal
beneficiary of the U.S. invasion that dethroned its
enemy Saddam, ended the Sunni Baath Party`s monopoly of
power and opened the door to Shia politicians with
strong ties to Tehran. The regime in the Green Zone is
the same regime that rolled out a red carpet for
President Ahmadinejad.
Why, then, would Iran bloody it up? Why,
when things are going Iran`s way in Iraq, would it risk
war with the United States over Iraq?
The April 16 Los Angeles Times
offers an answer. Iran`s proxy war against us in Iraq
may be Tehran`s response to a U.S. proxy war being waged
against Iran. Ahmadinejad may be exacting blood for
blood.
According to Times` writer Borzou
Daragahi, Iran believes the United States is behind
groups that are systematically killing Iranians along
the border. [Iran
says U.S. aids rebels at its borders]
One such group is the
Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, which is
linked to the
PKK that has conducted a terrorist war in Turkey and
is considered by the United States a terrorist
organization. The founder of PEJAK is Osman Ocalan,
brother of the founder of the PKK, who is now serving a
life sentence in a Turkish prison.
As Turkey retaliates against the PKK
with artillery fire and raids into Kurdistan, Iranians
are now doing the same.
A second group, regarded by both the
United States and Iran as terrorist, is the
Mujahedin Khalq, a cult-like group, operating inside
Iraq on the Iranian border. Iranians also believe the
United States is behind attacks in the oil-rich and Arab
Khuzestan region of southwest Iran.
And, as Daragahi reports, "Baluch
militants have killed dozens of members of Iran`s
security forces, including 11 elite Revolutionary Guard
in a car bomb attack last year in Zahedan, a town near
the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan." Jundallah,
or God`s Party, claimed responsibility for that attack.
Last year also, a Kurdish woman killed
several Iranian officers and soldiers in a suicide
bombing. According to Daragahi, "Iraqi Kurds say
perceived U.S. support for PEJAK and other anti-Iranian
groups prompted Iranians to reactivate Ansar al Islam, a
Sunni Muslim group with ties to al-Qaida that has been
launching attacks against Kurdish officials."
The danger here is that these proxy wars
could explode into U.S. air attacks on the Quds Force,
followed by Iranian retaliation against U.S. troops,
followed by U.S. strikes on Iran`s nuclear facilities
and a third U.S. war in the Middle East, dropped into
the lap of an overstretched U.S. military and onto the
desk of the next president.
In his speech last week, Bush
warned that the regime in Tehran "has a choice to
make," and if "Iran makes the wrong choice,
America will act to protect our interests, and our
troops and our Iraqi partners"—i.e., this is
Tehran`s last warning.
Query: Where is the Congress of the
United States?
It alone has the power to authorize or declare a war
of the magnitude toward which we may be headed because
of proxy wars about which the American people know next
to nothing.
Up on Capitol Hill,
GOP Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina is seeking
to rewrite the War Powers Act to ensure that—if the
United States goes to war again—it be the "collective
judgment" of both elected branches, as the Founding
Fathers intended.
Needed now are congressional hearings to
determine if President Bush has authorized a proxy war
against Iran—by funding or arming guerrillas to attack
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and if that is what is
behind the IRG-backed attacks on U.S. forces.
Even before such hearings, both Houses
should pass a joint resolution declaring that no
appropriated funds may be used for any pre-emptive U.S.
air strikes on Iran—unless and until Congress has
authorized such acts of war. If we are headed for war
with Iran, it should be the collective judgment of all
the nation`s elected leadership, and not done on the
whim of a lame-duck president unsure about his place in
history.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Patrick J. Buchanan
needs
no introduction to VDARE.COM readers;
his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World,
reviewed
here by
Paul Craig Roberts.
