Iran Launches Offensive in Iraq

Timothy Birdnow

A fresh round of violence in Iraq, where U.S. troops are engaging in a drawdown and eventual exit, is being blamed on Iranian security agencies.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-envoy-blames-iran-following-deadly-mo

Iran and Syria have been at the heart of our problems in Iraq all along, and our unwillingness to place blame where it belongs has been the root of our problem. Iran was and is the terror master, and an aggressive approach to the Medea-Persians would have saved countless lives and stabilized not just Iraq but the entire Middle East. We failed miserably in taking the proper steps.

A regime like Iran has to export it's revolution or face counter-revolution. It really is that simple. The public must believe that aliens are their enemies and that sacrifice is needed to protect the nation. The Iranian public has grown increasingly restive in the grip of the Mullahs, and they were prepared to overthrow the Islamic Republic on more than one occasion. We should have helped the rebels, but we failed to do so, and they were crushed.

It is a simple proposition; they will fight us outside of Iran (and Syria) or inside. We could have assisted the opposition. Supplied weapons, training, sanctuary, intel. We could have turned them into a formidable foe. And every second the Mullahs were fighting our proxies would be a second they weren't making mischief for our people and our friends.

This is a war. Unfortunately, we are afraid to fight it like one. One does not leave an enemy at your back in wartime. And Iran and Syria are the ultimate sources of international terrorism.

What would Franklin Roosevelt have done had Germany not declared war on the U.S.? The Japanese were our attackers, after all. Would he have fought Japan while ignoring Nazi Germany?

No. Even before war broke out Roosevelt and Hitler were waging a stealth war in the North Atlantic, and once open hostilities arose FDR would doubtlessly have found a pretext for open war with the Germans. He understood that we could not possibly believe victory over Japan would secure American safety as long as their allies in der Fatherland still threatened.

Iraq and Afghanistan were never intended to be the ultimate goals anyway; the idea held by Bush and the inner core was to contain Iran, have U.S. forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, squeezing them. Unfortunately, Bush misread the political winds horribly, and allowed our purposes to be mischaracterized by the anti-war Left. It turned from a geopolitical squeeze play into a battle for survival against enemies comprised of international jihadists and equipped and funded by the very same Iran we were trying to contain. Of course, Iran has been supported by our "allies" Russia and China.

The problem was we weren't nearly aggressive enough. We needed to put real pressure on the Iranian regime and we failed to do it. They put pressure on us, making us react, and that actually took the heat off of the cadre in Tehran. Foolish; with our money and our capabilities we could have built a revolution in the land of the Persians. But we decided to hunker down, and a purely defensive war in a foreign land is generally a fast track to defeat. Guerilla fighting is hard to deal with at it's best, and in a foreign country it requires a certain degree of ruthlessness and a high degree of aggression. Otherwise you are playing hide-and-seek on a national scale.

It's time we get serious about Iran. But I fear our cowardly Il Duce in the White House is constitutionally incapable of it.