Soup of the Day

A modern tale

hy•poc•ri•sy
(noun)
the practice of claiming to have moral
standards or beliefs to which one’s
own behaviour does not conform;

When discussing the current political situations at home or abroad, I have been rather outspoken recently in our social circles. Subjects such as Global Warming, our dependence on fossil fuels and the continuing Middle East debacle are always conversed with much enthusiasm on my part because I strongly believe we are currently walking blindly into some of the darkest times in the last fifty years.

The recent cartoon argument between the Western Media and Muslim culture has just highlighted the growing problem that the so called ‘free world’ is having to face. Although it was obviously a bad idea to publish such material, the original argument of what was really wrong with publishing the material was completely lost and both sides used it to bolster their political arguments against the other. What was most worrying is that no-one seemed to notice the transition from a simple question of good taste to all out cultural war.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was very quick to jump on this political hot potato. In recent years Ali Khamenei has claimed that the Holocaust is a myth, made up by the West to justify their occupation of Palestine. This hasn’t helped Iran’s deteriorating relationship with the US government, the British government and every Jewish community in the world. But then Ali Khamenei does not really mind because his statements were not for us to hear, they were for his people.

It seems that we will not learn the lessons from our previous mistakes, however recent they may be. Iraq was invaded on the precursor that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, or as we now regularly hear them referred to, WMD’s. Western intelligence has known for a long time that Saddam did have a program devoted to the task of creating chemical and biological weaponary, we saw it in use when Saddam launched several attacks on the Kurd’s shortly before the first Gulf War; for those who have forgotten, George Bush Snr. encouraged the Kurdish people of Iraq to rise up against Saddam, but gave them no support and Saddam quickly squashed the uprising, resulting in 1.5 million Kurds fleeing into Turkey.
In the lead up to the current Iraq conflict, Saddam faced a real dilema. Saddam knew that if he carried on his program of WMD research, the UN security council would support America’s desire to invade Iraq and he would be overthrown. He also knew that his reign in Iraq relied on a campaign of terror. This terror was the fact that if any of his people, or his neighbours stepped out of line, Saddam wouldn’t hesitate to hit back at them with everything he had - as he had done in 1988. So he stopped his WMD program but told his people and the world that he hadn’t, which worked for him as it kept the UN inspectors happy and his people in line. While President Bill Clinton was in power this was a good move as Clinton was not needlessly going to send his country men and women into war.

In 2001, George W Bush came into power and everything changed. Before even Iraq was mentioned once in the media, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had their eyes on the Saddam’s oil fields. They had to, they had been funded by countless Oil Companies on the precursor that they would invade Iraq and let their benefactors get their return on investment. But of course, Iraq wasn’t just about Oil. As Mark Thomas points out in his “The Night We Went To War” policital/comedy audio show, Bush was also making a statement not to mess with America or they’ll invade and destroy without restraint.

Saddam was very vocal in his support for the attack on the World Trade Center on that fateful day in September 2001. But the World knew Saddam had nothing to do with it, he had to gloat to maintain his defiant appearance to his people. Saddam probably knew that he was walking a very thin line at this point. If he was still secretly developing WMD’s, it had to stop and quickly and it had to be secret. This fact is supported by the two invading countries complete failure to find any evidence whatsoever of WMD research after the intial conflict ended in 2003.

Now we arrive in 2006 and Ali Khamenei is developing nuclear weapons. He is also very vocal in stating that Israel should be wiped of the face of the planet. So Iran gaining nuclear weaponary would certainly appear to be a step towards that goal. Except it’s not a real goal of Iran. Ali Khamenei is not stupid. He is well aware that the response to a nuclear attack on Israel would be instantaneous and devasting. However, just like Saddam and his reign over Iraq, Ali Khamenei won his power through his defiance of Western rule over the Middle East. The only way he can remain in power is to continue to demonstrate such a defiance, esculating it wouldn’t do any harm to his popularity either.

So why are Iran developing WMD’s? Well, firstly to satisfy the country that Ali Khamenei is a leader with power and he could fulfil his stated goals, if he so desired. But Iran’s main goal is to have a deterrent from attack like everyone else with nuclear weapons. Notice how the US government is not putting pressure on Northern Korea about their development of WMD’s. This is because the US knows full well that Northern Korea has quietly joined the exclusive club of world nuclear powers. India and Pakistan are also recent members to this club. Iran wants in, mainly to ensure they will not be invated by a Western force and so that Ali Khamenei can keep any force wanting to overthrow him at arms length.

Although any country developing and owning nuclear weapons is not a good thing, the fact that almost every Western power does have a nuclear deterrent means that telling Iran they can’t is pure hypocrisy. Just as every other country with nuclear powers have avoided using them in conflict, except America of course, Iran isn’t about to start a nuclear holocaust that ultimately would end with Iran being wiped from the Earth, not Israel.