Tuesday, June 19, 2007

HOW US "REALIM" ADMINISTRATION TAUGHT IRANTHE WRONG LESSONS

From MERIA, Volume 11, No. 2, Article 5/8 - June 2007 by Nathan Thrall ...

The prospect of peacefully preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons looks bleaker by the day. Iran appears more emboldened than it has in decades, and support for the Bush administration's foreign policy is at an all-time low. As a presidential election year approaches, conservatives are seeking to distance themselves from Bush by eulogizing Reagan. Yet they forget or ignore that the present predicament is in large part Reagan's legacy. This article examines how the Regan administration, through a seemingly endless series of self-deceits and capitulations, nurtured the ambitions of Iran's current leadership, ruined U.S. credibility, and eroded America's power to deter the Islamic Republic. Still, while Democrats may welcome any shifting of blame from the failed Iran policies of Reagan's predecessor [Carter], it is they who have the most to learn from Reagan's mistakes; for Reagan's errors were realist errors, and the influence of realism is now rising most markedly on the left. Carter gave birth to the decades-long U.S. appeasement of Iran; Reagan fostered it.....

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