One, I don't care. If Iran gets nukes and uses them, I'll feel little comfort that the Iranian people would be horrified.
Two, I've long doubted that the Iranian people will rally to their hated government if we attack them. This runs counter to history when factions hated near enemies more than far enemies and saw foreign intervention as a means to defeat local enemies. I will point out again, would any attack by our Islamist enemies short of the destruction of the Berkeley Women's Studies Department inspire MoveOn.org to rally to President Bush?
And even in Iraq, after years of fighting our troops, the Sunni enemies seem to hate the Shias more than us. As Jill Carroll relates:
There was no mistaking that the mujahideen who held me hated America. "One
day, hopefully, one day, America, all of America gone," said one of my guards early in my captivity. He spread his hands out wide as if to wipe America off the map.
"I don't quite understand," I said. "All America?"
My female jailer Um Ali, listening in on the conversation, translated the sentiment into simpler Arabic for me. "No journalists, no people, no nothing," she said.
I could also see that Shiites were high on their list of enemies. Once, when attempting to explain the historical split between Sunnis and Shiites, Abu Nour, the leader of my captors, stopped himself after he referred to "Shiite Muslims."
"No, they are not Muslims," Ink Eyes said. "Anyone who asks for things from people that are dead, and not [from] Allah, he is not a Muslim."
He was referring to Shiites appealing to long-dead Islamic leaders to intercede with God, asking for miracles such as curing the sick. It's a practice similar to that of Catholics praying to saints.But after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya Shrine, and rampant Sunni-Shiite killing, nearly every captor I came into contact with would tell me about their hate for Shiites first. Abu Nour now simply referred to them as "dogs."
So I don't assume that if we attack Iran to overthrow the mullahs or just destroy their nuclear facilities that the Iranian people will rally to the mullah government. Perhaps for a little while. Then the blame game will start.But maybe not even that much. And if we throw out the mullahs, the long oppressed Iranian majority will decide that as much as they want to complain about American involvement, what the heck, the mullahs are out on the street. Silly to invite the mullahs back in just because American power kicked them out. Right?
We must end the threat mullah-run Iran poses toward us. Period. Worry about our polling numbers later.
