Neocons Heart Terrorists

Danny Postel takes a look at neoconservative affection for the weird Stalinist/Saddamist terrorist cult MEK. One of the causes of the failure of Iranian peace overtures in the post-9/11 era is that after the fall of Baghdad, Iran proposed a swap whereby we'd gain custody of some al-Qaeda dudes in exchange for us handing some MEK guys we'd found in Iraq over to Teheran, but the powers that be preferred to keep the option of unleashing Saddam's favorite terrorist group against Iran as a policy option for down the road.

Comments

Which makes this like the logic of mutually-assured destruction (we'll hold onto something dangerous to you, you hold onto something dangerous to us), except that the evidence is building that our leaders look *forward* to MAD.

Interesting strategy for game theory, I suppose...

Posted by Chris | October 23, 2007 12:05 PM

This was a smart post, except for one mistake: cross out "down the road".

Posted by glasnost | October 23, 2007 12:27 PM

Don't you know tht we're in a Global War on Terrorism Committed By Terrorists We Don't Approve Of?

We're still protecting Orlando Bosch, and Luis Posada, too--Google their names if you haven't heard of them.

Posted by rea | October 23, 2007 1:01 PM

That's all very weird indeed.

Posted by novakant | October 23, 2007 1:40 PM

I have always found it really disingenuous to talk shit about Iran supporting terrorist groups while at the same time we have been providing training, money and arms to MEK. We have encouraged MEK to strike inside Iran and according to some reports our people have accompanied MEK in attacking Iran and KILLING IRANIANS inside Iran. All this crying about Iran KILLING AMERICANS inside IRAQ is all a bunch of garbage as long as we are doing worse.

Posted by apishapa | October 23, 2007 2:01 PM

Yup.

My big comment of the day...

Oh, by the way don't forget Jundallah...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jundallah

Jundullah (Army of God) (Persian: جندالله) is a Sunni terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda that is based in Balochistan. It is a part of the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan and in Iran's Sistan and Baluchistan Province. Being affiliated/mistaken with the Pakistani Jundallah, the Iranian Jundullah changed its name to: "Peoples Resistance Movement Of Iran" (PRMI). Jundallah claims that it has 1,000 fighters and has killed Iranian soldiers.[1] The group has been identified as a terrorist organization by Iran and Pakistan...

Fars News Agency, an Iranian state run news agency, reported that the United States government is involved in PRMI's terrorists acts.[7] On April 2, 2007, Abdul Malik Rigi, appeared on the Iranian branch of the Voice of America, the official broadcasting service of the United States government, which identified Rigi as "the leader of popular Iranian resistance movement". This incident resulted in public condemnation by Persian-American communities in the U.S, as well as the Iranian regime."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 23, 2007 7:23 PM

At this very moment a fair bit of pro-MEK propaganda is being promulgated at various Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events. David Horowitz's FrontPageMag has long carried MEK-derived stuff, e.g., on women's oppression in Iran & the Islamic world.

Posted by KH | October 23, 2007 8:12 PM