Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Enemies Emboldened
Take some of the tough talk with a grain of salt, but the crux of the Iranian Official's point is accurate:
Yes, the world, including our enemies, is watching us struggle with insurgencies and natural disasters, and as each one hits, it unveils that the mighty U.S. has no plan to counter them. There's no way to stop a hurricane from hitting us, but there is a way to handle the aftermath. What we saw, in the first few days after Katrina, was how a small nation deals with a disaster, not a superpower. Andrew Sullivan is right, it is a betrayal.
|
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been following closely the way the United States government has been handling Hurricane Katrina, and drawing strategic conclusions from it.
In remarks that appeared on Ansar-e Hezbollah website on Sunday, a top official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the devastating hurricane had exposed America's vulnerabilities.
"The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.", Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.
"If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America's states will face a crisis the size of Katrina", he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. "The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone".
"How could the White House, which is impotent in the face of a storm and a natural disaster, enter a military conflict with the powerful Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly with the precious experience that we gained in the eight-year war with Iraq?" he said.
Jazayeri said the hurricane havoc showed that "contrary to public perception, the strength of America's leadership is like a balloon, which can easily burst".
The Revolutionary Guards spokesman said the U.S. administration's inability to end the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the "weakness of America's defence and state departments, as well as its intelligence and security apparatus."
In a defiant tone that mirrored recent remarks by top officials of the Islamic Republic, the IRGC spokesman said, "precise information from inside America shows a lack of coordination among military, security, and political agencies in that country and brings to light the fact that others can cause many times the amount of damage compared to the blows they may receive."
Yes, the world, including our enemies, is watching us struggle with insurgencies and natural disasters, and as each one hits, it unveils that the mighty U.S. has no plan to counter them. There's no way to stop a hurricane from hitting us, but there is a way to handle the aftermath. What we saw, in the first few days after Katrina, was how a small nation deals with a disaster, not a superpower. Andrew Sullivan is right, it is a betrayal.
