Editor:
In 2010, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency delivered its report to Congress on the state of Iranian military capabilities. It did not match the narrative repeated by American jingoists; it reported that Iran has a primarily defensive stance and has limited ability to project force beyond its own borders.
But the report cautions that the development of Iranian nuclear capabilities might offer that country a deterrent to American and Israeli goals in the area.
More troubling is that Iran is expanding its influence in the region by developing bilateral ties with its neighbours and by advocating Islamic solidarity.
Both of these are considered illegitimate exercises of sovereignty and unacceptable to America, which by official policy has controlled the region since the end of the Second World War.
In 1951 Iran, with an enormously popular elected government, dared try to take control over its own oil supplies, which caused Great Britain and the U.S. to openly overthrow that government and install a friendly dictator.
Actual democratic movements can only be tolerated to the degree they align with America's interests. When independent democracy takes root, it must be stamped out, whether in Chile, Nicaragua, Turkey or other places. And now we have our member of Parliament John Weston aligning himself with U.S. and Israeli terrorism and waxing poetic on his aspirations for the Iranian people. What a display of patronizing arrogance.
I present a poem, which I envision being written by an ambitious Iranian politician who despises the Canadian government but loves Canadians:
I weep for the Canadian people / Whose interval in sunlight fades from memory /Whose lifeblood of decency and sanity drain away / As Pearson and Trudeau roll in their graves / I will toil without end to teach them their own history / While I forgive them their descent into madness.
Glen MacPherson
Sechelt
