The War of Words is Heating Up

You have to give Iranian legislators credit -- they do seem to have a sense of humour.

Yesterday, the Iranian parliament approved a non-binding resolution that called the US Army and Central Intelligence Agency "terrorist organizations". The move was made in response to a US bill that seeks to impose a similar designation to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

I am sure that most Americans will take the Iranian parliament's move as an affront, but I am not entirely sure that they should. The move is a good indication of how many people view the US, and its a far cry from the approved vision of "land of the free and home of the brave that all good men wish to immigrate to". Just consider some of these events and actions undertaken by the United States:

• invading Iraq under questionable pretences;
• deciding to unilaterally create the new category of "unlawful combatant" as a means of side-stepping key provisions of the Geneva Conventions;
• willful use of torture of individuals captured in Iraq and Afghanistan;
• frequent attacks, including aerial bombardment, which kill an inordinate number of innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians;
• a reconstruction program that sometimes seems designed more as corporate welfare for companies like Halliburton and Bechtel than as a means of helping improve the lives of the average Iraqi.

Historically, the record is not much better:

• using depleted uranium bullets in Kosovo and in the first Gulf War;
• attacks on Iraqi infrastructure that destroyed hospitals and utilities in the first Gulf War, causing the deaths of innocent civilians;
• support for violent coup against Allende in Chile that resulted in the establishment of one of the nastiest regimes in modern Latin American history;
• numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro;
• creating some of the conditions that encouraged the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, and then providing arms and money to anti-Soviet forces (including a certain Osama Bin Laden who would come back to haunt the United States);
• supporting the coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected leader and replaced him with the Shah;
• and, making the world's first nuclear attacks on Japan.

Unfortunately, several of these points were mentioned by the Iranian parliament, so most Americans are likely to ignore them. After all, if a "terrorist" says it, it must be false, right?