Kidding us or Killing us

They have got to be kidding.

The New York Times reported today that the Bush administration is considering adding the Revolutionary Guard—a branch of the Iranian military—to a list of terrorist organizations. The Revolutionary Guard is thought to be the largest branch of Iran’s military.

It's the equivalent of France declaring the U.S. Marine Corps a terrorist organization. It's silly on the face of it and insulting diplomatically.

One of the reasons given for such a move—something no other administration has done (in fact, no other government in the world has done)—is that it will mollify those members of the administration who are calling for more aggressive action against Iran. Talk about appeasing special interests.

All this because Iran is said to be enriching uranium in an effort to become a nuclear power. Twenty years haven’t passed since the end of the Cold War, and it looks like the world is again heading for a nuclear Armageddon. Only this time, the casus belli has nothing to do with threats of world domination. Instead, it’s the domination of the next world that seems to be the concern.

Iran’s government is only loosely republican, more accurately it is a secular theocracy, and our government seems to be heading that way.

Except that giving spiritual motivation to this administration gives it a tiny philosophical prop that it doesn’t deserve. It may seem cynical to doubt the religiousness of politicians, instead calling it religiosity, but that again grants to them some infinitesimal legitimacy that they don’t deserve.

This administration is not driven by ideology. The ideologues of this administration are being used to feed the greed of Dick Cheney and his ilk. No one has ever mentioned the vice president’s faith as being his guide because there is little or no evidence that he has any. But there is ample evidence of his greed, his duplicity, and his unwillingness to comply with the law. There is ample evidence that his power remains unchecked in the White House.

And so it goes. To mollify the greed of the military industry—the KBRs, Blackwaters, and Erinys—and others, the administration will rattle a sword instead of seeking diplomacy.

The most disturbing thing is that the opposition in this country doesn’t have a clue about how to respond. It doesn’t even have the fortitude to know that such a move merits a response because in the end this is all seen as politics. Politics is what is killing us.