The good medicine which can cure disease usualy has nasty side effects which people have to bear in order to return to their healthy state. The Bush administration is like a bad medicine with pleasant side effects especially from an Iranian point of view, and by Iranian I don't mean the Islamic republic, rather the nation as whole, or as a friend of mine has so eloquently put it “the Axis of Excellence”.
The Taliban were thrown out of power, be it only officially as a bad treatment of the pain caused to the Americans on September 11th, with as side effect the reopening of schools to Afghan girls.
Every one knows however that the main goal is to protect the opium and its money making machine as well as its sedating effect on the populations of the neighbouring countries. The 600% increase in the opium production which followed the invading forces of the USA, Britain and ofcourse the Netherlands is not exactly a natural turn of events.
On a comic note, there are millions of Teryakis in Iran who will consider this one to be the most pleasant side effect of the Bush charades.
In Iraq it was Mr. Hussein's turn to pack the bags. Again a bad treatment for the terror the Americans were persuaded to believe would be unleashed upon them had Mr. Hussein remained in power. The American troops found more weapons of “mass-terbation” in the Hussein palaces than they collectively had ever seen.
Another rather ironic but equally pleasant side effect for the Axis of Excellence is that both Rumsfeld and Hussein should end in the same week. We all remember the images of Rumsfeld and Hussein sharing hugs and kisses as well as weapons and sattelite images of Iranian troop positions in 1982.
One of course helped destroy the other and he had to commit political suicide in order to do so. Rumsfeld being 75 years old will spend his days watching the Iraqi civil war and Hussein will be hung on Iranian new year's day.
As he was shouting the famous two words which are designed to remind us that Allah is really great, Mr. Hussein was given his death sentence by the judge. Neither the prosecutor nor the judge ever mentioned the use of chemical weapons against the Iranians during the war and the verdict was based on the killing of 148 people after an assassination attempt on Mr. Hussein in 1982. None the less this is of the few instances in which Capital punishment doesn't seem to be such a bad phenomenon.
I am constantly reminded of watching Mr. Hussein on TV as he was walking among chemically gassed Iranian bodies, holding his rifle and announcing to his Arab friends: Look how I have killed the sons of Cyrus like Hasharaat. (Hasharaat is plural of the word Hashareh meaning Insect)
The fact that these crimes were not among the charges against Hussein in his trial reflects more the “uselessness” of the current Iranian government than anything else.
Let us remember the Iranians (Persian and Kurdish) as well as the Iraqis who fell victim to the Hussein regime.
