Much has been said recently about the upcoming MEK de-listing as a terrorist organization. I say upcoming because I seriously doubt that there is any chance that it isn’t going to happen. Unless releasing the pro-Israel hikers had something to do with it.
Yes, the innocent hikers it turns out, were statistically probable spies for either Israel or the US sent to look-see on the progress of the known nuclear plants several of which were a scant 200 miles from where apparently the hiking between the Iraq and Iranian border, is UNBELIEVABLE.
I’m not advocating this rumor’s truth either way, but as conspiracy theories go, it is easy to see that pretty much nothing has changed since 1953.
NIAC and Trita Parsi either out of misplaced priorities, or nothing better to do this summer, have been front and center in their opposition to the MEK de-listing. The NIAC website, which I hope represents the NIAC position on all this suggests that:
1) MEK threatens the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
QUESTION: How? Unless I have been mistaken and the pro-democracy movement in Iran is actually a Marxist-Islamist one, I don’t see the MEK making any gains there.
2) MEK paves the way for covert action and war, repeating the mistakes of Iraq
QUESTION: How? Is the MEK somehow super successful at covert action and war? It seems to me they bet on the wrong horse siding with Saddam against the IRI, and as far as I can tell the only mistake made in the Iraq war was to underestimate the IRI’s influence. Does de-listing the MEK make the IRI more successful at daunting the US like they did in Iraq? I don’t get the MEK connection here.
3) MEK empowers pro-war hardliners in Washington, and destroys US credibility among Iranians.
QUESTION: How? Do pro-war hardliners actually think that the Iranian Girl Scouts would be an effective force against the IRI? Do you really think that after Afghanistan, even the hardliners in the US are eager to fight Iran in a war? Really? As far as US credibility among Iranians, I don’t see that it is possible to go below zero. Because that is where US credibility among Iranians is now.
4) MEK will control US policy towards Iran, silencing the Iranian-American community.
QUESTION: How? Is the US so weak to heed the advice of an unelected, unrepresentative dictatorial organization and develop harmful policy towards Iran? In case anyone is confused, I am talking about MEK here not NIAC. And how exactly does the MEK succeed at silencing the Iranian-American community? Especially when we are so good at it ourselves?
But my main question to NIAC is:
Why single out the MEK and not the IRI?
If we are counting Americans killed, the IRI wins that designation hands down (up?). If we are counting harming the pro-democracy movement, I think we can all agree the IRI wins that one easily too.
Don’t get me wrong, there is no denying that the MEK has correctly been labeled as a terrorist organization.
Yes, it has assassinated 6 Americans in the 1970’s when it fought against the now widely accepted as brutal dictatorship under the Shah. The Americans were predominantly carefully chosen military advisers, and key industrial corporate personnel that in effect supported the brutal dictatorship in Iran.
Here are the names of those 6 Americans killed by the MEK during the seventies:
– Lt. Col. Louis Lee Hawkins, a U.S. Army comptroller. He was shot to death in front of his home in Tehran by two MEK men on a motorcycle on June 2, 1973.
– U.S. Air Force officers Col. Paul Shaffer and Lt. Col. Jack Turner were in their car, which was trapped between two MEK cars carrying armed men. The MEK told the Iranian driver to lie down and then shot and killed the Americans. Six hours later a woman called reporters to claim the MEK carried out the attack as retaliation for the recent death of prisoners at the hands of Iranian authorities.
– A car carrying three American employees of Rockwell International was attacked in May 1976. William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard were killed. They had been working on the Ibex system for gathering intelligence on the neighboring USSR.
2 other attempts that failed were:
– USAF Brig. Gen. Harold Price was wounded in a May 1972 MEK assassination attempt.
– In November 1971 the MEK failed in their attempt to kidnap the US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II.
You can certainly look at this as innocent US military “advisors” being killed while helping Iran turn into a developing country. But if you like the MEK you can look at this as complicit US “military advisors” being killed while helping an Iranian dictator brutally oppress his own people for cheap oil.
After the revolution, the MEK certainly played a key role in the US embassy hostage taking, and continued their anti-American stance well into the early years of the revolution. Give them that.
But soon after, the more important note about the MEK is they went rogue against the IRI. Far more than 6 IRI officials have been routinely killed by the MEK over the years. Specifically they killed the second Iranian president Mohammad Ali Rajai and the Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, in a spectacular briefcase bomb left in a conference room, reminiscent of the famous attempt on Hitler’s life. Except this time “Hitler” got killed. Given the dubious nature of and how the President and Prime minister were rush-put into power illegally after ousting freely elected Banisadr, this was an act of rebellion and protest whose justification can certainly be debated.
Admittedly as bloody-handed Marxist terrorists go, the MEK is right up there with Italy’s Red Brigade, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof, the PLO, the lesser mentioned Zionist freedom fighters of pre-Balfour Israel, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and on into the 80’s with Daniel Ortega’s Ronald Reagan negotiating Sandnistas, and further on and into the annals of anti-this-or-that terrorist groups for dummies historical record books.
So yeah, there are, and have always been anti-western terrorist groups in the world, and certainly the MEK is absolutely one of them.
And if by now, you are sensing one big missing name from this list, and might even be questioning NIAC’s terrier with a bone grip on the MEK, you are right to do so, so I’ll go ahead and ask it for you, “What about the IRI?”
Because as anti-Western Marxist terrorism goes, Iran is the biggest anti-Western Marxist terrorist organization on the planet. Is it really Marxist though? It is certainly Islamist, but Marxist? Well, if you count the elimination of the Taghoot class as the elimination of the bourgeoisie, and the Friday prayer blind believers as the proletariat, then it is not far to go to the RG as the Superstructure, controlling every aspect of life and industry in Iran. So yeah, Marxist.
Having directly killed more Americans than all the above mentioned terrorist groups combined, specifically in Iraq, as road bomb after road bomb has claimed the lives of countless American soldiers, and mortar attacks and snipers and the coup disgrace, suicide bombers have successfully created nothing short of America’s Second Greatest Generation.
Compared to IRI therefore, the MEK is the Girl Scouts of terrorism.
In fact; it is the IRI that:
1) … threatens the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
2) … paves the way for covert action and war, repeating the mistakes of Iraq.
3) … empowers pro-war hardliners in Washington, and destroys US credibility among Iranians.
4) … controls US policy towards Iran, silencing the Iranian-American community.
NIAC can relax (and release) knowing that most of us do not support the MEK. And I think all of us cannot ever forgive the MEK for siding with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, especially taking up arms against their fellow Iranians. And certainly you have to by now question the sanity and combination of Islam and Marxism as an ideology to present, with a straight face.
Marxist Islam is like a Shit smoothie with a Puke boost. (I’ll let you decide which is which)
But again, in comparison to the IRI, the MEK is a hair on the tail of the dog. Actually a flea on the hair on the tail of the dog. A mangy, rabid, street dog.
Now, while none of this in any way shape or form dismisses the MEK from correctly being designated as a terrorist organization, it ought to at least raise some doubt and larger question about priorities.
Or in other words, forget the fucking flea! What about the Goddamn DOG!!!
Neither should the US be focusing on the MEK at this time and debating whether or not it ought to de-list it and in some Republican wet-dream try and recruit the MEK to help overthrow the IRI, nor should it ignore the biggest elephant in the room, namely that the IRI is and has always been the far far larger threat and culprit, and something, anything has to be done about it.
NIAC should stop their ridiculous campaign against the MEK de-listing. In spite of their overall lack of creativity, and questionable choice of the battles they seem to “fight for” us, NIAC ought to ask us what we want instead of the apparently dead from the neck up party-line members (emphasis on party), and then present it to their surprisingly high up connections in Washington.
Instead of the MEK T-list status, NIAC should focus on the IRI’s far numerous, and far more than interesting accomplishments. Anything else just helps the IRI skirt the real issue, and would actually be considered treason, if we were actually a free people.
I’m no fan of the MEK. I’m also no fan of the New England Patriots. Any group that follows a deviant ruthless leader, claims to be unified and selfless, but in fact marches to the drumbeat of a rockstar and immediately stifles the slightest dissension, is doomed to fail. And of course that goes for the MEK too.
But let us not for one second forget, or worse deny, that the far bigger threat, the bigger scam, the bigger scandal, the bigger crime, the bigger rape, the bigger betrayal, the bigger theft, and the bigger lie is the IRI’s continual stranglehold on the topics and conversations, and more important than anything, the freedom of the Iranian people and their god-given right to choose “not to believe” the biggest lies they have been consistently told since 1979.
To put it in similar terms, the IRI has created a list of “Freedom Sponsoring Organizations” and put the entire Iranian people on that list and are slowly ticking them off one by one. Hyphenated ones included.
How and when will we de-list the Iranian people from that list?
