THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE'S ATTACK DOGS JUMP ONTO THE 'IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS' BANDWAGON.

The attack dogs at neoconservative headquarters in Washington, DC, are at it again. They have seized on the ‘crisis’ that was brought about by the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines by the Iranians inside Iranian waters to call again for confrontation and war against Iran.

Two of the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) most unwavering and repulsive warmongering lunatics, David Frum and Michael Ledeen, have each jumped on the bandwagon of hate to take advantage of the current stand-off between Britain and Iran in order to further their cause of getting the US to attack Iran thus leaving Israel free to deal with their immediate neighbours, Syria, Hizbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza and West Bank, all of whom rely on support from Iran.

Frum’s frothing at the mouth contribution opens with: “The Iranian seizure of 15 British naval personnel is an outrage--and an opportunity.” The ‘opportunity’ he refers to is the opportunity to encourage the Europeans to take up the challenge of making some tough sanctions decisions against Iran. But he also writes toward the end of his piece that: “Since 9/11, Europeans have pleaded with the U.S. to rely on sanctions and diplomacy rather than force. Fine. Let's see some sanctions then--real sanctions, not the wrist-slaps imposed till now.” Since Frum just knows that that isn’t going to happen, then the real meaning of Frum’s use of the word ‘opportunity’ comes into play – ‘if you can’t come to sanctions then support a strike against Iran’.

Frum also exposes both his hypocrisy and his obsessive paranoid Islamaphobia in his piece. He reckons Iran “…forced the captured female sailor to wear the Islamic hijab, a violation of her Geneva Convention right to practice her own religion.” Frum compounds his paranoid obsession about Islam by trying to use the headscarf the female prisoner is wearing as some kind of demonising symbol when he asserts: “…let's broadcast one more time that image of Faye Turney, cloaked against her will in that black headscarf of subordination and humiliation.” The hypocrisy is in the way that Frum, a supporter of the horrors of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, attempts to glibly mention that Iran’s prisoners are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.

For the lunatic fascist neocon Michael Ledeen, it’s not so much hypocrisy and paranoia that sets the pace in his rant; it’s his arrogance, which is just another of those values, together with hypocrisy, that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’. He berates the British because they didn’t fight to gain their freedom before capture and then rubs it in by relating a story about a similar border incident in which American servicemen were involved. They, of course, escaped capture by fighting back. The implication is barely disguised.

For Ledeen the reason for Iran’s actions is straight forward: “The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources).” Ledeen’s arrogance is supreme. For him the capture of Iranian intelligence and military officers by the US is quite legitimate despite the fact they are part of the Iranian diplomatic corps in Iraq but for the Iranians to capture coalition forces renders them to be likened to wolves or animals that have captured their 'prey'. It doesn’t for one moment occur to Ledeen that it is the US and Britain that is on land that doesn’t belong to them and who are in places where they are not wanted.

Hypocrisy and arrogance; the hallmarks of all true warmongering neoconservatives.