In speech to Reform temple, journalist praises war in Iraq

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born scholar whose views have appeared frequently in conservative newspapers, told an audience at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills Dec. 8 that the United States must continue waging war in Iraq.

Speaking from the bima of the large Reform synagogue, Taheri praised the Bush administration for deciding “to abandon a six-decades-long foreign policy to support the status quo and prevent any change to a policy of democratization and creating a new Middle East.”

“With President George W. Bush and of course the impact of 9/11, the U.S. for the first time has intervened to change the situation, forcing the end to the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan and to Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq,” Taheri said approvingly.

Taheri’s speech at the synagogue came less than one month after the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution calling for a well-planned but speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and seeking more transparency from the Bush administration on the war. The resolution also calls for an examination of prewar intelligence. The Republican Jewish Coalition is taking out advertisements in Jewish newspapers this week saying it supports the war and that the URJ “does not speak” for all American Jews.

B’nai Jeshurun’s rabbi, Laurence Groffman, said the war “is not something we’ve discussed formally as a congregation. As with any group of people, we have diverse opinions.”

Groffman said there was “significance in hearing a Muslim come out with a pro-Bush point of view. It’s a good reminder that we can’t generalize about people — that all Jews must think this or all Muslims must think that. Quite possibly there are Muslims who appreciate or approve of the president’s policies, and just because they are Muslims doesn’t mean they are opposed.”

Taheri, who served as executive editor-in-chief of Iran’s main daily newspaper before the 1979 fall of the shah, is former Middle East editor for The Sunday Times of London and a frequent contributor to The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

In his remarks at B’nai Jeshurun, Taheri said that the Middle East is “basically the only part of the world that has remained unaffected by the rate of democratization that followed the end of the Cold War. This is an area of darkness,” he said. “If it will change or not is the big question we are facing now.”

Taheri said that “some of the most reactionary regimes in the region are trying to adopt themselves” to this new reality, “using cosmetic reforms, holding cosmetic elections, and so on.” He said these elections show “there is a constituency for democratic pluralism. The leaders are still very inexperienced, but there is a chance in time they will be able to take it in the direction that President Bush announced.”

But, he said, a key determinant in the process is “whether the United States has the sticking power or not. Many people say the American attention span is six months, and, in fact, the United States is a monarchy in which public opinion plays the role of the official monarch.”

Taheri said, “For the first time in six decades the United States is on the right side in the Middle East,” and he noted that course was helping bring together Shiite and Sunni terrorists, Baathists, and pan-Arabists into an alliance of opposition “to a democratic Iraq.”

Turning to consideration of his native land, Taheri said, “Iran is determined to challenge the United States in the region. The Iranian position is if the Americans want to make a democratic Middle East, we are not going to allow it, because we want to make an Iranian Middle East, and the Iranian Middle East, of course, would mean an entire region controlled by an Islamo-fascist ideology, lack of freedom, devaluation of human rights, support for terrorism, and all the things we have seen in Iran for the past quarter century. So it’s a big battle at the moment.”

Postulating “three scenarios that are possible for the Middle East,” the speaker said the first would have the United States “pull back to a defensive position, as it did during the Cold War, and forget the anti-democratic forces in the region.”

Labeling that choice “a very dangerous prospect for everybody,” Taheri said it “would waste a generation or two in the region and cause perpetuation of the threat of terrorism all over the world.”

A second possibility, he said, is “that the United States stays firm and pushes forward a genuinely democratic shaping of the Middle East.”

“The third option would be a war that could involve Iranian nuclear weapons, and we always have a potential for violence and a war between Israel and Palestine.”

The Palestinian cause

Taheri linked the Iraq war to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by suggesting both are affected by outside influences.

“If the Palestinians and Israelis were left to their own devices, they would find a way to live together,” he told the audience. “The problem is that Palestine has been transformed into a cause by the Egyptians, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Iranians, and so on. When something is transformed into a cause, solving the problem is impossible.”

But, Taheri said, he thought “for the first time we have the opportunity to disentangle the Palestinian issue from other issues in the region. Palestine has been the last refuge of every scoundrel in the Middle East,” a tactic that “doesn’t work anymore.”

Speaking of “the decisive role the United States has to play” in the Middle East, he said the prevailing issue is “whether the U.S. can stay the course,” with many “anti-democratic camps” who are hoping for the arrival of military helicopters in a scenario analogous to that which saw defeated American forces being evacuated from such places as Saigon and Mogadishu.

“If that happens, of course, there will be a new era of darkness with unforeseeable consequences,” Taheri said, noting that the Middle East is “the center of the world’s oil resources.”

“You Americans have started a historic mission. Most of the hate against Americans in the region is produced by Americans themselves. Many believe that the United States wants to share what has made it great, which is democracy, pluralism, and its willingness to accept new ideas.”

Questioned about allegations of torture and religious desecration inflicted by American and Iraqi troops against prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere, Taheri insisted that “the U.S. has won great support in the Muslim world despite all those things, because when those things came out, the Muslim people saw they were being discussed openly by people in the United States — whereas in the Muslim world everybody does it 100 times worse.

“When things like Abu Ghraib happen they have a bad impact,” he said, “but people put it in a broader context.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.

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