First of all, I was almost sick when I saw a bunch of grinning Republicans hold up index fingers that had been drenched in purple ink.

I hope none of them were from Ohio or Florida.

For background, you may wish to read this Christian Science Monitor article on the role of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in pushing the U.S. towards advancing democracy in Iraq.

The U.S. wanted to delay elections and have its appointees write an Iraqi constitution. Al-Sistani pushed back against both those notions.

Yet they bask in self-congratulation while his name goes unmentioned. Oh well, that's politics!

Since I screwed around with respects to finishing this post, here's some comment from today's papers. The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui looked at the Bush and the Iraq vote this way:

Bush urged the Iraqis to risk their lives to vote. They did, in a stunning display of courage.

It was a gamble that paid off. But it was a gamble taken at their expense. Iraqi lives are cheap.

Besides lauding the brave Iraqis, the world should credit Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It was he, not Bush, who forced the election.

It was at his behest that hundreds of thousands demonstrated a year ago demanding an election, which Bush wanted postponed.

It was Sistani who insisted on the one person-one vote formula, rather than U.S.-style caucuses. It was his edict — "voting is more important than prayer or fasting" — that propelled millions of Shiites, including women, on their death-defying march.

It is his followers, along with the semi-autonomous Kurds, who made a success of this election. It failed where Americans have direct control, in the Sunni heartland.

Finally, had the vote been held last May, as Sistani suggested, there would have been far fewer dead Iraqis and Americans.

To be fair to Bush, he only had an hour. You don't want to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty.

On terrorism ...

To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region. You have passed, and we are applying, the Syrian Accountability Act, and we expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom.

Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

A short history lesson. Iran had a democratically elected government in the 1950s. It was overthrown -- with active CIA involvement -- after it nationalized the oil industry. The Shah was installed. He was a brutal authoritarian ruler -- but he was also America's bitch, so it was all good. The Shah was overthrown, but then the revolution was co-opted by the Islamic fundamentalists.

Even though U.S. citizens were taken hostage, the U.S. -- under the freedom-loving leadership of Republican President Ronald Reagan -- covertly sold Iran arms and used the money to fund the CIA-created Contras to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

At the same time, the U.S. started viewing Saddam Hussein as a useful counterweight to Iran (Iraq had invaded Iran, triggering a ruinous war that would last most of the decade). Donald Rumsfeld personally met with him in 1983 as Reagan's envoy.

Although officially neutral, the U.S. provided covert military help to Iraq in its war against Iran. It restored diplomatic relations in 1984 even though Iraq was using chemical weapons.

It would be great for Dubya's credibility if he forcefully attacked the secret arms deals and cozying up to dictators that marked the worst of the Reagan era's foreign policy, or the overthrowal of democratically-elected regimes at other times in history when it was in the U.S.'s interests. And if he promised it would never happen on his watch? I tell you, my heart would soar! :^)

While he wants to stop Iran's nuclear program, if they are trying to build a nuclear weapon, I couldn't blame them for trying. It's the only way to guarantee the U.S. won't invade. In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, The Star's Richard Gwyn asked rhetorically why North Korea wasn't invaded. The answer? Because it has weapons of mass destruction. And the reason why Iraq was being invade? Because it didn't have weapons of mass destruction.

With respects to Iran's nuclear ambitions, here's the abstract of a master's thesis published last September. It's written by Charles C. Mayer, who was a student at the Naval Postgraduate School. I found it through the Federation of American Scientists website:

Throughout twenty-five years of strained relations, U.S. policy efforts have delayed but not thwarted Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, largely because Washington has failed to influence Iran’s motivations for acquiring nuclear weapons.

There are three main motivations behind Iran’s nuclear program. First, at the systemic level, external threats drive Iran’s perceived need for a nuclear deterrent. Second, at the individual level, well placed governmental elites propel the nuclear security myth to spur nationalistic support for nuclear weapons. Third, at the state level, institutional bureaucracies, created to build Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, now compete against other organizations for their own self interests, which are closely associated with the continued development of nuclear weapons.

The thesis recommends three policy tracks, addressing causal factors at each level. First, the United States should try to create a new Gulf Security organization, including Iran and the new Iraqi government, to build a collective security environment without nuclear weapons. Second, Washington should build a multilateral coalition to contain Iranian proliferation activities while offering economic incentives for Iranian disarmament. Third, the United States should work to discredit Iran’s nuclear security myth by fostering a public debate within Iran on the costs of nuclear weapons, using U.S.-run media.

The European Union has been trying to negotiate with Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Here is what Seymour Hersh wrote in a Jan. 24 New Yorker article:

The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic progress on the Iranian nuclear threat will take place unless there is a credible threat of military action. “The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal,” a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. “And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.”

When the U.S. talks of Iran and Syria's state sponsorship of terrorism, they mean Hezbollah (Party of God).

Here is a segment from a U.S. Council on Foreign Relations Q-and-A on Hezbollah:

Was Hezbollah’s campaign against Israeli occupation considered terrorism?

Lebanese officials and most Arabs insist the anti-Israel attacks were legitimate. Most Western countries, including the United States, disapproved of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon and called Hezbollah's campaign against it resistance rather than terrorism.

Hezbollah is a fundamentalist Shiite group that has attacked Israel and supported Palestinian militants, but it's interesting to note that its leader spoke out against al Qaeda's 9/11 attack as being against Islam.

Hezbollah also has a non-military wing that does a significant amount of social work in Lebanon in the Shiite community, giving it some base of popular support.

One of my beliefs about the Middle East is that injustice, as much as the absence of freedom or liberty, drives events in the Middle East.

Curiously, the word 'injustice' never appears in the text of Dubya's speech.

Here are the Middle East portions of his speech:

The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure. Tomorrow morning, Secretary of State Rice departs on a trip that will take her to Israel and the West Bank for meetings with Prime Minister Sharon and President Abbas. She will discuss with them how we and our friends can help the Palestinian people end terror and build the institutions of a peaceful, independent, democratic state.

To promote this democracy, I will ask Congress for $350 million to support Palestinian political, economic and security reforms. The goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace is within reach and America will help them achieve that goal.

To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, the United States will work with our friends in the region to fight the common threat of terror, while we encourage a higher standard of freedom.

What, in the U.S.'s mind, is the difference between conflict borne of injustice and terrorism?

I wish Mahmoud Abbas well in his attempts to guide the Palestinians away from armed conflict to a political solution with Israel. Hopefully Sharon is willing to be a real peace partner.

Because if he isn't, the violence will be back with a vengeance.

One final observation

Dubya said:

The United States has no right, no desire and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies. They seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life.

I wonder if he's talking about James Dobson. :)