{"id":5827,"date":"2009-06-24T14:21:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T22:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5827"},"modified":"2009-06-24T14:21:11","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T22:21:11","slug":"from-the-department-of-unintended-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/24\/from-the-department-of-unintended-irony\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Department of Unintended Irony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>National Review<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <a href=\"http:\/\/corner.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=OGVlOTM4Nzk5NjJmZWE2ZGJiOTMxNTE4MzQ4NjU5NGY=\">Rich Lowry<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A major irony in Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policy is that Iran appears to be much better primed than Iraq for a transition to democratic government (although Iraq is managing it anyway). <em>It hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been devastated by sanctions and war the way Iraq was<\/em>; its faux elections let people at least exercise their democratic muscles; and the country has a relatively well-developed civil society. [my emphasis]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just give it some time, Rich!<\/p>\n<p>More seriously, Lowry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comment does cut to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/opinion\/greenwald\/2009\/06\/16\/iran\/index.html\">core contradiction<\/a> of the neocon position on Iran. The same people who so self-righteously <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=azLtnnPsAWw\">hold themselves up<\/a> as champions of the slain Neda and protectors of innocent Iranians want nothing more than to ramp up sanctions (which, as Fred Kagan <a href=\"http:\/\/ipsnews.net\/news.asp?idnews=46655\">forthrightly admitted<\/a>, will have the immediate effect of killing innocent Iranians) followed in all likelihood by military strikes (the destructive effects of which should need no explanation.) The fact that war with Iran would likely consolidate the hardliners\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 power and snuff out the opposition similarly does not seem to factor into the thinking of these courageous defenders of the Iranian people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Review\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Rich Lowry: A major irony in Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policy is that Iran appears to be much better primed than Iraq for a transition to democratic government (although Iraq is managing it anyway). It hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been devastated by sanctions and war the way Iraq was; its faux elections let people at least exercise their democratic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5828,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827\/revisions\/5828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5827"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}