AZ Politics

Towards a Sane Energy Policy

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Posted by: AzBlueMeanie I am pleased that GOP Spartan agrees that the "McClinton Gas Tax Holiday Gimmick" is a bad idea and recognizes that the Bush administration’s weak dollar policy and reckless fiscal mismanagement of our economy, including the doubling of our national debt over 7 years, is largely responsible for our present economic condition. … Read more

The McClinton Gas Tax Holiday Gimmick

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Posted by: AzBlueMeanie (Artwork courtesy of BuzzFlash.org The John McCain for President, Hillary Clinton for Vice President War Party Fusion Ticket | BuzzFlash.org) Sen. John McCain has proposed a gas tax holiday for this summer, suspending the 18.4 cent-per-gallon federal gasoline excise tax and the 24.4 cent-per-gallon federal excise tax on diesel fuel between Memorial … Read more

Mule Train Mail: Dr. Richard Eaton “Iran, Can There Be a Grand Bargain?”

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In
early May 2003, just after American troops had triumphantly swept up
the Tigris-Euphrates and taken Baghdad, an extraordinary message was
delivered to Washington via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.  It came as
a two-page fax, on plain paper.  Now known as the “Grand
Bargain,” this proposal had the apparent support of all the
major actors in Iran’s government of then-President Muhammad
Khatami.  Although the proposed deal offered to settle all disputes
between Iran and the United States, the Bush Administration dismissed
it with contempt.  Not only did American officials refuse to receive
the message; they even scolded the Swiss ambassador in Tehran for
having forwarded it to Washington.

At the time Bush rejected the offer, it seemed nothing could be
gained from talking with Teheran.  The United States was sated with
hubris.  American troops had just toppled the statue of Saddam
Hussain, who himself would soon be captured and ultimately hanged.
Just days earlier, George Bush had swaggered aboard the S.S. Abraham
Lincoln to give his infamous “Mission Accomplished”
speech.  In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden was reportedly on the run,
while neo-cons in Washington, flushed with these victories, were
already eying Iran as the next domino to fall to America’s
grand plan of  unilateral regime-changes in the region.  As Bill
Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinsky stated in their 2004 report to the
Council on Foreign relations, Why talk with the Iranians when we’ve
got them hemmed in on both their eastern and western flanks? 

Today,
however, with some six million Iraqis either killed or exiled as a
result of the war, with the country’s infrastructure destroyed,
and with no end in sight to America’s five-year debacle in
Iraq, the world is a very different place.  Here at home, war-fatigue
has set in, and the economy is dangerously weak.  Nonetheless,
neither proponents nor opponents of the war — including presidential
aspirants — have offered ideas on how American might end its Iraq
adventure.  This, then, might be an appropriate time to revisit
Tehran’s offer.

Since
most Americans are unfamiliar with the Grand Bargain, which the
mainstream media ignored it when it was made, we can begin by asking
what it proposed to do.   For their own part, Iran offered to make no
attempts to obtain nuclear arms and to accept much tighter controls
by the IAEA in exchange for access to nuclear technology.  They
offered to stop supporting Hamas and Hizbullah in Palestine and
Lebanon respectively.  They offered to cooperate with Iraq in all
matters dealing with that country’s security.  And crucially, they
offered not only to recognize the state of Israel, but also to accept
a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.  Quite obviously, the
offer contradicted Bush’s claim, which was made then as it
still is today, that Iran is committed to sponsoring terrorism and to
seeing the destruction of Israel. 

For
its part, the U.S. would fully normalize its relations with Iran, end
its sanctions on the country imposed at the time of Iran’s
Revolution in 1979, cooperate on a wide range of issues dealing with
technology transfers, and recognize Iran’s security concerns.
That would mean ceasing to characterize Iran as an “axis of
evil” or a “terrorist” state.  It also meant ending
threats to attack their country.  And finally, America would take
action against the Mujahidin-i Khalq in Iraq, a group of hold-overs
from the days of the Iranian Revolution who had never accepted the
Islamic Republic and are determined to undo the revolution by
overthrowing Iran’s current regime.

Read the Rest of the Grand Bargain After the Flip...