The Kyl-Lieberman Amendment: the overture to IRW redux

This week the Congress has taken steps to increase economic sanctions against Iran. As reported by the AP,

The House passed, by a 397-16 vote, a proposal by Lantos, D-Calif., aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.

Current law imposes sanctions against any foreign company that invests $20 million or more in Iran's energy industry, although the U.S. has waived or ignored sanction laws in exchange for European support on nonproliferation issues.

I am not going to take a position one way or the other regarding whether this action is warranted, wise, etc. Instead I am going to focus on what has transpired in the Senate, which I will say unequivocally is a bad thing indeed.

"What happened" was what has become known as the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment. The amendment was proposed to be added to the bill that passed the House. The entire original amendment can be found here (.pdf) and here (text). There are 15 "findings" enumerated which basically say that the Senate finds that the government of Iran, acting directly and through proxies in Iraq and elsewhere, is trying to cause Iraq to collapse in order to take it over. There are some statements in these "findings" that indicate how dangerous the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment can be (even in its revised form, which will be discussed later).

For instance, the first finding says

General David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, stated in testimony before a joint session of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on September 10, 2007, that "[i]t is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps Qods Force, seeks to turn the Shi'a militia extremists into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq."

The Qods Force is in fact part of the official military of the state of Iran. Hezbollah is an organization that is supported--financially and otherwise--by the government of Iran. However, Hezbollah is based in Lebanon. Hezbollah is also officially recognized as a terrorist organization by this and other countries. Here's the problem with this "finding." It is setting the stage to take action against the government of Iran, and it is tying what is going on in Iraq to the "global war on terror." Thus, there is an attempt to once again equate Iraq with the global war on terror, which is a fallacy and a stupid thing to do. Why? Because it does not in any way address the issues in Iraq. It does not in any way address what needs to be done to bring peace and stability to Iraq. "Global terror" is not part of the sectarian and political problems in Iraq. "Global terror" is just another one of the PR catchphrases used by the Bush administration to stir up support for its idiotic policies. And now, this Kyl-Lieberman Amendment seeks to tie "global terror" and the government of Iran into one tidy, complete unto itself package.

This effort is seen further in "finding" no. 6:

General Petraeus said of Iranian support for extremist activity in Iraq on April 26, 2007, that "[w]e know that it goes as high as [Brig. Gen. Qassem] Suleimani, who is the head of the Qods Force. . . We believe that he works directly for the supreme leader of the country."

Again, this seeks to "prove" that the state of Iran is "global terror" itself.

The rest of the "findings" are clearly designed to "prove" that the government of Iran is one of the biggest, if not the primary, source of "global terror."

And that brings me to the proposed action of the original Kyl-Lieberman Amendment.

This portion of the original amendment says "It is the sense of the Senate--" and then lists six items, the first of which is

Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy[.]

[NOTE: Sarcasm alert!] Now we just have to take action against Iran because if we don't, not only will Iraq be harmed, but God's--and America's--gift of democracy for the Persian Gulf and the Middle East will be harmed, and the economy of the whole world will crumble. We just have to do something. Don't you see???

And that "something" is found in the following provisions of the original Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which state what U.S. policy should be:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224[.]

(emphasis added). Keep in mind that the bill passed by the House called for increased economic sanctions against Iran, and then please note that almost nothing in the above excerpts has anything to do with economic sanctions. Instead, those excerpts speak in terms of military action and other direct, hostile action toward the government of Iran.

If for any reason any of you do not think that this Kyl-Lieberman Amendment is not designed to set the stage for declaring war on Iran--like the IWR was used to set the stage for declaring war on Iraq--then you need to push aside that big pitcher of Kool-Aid, find yourself a big pot of strong-ass coffee AND WAKE THE HELL UP!!!

Now I know what some of you are thinking. The amendment only says what U.S. policy should be, not what it will be. This technically is correct. The Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was presented as a non-binding resolution. However, if it is non-binding, what's the freakin' point of voting on it in the first place? Well, I will tell you. In the future when some actual, real, binding legislation with the same or similar provisions is presented, anyone who voted for this piece of shit will be hard pressed to vote against the real legislation. After all, they already decided that this should be the policy of the U.S., so to reverse course would be flip-flopping, freedom-hating, etc. [NOTE: Sarcasm alert!] Why, it would mean that they wanted to destroy the God-given duty to spread democracy and--even worse--the global economy! This might sound ridiculous, but given how utterly spineless the Democrats have been (a subject I discussed before), we know this sort of tactic will work.

There is another reason why we know this sort of tactic will work, but I will discuss that a little bit later.

Now, I have to say that the original Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was itself amended. As explained by David Bromwich,

To assure a larger majority the language ("combat, contain, and roll back") was accordingly trimmed and blurred to say "that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies."

[NOTE: Sarcasm alert!] Well, that is oh so much better. That certainly removes all possibility that war could be declared, especially since U.S. policy should use "all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including intelligence and military instruments" to achieve the kinder, gentler policy.

More strong-ass coffee, please.

Now, let's get back to the "sort of tactic" I mentioned to make sure that this "non-binding" crap could become binding in the future. We know this sort of tactic will work because the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 76-22. A review of that vote shows that 1 Democrat did not vote (read the Bromwich post to find out who), 19 voted against the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and 29 Democrats voted "yes." That means that a majority of Democrats voted for this piece of crap.

On March 21 of this year, I wrote that the Iraq war has been the "dumbest fucking thing this country has done in my lifetime, and possibly in our entire history." The Iraq war will move to #2 on the list if we declare war on Iran. And as it stands now, the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment is somewhere in the top 10.