I’ll wager the risible Mr. Silvestri isn’t the only US Congressman who doesn’t really know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni. In the onrushing flow of events out of Iran, I’d further bet almost none (or none) of them have read Amir Taheri’s The Spirit of Allah, arguably the finest biography of Khomeini and analysis of his Iranian revolution. I’ll go further. I bet very few have even read the Wikipedia entry under Khomeini. If they had, they would have read the following:
Khomeini adamantly opposed the provisional government of Shapour Bakhtiar, promising ‘I shall kick their teeth in.'[21] On February 11, Khomeini appointed his own competing interim prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, demanding ‘since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed.’ It was ‘God’s government,’ he warned, disobedience against which was a ‘revolt against God.'[22]
On the airplane on his way to Iran Khomeini was asked by reporter Peter Jennings: “What do you feel in returning to Iran?” Khomeini answered “Hic ehsasi nadaram” (I don’t feel a thing).
In other words, Khomeini (and most of his followers) are not Iranian nationalists. They are Islamists doing “God’s work.” National borders do not exist in their eyes. There can be no separation of church and state, because there is no state. Parts of Iraq like Najaf and Kerbala are God’s territory to them. They are key Shiite holy places.
And yet the semi-literate partisans in our Congress voted yesterday to withdraw from Iraq and give the mullahs what they originally sought in the Iran-Iraq War (those same holy places). Moreover, that same Islamic Republic of Iran will soon be nuclear.
Perhaps we should call our Congress the Chamber of Clowns.
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