Emboldened by the U.S. military's apparent quick rout of Iraqi forces, conservative hawks in America are setting their sights on regime change in Iran and Syria.
"It's time to bring down the other terror masters," Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute* wrote on Monday -- two days before U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad -- in a piece entitled "Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn."
"Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle," he added. "Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq."
[...]
Frank Gaffney, a senior Pentagon official under former President Ronald Reagan, said he believed that regime change should be the U.S. policy toward Iran and Syria and said the United States could not rule out the use of force.
"If the threat metastasizes in such a way that we consider it to leave us no choice but to use military force then that would have to be an option," he said.
Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy* think tank, said many Iranians would like to see their government change and the United States should help them through information flows, economic assistance and possibly covert activity.
"The use of military force is probably genuinely the last resort here, but I certainly think it's like that we're going to see efforts made to bring about change in Iran as well as Syria ... and perhaps elsewhere in the region as a matter of the natural progression of this war on terror," he added.
*These institutes and think tanks are endowed by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and the Bradley Foundation in what amounts to an attempt at a plutocratic global coup under the twin Trojan horses of "democracy" and a "war on terror."
