Back in January 2007, Greg Sheridan praised former US President George W Bush for defying conventional wisdom and popular sentiment in his foreign policy adventures. His column of 11 January began with these words:
A US military strike against Iran must now be considered formally on the international agenda, following George W. Bush’s sombre, calm, but in substance extraordinarily bold address on Iraq . Bush accused Iran of providing material assistance for attacks on US troops in Iraq . It is hard to imagine a more serious accusation. What’s more, Bush promised to stop such Iranian actions. Whatever you think of Bush, he has a very high level of credibility when it comes to carrying out any threat he makes of military action.
Given Sheridan ’s near-obsessive grovelling of all things Bush, I have little doubt that Sheridan would have supported a full scale invasion of Iran . Forced regime change was good enough for the Iraqi goose, and in Sheridan ’s eyes would be just as good for the Iranian gander. Heck, what’s a few hundred thousand dead Iranian civilians?
Yet the other day Sheridan has the gall to claim that the so-called “Western human rights lobby” has been doing bugger-all to support Iranian protesters Sheridan would have been quite happy to see the Yanks and/or Israelis bomb the crap out of. Heck, just a week earlier Sheridan was happy to consider the utility of “a limited military strike” against Iran.
Now Sheridan claims that ...
[a]part from ethnic Iranians, there has hardly been a single demonstration in any Western capital in support of the Iranian democrats. Yet isn't there a class, in Australia and in the rest of the West, of people deeply concerned about human rights?
He then has a go at Louise Adler for criticising Israel and Michael Leunig for having a cartoon in an Iranian competition which he didn’t actually submit and had no idea was being submitted anyway. And what does all this prove?
[T]hat many Western human rights organisations, and many of the most self-congratulatory and morally vain posturers, are not interested in human rights at all. They are interested in advancing a soft Left sectarian agenda.
Actually, what it proves is that Sheridan doesn't know what he's talking about. He should name just one of his critics who has called upon Iran to be bombed and invaded in the manner he has. But then on Planet Sheridan, if you don’t draw a cartoon for Iranian protestors or you don’t march through the streets, you clearly don’t like Iranian democrats as much as if you’re happy to see them and their families blown up by American and/or Israeli bombs. Go figure.
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