With friends like these...
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan attended an Iranian sponsored conference on "counterterrorism."
Guess who they think are the world's two greatest terror threats?
On June 25-26, 2011, the Iranian regime hosted the first "World Without Terrorism Conference" in Tehran. The conferees included Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmonov, Pakistani President Asif 'Ali Zardari, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and Sudanese President 'Omar Al-Bashir, as well as representatives from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Mali. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad both spoke at the conference's opening ceremony.[1] In his address, Khamenei said that the conference's aim was to clearly define terrorism and to identify its root causes. He pointed to "satanic world powers which use terrorism in their policies and in their planning to achieve their illegitimate goals," specifying that the "Zionist regime" and Zionism in general had from their very beginning perpetuated global terrorism. He went on to say that the U.S., the U.K., and other Western governments had "a black record of terrorist behaviors."[2]
It is worth pointing out that Tehran has recently suffered a number of severe blows, both domestically - as a result of the deep schism between Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad - and as a result of regional developments - among them the precarious situation of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, which has significantly weakened the Tehran-Damascus axis; Iran's defeat in the standoff with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states over the recent crisis in Bahrain; the E.U.'s refusal to renew talks with Iran over its nuclear program; and more. Thus, it is apparent that Tehran devised the conference as a means to improve its standing in the region and internationally, and to promote itself as a strong and leading regional force, at the expense of Saudi Arabia. Throughout the conference, Iran presented a blatantly anti-U.S. and anti-West agenda, focusing on the claim that the U.S. and Israel are at the root of global terrorism.
As Obama continues to push US withdrawal from the world, these dictators and autocrats are going to be in trouble. It will become harder and harder to blame their corrupt rule on the United States.
The fact is, these countries need us. They don't need our cash, or our military, or our protection. They need us as a strawman so that they have a convenient whipping boy as their socieities devolve into primitivism.