Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji is circulating an open letter on the occasion of the UN session starting this week regarding the situation facing his country. It comes with key endorsements (Saad Eddin Ibrahim! Kwame Anthony Appiah! Henry Louis Gates, Jr! Michael Lerner! Juan Cole!) and seems very compelling to me. Here’s the beginning:

To His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations,

The people of Iran are experiencing difficult times both internationally and domestically. Internationally, they face the threat of a military attack from the US and the imposition of extensive sanctions by the UN Security Council. Domestically, a despotic state has – through constant and organized repression – imprisoned them in a life and death situation.

Far from helping the development of democracy, US policy over the past 50 years has consistently been to the detriment of the proponents of freedom and democracy in Iran. The 1953 coup against the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and the unwavering support for the despotic regime of the Shah, who acted as America’s gendarme in the Persian Gulf, are just two examples of these flawed policies. More recently the confrontation between various US Administrations and the Iranian state over the past three decades has made internal conditions very difficult for the proponents of freedom and human rights in Iran. Exploiting the danger posed by the US, the Iranian regime has put military-security forces in charge of the government, shut down all independent domestic media, and is imprisoning human rights activists on the pretext that they are all agents of a foreign enemy. The Bush Administration, for its part, by approving a fund for democracy assistance in Iran, which has in fact being largely spent on official institutions and media affiliated with the US government, has made it easy for the Iranian regime to describe its opponents as mercenaries of the US and to crush them with impunity. At the same time, even speaking about “the possibility” of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran. No Iranian wants to see what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan repeated in Iran. Iranian democrats also watch with deep concern the support in some American circles for separatist movements in Iran. Preserving Iran’s territorial integrity is important to all those who struggle for democracy and human rights in Iran. We want democracy for Iran and for all Iranians. We also believe that the dismemberment of Middle Eastern countries will fuel widespread and prolonged conflict in the region. In order to help the process of democratization in the Middle East, the US can best help by promoting a just peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, and pave the way for the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. A just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state would inflict the heaviest blow on the forces of fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East.

The rest is below the fold:

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Andrew writes:

So what to do? Remember that Kristol’s loyalty to the Republicans often trumps national security. How else to explain his support for the GOP last November, even though a Republican victory would have prevented the surge in the first place and kept Rumsfeld in the Pentagon? One option: Change the subject by launching wars against Syria and Iran, and so polarize the country that the choice is framed as: MoveOn or America? That’s much better than having, you know, an actual debate about the merits of the war in Iraq and the war against Islamist terror. On that, Republicans lose. If the war is far wider and more terrifying, if the enemies can be multiplied and amplified, then the dynamic plays to the advantage of the GOP. It’s for us or against us again.

I really think that’s wrong. Kristol wants military action against Syria and Iran because Syria and Iran are both countries in the news and Kristol’s only idea about foreign policy is that the United States should deploy more military force. He’s also, clearly, a committed partisan Republican, but I think any fair reading of the record shows that his commitment to maximum military action all the time trumps petty considerations of partisanship. Recall that back in April 2001 Bush disappointed Kristol by not launching a war with China and got this treatment:

The profound national humiliation that President Bush has brought upon the United States may be forgotten temporarily when the American aircrew, held captive in China as this magazine goes to press, return home. But when we finish celebrating, it will be time to assess the damage done, and the dangers invited, by the administration’s behavior.

Now, that was idiotic. Our temporary forgetting of this “profound” humiliation will extend until the end of time because Bush, listening to Colin Powell and other sensible members of his administration, handled a sticky situation rather well and advanced our key interests at basically no cost. Kristol, by contrast, wanted to engage in a risky game of brinksmanship over nothing because, basically, he thinks war is great. Which, again, is profoundly dumb, but not in a partisan way. He’s just a one-trick pony.