Category Archives: Iran

Victory!

“U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003” from yesterday’s New York Times:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

Fred Kaplan gets to the point in Slate:

Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated. If Bush were to order an attack under these circumstances, he would risk a major eruption in the chain of command, even a constitutional crisis, among many other crises. It seems extremely unlikely that even he would do that.

As a lifelong progressive, I’ve tended to see the CIA and the military as institutions made up of people who carry out repressive actions against poor, vulnerable nations. But if there’s one thing the Bush administration has taught me, it’s that there are times when they are the only rational actors in a position to do anything. It’s an irony for progressives today that we find ourselves cheering the CIA for showing independence from an administration willing to “fix the facts around the policy,” or the military’s top brass for letting it be known behind the scenes that they will not carry out an order to attack Iran.

I’m not suddenly convinced that the U.S. has stopped being a predatious empire, but just for today I want to say, “Thank you, CIA, and thank you, intelligence community, for taking a stand against war!”

Why Not Eurabia?

7 Replies

The man who insists that the U.S. is currently fighting “World War IV” against “Islamofascism” (World War III was the Cold War) and who said, “the only prudent—indeed, the only responsible—course is to assume that Ahmadinejad may not be bluffing…and to strike at him as soon as it is logistically possible” also wrote this:

Looking at Europe today, we already see the unfolding of a process…[that] has been called, rightly, Islamization. … In one recent illustration of this process, as reported in the British press, “schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils….” But why single out England? If anything, much more, and worse, has been going on in other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. All of these countries have large and growing Muslim populations demanding that their religious values and sensibilities be accommodated at the expense of the traditional values of the West…. Yet rather than insisting that, like all immigrant groups before them, they assimilate to Western norms, almost all European politicians have been cravenly giving in to the Muslims’ outrageous demands. … Already some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.

Our friend Norman Podhoretz is more than a solitary crank, he is a founding father of neoconservatism and a key foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential frontrunner Rudolph Guiliani. I was wondering what he meant by “some observers,” so I googled “Eurabia,” a term I had never heard before, though it conjures for me the kind of racial paranoia that caused white supremacists of a century ago to go crazy about the Yellow Peril. I’m an innocent, I guess, because I wonder honestly, would it be so bad to live in a Europe full of Arabs, Turks and Pakistanis? to blend in marketplace or on the Metro with people wearing the traditional clothing of those lands, or hear the Islamic call to prayer in European streets? I guess I’m just a traitor to my race, because I could even imagine my own children belonging to such a “foreign” culture, only first I need to find the right partner, it’s not something I can do alone. The fear-mongering is lost on me.

Anyway, the first thing that came up in my google search was the book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by “the world’s preeminent historian of Islam,” Bat Ye’or. (Never heard of her? Me neither.) She has coined the term “dhimmitude” to refer to the supposedly humiliating condition of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, a situation that she feels has already destroyed Europe, with the U.S. in danger of being next.

Eurabia cannot change direction; it can only use deception to mask its emergence, its bias and its inevitable trajectory. Eurabia’s destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel. Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia, and its profound implications for the United States…. Americans should consider the despair and confusion of many Europeans, prisoners of a Eurabian totalitarianism that foments a culture of deadly lies about Western civilization. Americans should know that this self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly responsible people.

For those who want it, here is a collection of links to articles by and about Bat Ye’or, and the Eurabia concept. Here is the wikipedia article that defines Eurabia as “a scenario where Europe allies itself and eventually merges with the Arab world.” Here is a profile from The New Yorker of Oriana Fallaci, another proponent of the Eurabia concept, who accused Muslims in The Force of Reason of “invading and conquering and subjugating” Europe. She called it “the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created.”

I don’t want to go any further with this for now, because I feel like I’m digging in a nest of maggots. It astonishes me that such views could exist at all, and even more so that they seem to be the dominant view in the West. In my view, it isn’t an Islamic invasion that is destroying Western culture. Our culture of tolerance and enlightenment is being eroded from within by people like Podhoretz, Ye’or and Fallaci who refuse to adapt to the diversity of the global era.

The Power of Myth

10 Replies

This is an excerpt from the last chapter of A Short History of Myth by religious scholar Karen Armstrong.

logos

We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a “resource.” This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.

Speaking of myths, allow me to recommend a couple of videos about what we might call the dark side of myth. Myth can be used in a political context to short-circuit reason and manipulate human behavior through emotional appeals. The first, a series of three hour-long segments aired on the BBC in 2005, is called The Power of Nightmares. It concerns the strange parallels between American neoconservatism, represented by people like Richard Perle and William Kristol, and Islamic extremism, represented by Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The second video, called Once Upon a Time in Iran (available here in a different format), follows a group of Iranian pilgrims to the shrine of Karbala in Iraq, where the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein died 1300 years ago at the hands of the caliph Yazid. It shows how Hussein’s resistance to tyranny helped to inspire Khomeini’s revolution against the Shah, seen as a modern Yazid, and is today informing the rhetoric of those who see Bush as yet another manifestation of Yezid’s spirit of tyranny.

As Karen Armstrong points out, “we are myth-making creatures,” so it would be a mistake to believe we can do away with myths and survive in the world on reason alone. We tried this in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it didn’t lead to the promised era of equality and peace. The only solution seems to be to stay alert to the myths that saturate our environment. Myths that reinforce our existing beliefs are the most effective, because we don’t even notice them. It’s easy for an American to recognize the story of Hussein and Yazid as a myth, though it is based on historical fact, but we are uncritical our own myth of America as a beacon of liberty for the world. Faced with so many myths, the most creative response is to become mythmakers ourselves. We must never forget that we have the power to appropriate myths, adapt them, attack them, talk back to them, rework them and make them our own.

Repentance

Leave a reply

This is a conversation I had with Doga a few days ago concerning war in the Middle East, America’s moral responsibilty for it, and how this might play out in the 2008 elections.

eatbees: I notice that Sarkozy, like Bush, wants to attack Iran.

doga: You mean he’s encouraging Bush to attack Iran?

eatbees: I should have said he warned Iran to to give up their nuclear ambitions if they don’t want to be attacked. He said that if diplomacy fails, there will either be a nuclear Iran or a bombed Iran, and a nuclear Iran is unacceptable.

doga: The journalists say he’s the new Tony Blair for Bush.

eatbees: I think he’s more independent than Blair. He’s looking out for French interests, and of course for his own interests. Did you know that fifteen years ago, when he was the mayor of a small city, he went into a school by himself to talk to a crazy man who was wearing an explosive vest? He saved the children who were hostages by convincing the crazy man to let them go. Later, police shot the man dead. Today Bush is the crazy man, and we’re the children. Can Sarkozy save us?

doga: When he was Minister of the Interior, he called the residents of the suburbs “cannibals,” as if they weren’t even human.

eatbees: I thought he said “racaille.” It means something like “scum.”

doga: I’m translating from Arabic. I don’t know the exact word.

eatbees: I don’t want to defend Sarkozy, but he chose an Arab woman to be Minister of Justice, and a Socialist to be Foreign Minister. So he’s complex. He’s ambitious, he wants to make a mark, and he’s a political risk-taker. If there’s an attack on Iran, we’ll see what he does. After that, I’ll be able to judge him.

doga: I know he’s ambitious, but political risk taking can have some bizarre effects, given the current state of affairs in the world.

eatbees: You don’t like the idea of throwing gasoline on the fire?

doga: If the world is already suffering from problems of war and terrorism, a “hard” style of politics can make things worse.

eatbees: So you prefer a calmer style. But how can we calm a situation that is so overheated?

doga: We need to look for the opposite of Bush.

eatbees: You mean the Dalai Lama? We know that Ahmadinejad or Chavez isn’t the opposite of Bush. In fact, they’re a lot like him. They want to stir things up. So who do you want as the next American president? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards? Do you think one of them can regain the world’s trust?

doga: I want to throw everything into question. We should be asking if it’s a problem of one party versus another, or rather, the illegal ambitions of an entire country.

eatbees: I agree the ambitons are illegal. But which of the three candidates is most likely to bring an end to them? Which ones would continue the same crimes with a different face? Frankly, I’m afraid that choosing a so-called progressive leader won’t change much.

doga: I don’t think there’s any intention of bringing an end to them.

eatbees: Obama is too ambitious for my taste. I think he has too much confidence in himself, a bit like Bush, though obviously his character and judgment are a lot better. But what do you mean by “throwing everything into question”? Who will be the judge, and in what court?

doga: What’s needed is self-criticism.

eatbees: Fine, but we still need to choose a president next year. I hope we can find someone who will lead us in that period of self-criticism, or at least allow it to happen. You said once that you wanted Bush to attack Iran because it would make the U.S. fall from its position of dominance that much more quickly.

doga: I didn’t say that.

eatbees: Yes you did, in a moment of anger. I sometimes feel the same way—that it would be better to get the disaster over with than drag it out for another twenty years. I just don’t want to see the result.

doga: I was trying to send you a message. Too much injustice can provoke an explosion.

eatbees: Exactly. And it’s clear that Cheney hasn’t understood that, or maybe he could care less about human beings because he’s possessed by a demon. I’m afraid none of our current leaders has learned the lesson. Cheney will never give up. He’s dangerous to the whole world, because fanning the flames is his personal mission. I think he’s made a vow to attack Iran before leaving office. In that context, it’s hard to imagine a future U.S. leader brilliant enough to restore our sense of justice.

doga: It’s possible that the Bush administration is playing its last hand, because they see that quite a few other nations are starting to revolt, especially in Latin America. The European Union is getting stronger, and the Musilm countries see America as a blood-sucker stealing their wealth. That’s why controlling the world by force and dominating the richest region of the world are the only solutions they can think of.

eatbees: They’re unable to trust, they only understand dominance. But such a solution isn’t stable. It’s sad to think that what we could have had with the hand of friendship, we’ll never win even after millions of deaths. There is only one option, changing course as quickly as possible. Repentance, taubah. I’m hoping a leader will emerge who can explain this to a population “spoiled” by chaos and a taste for dominance.

doga: Taubah—confessing one’s guilt, vowing never to do it again.

eatbees: Exactly.

doga: I’m afraid that what you hope for will never happen. Things are too controlled economically, so there is no room for human sentiment.

eatbees: If we have Clinton, Obama or Edwards as president, I think any one of them will be better than Bush. Even power can demonstrate compassion when we have leaders who see clearly, who realize that excessive ambition is a form of suicide. At their core, even economic interests are no more than the collective interests of humanity. So where does injustice come from?

doga: The worst kind of injustice is the one that is done voluntarily.

eatbees: What do you mean?

doga: I mean the U.S. has chosen to practice unjust policies. It hasn’t fallen into injustice blindly.

eatbees: Our population isn’t unjust.

doga: I’m talking about the administration.

eatbees: Then it’s up to us, the population, to demand justice. If not, we are also guilty. When you say the administration has chosen unjust policies, I think that’s obvious to you and me. In fact, all progressives in the U.S. would agree with you, and even sincere conservatives whose moral compass takes precedence over their ambitions.

doga: Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

eatbees: I’ve heard that quote before, but I’d forgotten it. Thanks for reminding me. What we need is a learning process, because the population has been badly educated in recent years. Do you think the Americans understand things well enough, given our present condition, to choose a new administration to start the learning process? I think everyone knows we need to change direction. It’s too obvious.

doga: I think the Americans already understand, but I don’t know if they have the will to let destiny do its work.

eatbees: We’re afraid of revenge. We think we’re trapped. We know we’ve done wrong, and we need to keep fighting to avoid revenge.

doga: Do you think like that too?

eatbees: Of course not! I know the world doesn’t hate us, even today. In fact, the tolerance is amazing. But the majority of my fellow citizens are fearful. You talk of “destiny” and that means losing our position of unique dominance.

doga: If the Americans change their policies willingly, and engage in self-criticism and repentance like you said, then the whole world will be proud of you. But at the same time, you need to understand that the moment for repentance won’t last forever. It needs to be seized at the right time.

eatbees: If Cheney has decided to attack Iran, then it may be too late afterward to “seize the moment.”

doga: It’s always possible to choose the right moment when you’re sitting down and using your brains.

eatbees: We need to do better than sit on our butts in this case! Maybe a general in the Pentagon will refuse Cheney’s orders, or Congress will move into action to control the abuse of power. We need to be effective if we want to prevent the worst. The next few months will be dangerous, because they’re playing their last hand, like you said.

doga: I didn’t say sit on your butts. When I said “sitting down,” I meant prudent thinking.

eatbees: It’s like the hadith that talks about the Last Days. “There will be a period of turmoil in which the one who sits will be better than one who stands and the one who stands will be better than one who walks and the one who walks will be better than one who runs.”

— • —

UPDATE: About the pending attack on Iran, go read this post by journalist Chris Floyd, “Countdown to Midnight in Persia,” which offers the scariest collection of omens I’ve seen yet. This is a serious and respected blog, with links to other serious and respected blogs. The post, written two days ago, claims that the Bush administration stands ready to launch “the complete destruction of the Iranian state in an aerial blitzkrieg aimed at up to 10,000 targets inside Iran.” There are plenty of links to other sources of information. The post begins this way:

Day after day, almost hour by hour, fresh confirmation comes of the impending American attack on Iran. Yet the same surreal malaise that hung over public affairs before the war of aggression against Iraq has descended again. Everyone knows the war is coming and nothing will stop it….

It ends this way:

This is murder. And all those who do not speak out against it—and against all those in high places who do nothing to stop it—are fully complicit in this abomination. No excuses, no mitigation, not this time. Speak out—or be damned with the criminals who thrive on your silence.

I have spoken out, many times, but it’s not enough. As Doga wrote on this blog just two weeks ago, “It isn’t enough to distance ourselves from the abuses we see, we must do whatever it takes to cure them.” So tell me, dear readers, what can we do?

What Hath Cheney Wrought, Part II

1 Reply

I’ll be honest. I’d rather be writing about almost anything other than Dick Cheney’s desire to attack Iran. This story has been with us ever since a senior Bush administration official joked in May 2003, “Anyone can go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran.” There was a flurry of concern last fall, causing me to write my first post on the subject in October 2006 when this blog was less than a month old.

In January 2007, when President Bush announced the “surge” in Iraq, he went out of his way to put Iran on notice. The following month, I wrote a post called “Collision Course” which laid out, as succinctly as possible, the state of play at the time. I wrote, “It is well known that Dick Cheney, who runs things in the White House, is chomping at the bit to attack Iran….” Following this, I wrote no less than six posts titled “Iran Fever” that chronicled the emerging conflict from every possible angle. After that, things seemed to calm down for a while. We heard that Condoleezza Rice had gained the upper hand.

That period of calm seems to be over now. Fox News is beating the war drums like they did for Iraq. Neocons like Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol and John Bolton are calling for an attack, and the latest rumors say that Cheney is poised to get his way. Only there is a new twist. The reason being given for attacking Iran is no longer their nuclear program, but the support they are supposedly giving to Shia militias who attack U.S. troops. A series of articles by Michael Gordon of the New York Times has helped make the case. (He also worked with Judith Miller to promote bogus claims of WMD before the Iraq invasion.) Two weeks ago, the Bush administration announced that it would label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist” group, the first time such a label has been given to a national army.

In an August 23 article on AlterNet, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern uses his professional bag of tricks to try to guess what Bush adminstration officials are thinking about Iran. McGovern is best known for publicly confronting Donald Rumsfeld over lies that he knew where WMD was hidden in Iraq. Based on media activity, insider rumor and political maneuvering, he concludes that the liklihood of an attack on Iran is now dangerously high.

One former colleague, operations officer-par-excellence Robert Baer, now reports… that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran; that the administration’s plan to put Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike; and that the delusional “neoconservative” thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and the rise of a more friendly Iran.

Even scarier, he suggests that the resignation of Karl Rove may be a sign that moderates in the White House have lost the battle on Iran.

In the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on Cheney’s death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder to shoulder with some of the most devoted neocons just before the attack on Iraq, has put into words…speculation several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove’s departure.

In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one’s dummy and would not want to be required to “spin” an unnecessary war on Iran, may have lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided—or was urged—to spend more time with his family.

He goes on to address the widespread belief that Bush is too politically weak, and it is too late in his term for an attack on Iran.

Many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won’t happen because it would be crazy and that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn’t dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly. But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality.

He refers us to an article by Dr. Justin Frank, a psychiatrist with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, called “Dangers of a Cornered George Bush.” The picture painted by Dr. Frank isn’t pretty, particularly when we consider that the man he is describing controls the most powerful military in human history.

George W. Bush is without conscience…. By identifying himself as all good and on the side of right, he has been able to vanquish any guilt, any sense of doing wrong. […]

George W. Bush seems also to be without shame. […] He says whatever he thinks people want to hear, whether it be “stay the course” or “I’ve never been about ‘stay the course.’ ” He does whatever he wants.

He lies—not just to us, but to himself as well. What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt—for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him. […]

Bush has a profound fear of failure and humiliation

change means humiliating collapse

We mustn’t expect Bush to suddenly turn pragmatic or accept common sense. His response to failure is to dig in, give us the finger, and repeat his mistakes in a more magnified way. Cheney, who has manipulated him brilliantly until now, understands this, and he knows how to use it to get what he wants, such as an attack on Iran.

In an August 24 report in Raw Story, Larisa Alexandrovna gives us a complimentary piece of the puzzle.

The Bush administration has shifted from its earlier strategy of building a case [against Iran] based on an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program to one invoking improvised explosive devices…that are killing US soldiers in Iraq. […]

A senior intelligence official told Raw Story…that the CIA had stepped up operations in the region, shifting their Iran focus to “other” approaches in preference to the “black propaganda” that Raw Story “has already reported on.” […] One former CIA case officer who served in the Middle East even suggested that politically framing the Iranians for its own failures in Iraq would allow the Bush administration to avoid accountability, as well as providing a casus belli for an attack. […]

“If you were to report that a U.S. surgical strike against key targets in Iran were to happen sooner rather than later, you would not be wrong,” said [another] source…. Some officials speculate that the administration is trying to provoke the Iranians into an incident that will justify an airstrike in response, suggesting that the combined effect of circumstantial evidence tying Iran to the IEDs and an event or incident involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard might “just be enough” to justify military action against Iran.

She goes on to put Cheney right in the middle of the action.

None of the sources interviewed for this article referenced President George W. Bush or alluded to the end of the Bush presidency as the deadline for an Iranian offensive. Each, instead, mentioned either the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney or Cheney himself. […]

One of the former CIA case officers interviewed for this article explained that the Office of the Vice President is making this drastic move in order to lay the groundwork for a possible incident.

“They still need a trigger and I would not be surprised if we will see some event in Iraq which implicates the Iranians,” said this source. “They need a pretext.”

Putting all this together, we see a humiliated president who becomes more dangerous when cornered, under the influence of a psychotically authoritarian vice president, whose fixation since at least 2003 has been attacking Iran. We see preparations in the U.S. media and in the Middle East for such an attack.

I hope my fears will be proven wrong, both for the sake of the Iranian people, and because an attack on Iran during a presidential campaign would seriously distort our politics. Yet how it can be stopped if Congress remains weak, and the media refuse to do their job? There have been rumors that if an attack order is given, some of our top generals will resign rather than obey. But the responsibility for dealing with an out-of-control executive lies with Congress. In a democracy, we should never have to rely on disobedient commanders to do what’s right!

This post is the last in a series of four about neoconservative evil. The earlier posts were “Neoconservative Death Throes,” “Heart of Darkness” and “What Hath Cheney Wrought, Part I.”

Why I Can’t Support Obama

18 Replies

One more apologist for the American empire?

The title of this post is a bit misleading, because I probably support Barack Obama more than any other candidate for U.S. president. Still, his foreign policy positions are enough to seriously compromise my support. I despair of ever seeing a U.S. president with a progressive foreign policy, which to me means practicing the same principles of justice and equality outside our borders that we proclaim as our own fundamental rights. In this global era, borders are no longer meaningful except to the wealthy elites who run most nations. A true progressive must be prepared to argue that the world’s poor and excluded deserve the same voice in shaping policy that we demand for ourselves. Senator Obama of all people should know that, having spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and his early adulthood as a community organizer in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago. But his foreign policy pronouncements have been largely establishment rhetoric, as I will illustrate here.

I guess we can’t expect a presidential candidate to turn down an invitation to speak at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that helped give us the Iraq war, and now wants a war with Iran. But when Obama spoke there, did he really have to pander as blatantly as this?

I think “a small gathering of friends” fits this crowd just right. I want to begin today by telling you a story. Back in January of 2006, I made my first trip to the Holy Land. […] Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed.

As it happens, Kiryat Shmona was hit repeatedly by missiles during last summer’s war between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces. I’m no supporter of Hezbollah missles, which were surely launched with the knowledge that they would kill civilians. But a far greater number of Lebanese civilians died in that war. This was rationalized by moral opportunists like Alan Dershowitz, who argued in the Los Angeles Times that some civilian deaths are “more tragic than others.” Apparently, Lebanese civilians deserve to die more than Israeli civilians do, because they might be harboring terrorists. Besides, Obama might add, their homes don’t “look like ones you might find in a suburb in America.” There are no cars in the driveways. The shrubs are untrimmed. Given the history of American prejudice, Obama should know better than to argue that we must stand with Israel simply because they “look like” us.

Obama opposed the war in Iraq before it began, but today he offers little hope for a resolution, calling not for full withdrawal of American forces (of the presidential candidates, only Bill Richardson and Ron Paul have done this) but for a “phased redeployment” of “combat forces” that will allow “a limited number of U.S. troops to remain and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism,” thus ensuring that Iraq will remain under American tutelage for the forseeable future. Indeed, the American footprint in the region might even expand. As he told AIPAC, “We will redeploy our troops to other locations in the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged in the Middle East.”

In many ways, Obama’s view of the Middle East is no more enlightened than that of our current president. Hezbollah is said to have “attacked Israel” instead of the other way around, although Seymour Hersh has shown that Israel planned the confrontation well in advance with help from the Bush adminstration. Iran is called “one of the greatest threats to the United States, Israel, and world peace,” as if world peace were identical with U.S. and Israeli interests. President Ahmadinejad is said to have called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” a mistranslation that has become one of the cliches of Middle East reporting. More accurately, he expressed the hope that Zionism would one day “vanish from the page of time” as the Soviet Union has. Obama goes on to say:

In the 21st century, it is unacceptable that a member state of the United Nations would openly call for the elimination of another member state. But that is exactly what he has done. Neither Israel nor the United States has the luxury of dismissing these outrages as mere rhetoric.

So for Ahmadinejad to imagine a future in which Israel is gone from the scene, as Reagan did to the Soviet Union when he tossed it on the “ash heap of history,” is an “outrage” that cannot be “dismissed.” In fact the outrage is so great that the U.S. is justified in responding with force. Like every other American politican, Obama insists that “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.” He compounds this double standard by imagining a future in which Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are provoked by Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to launch their own nuclear programs. This hypothetical crisis, still years away if it happens at all, ignores the fact that the Middle East already has a nuclear state. But Obama has no problem with that. Israel’s suburbs look like ours.

America’s love affair with Israel is complicated, and I can understand why Barack Obama in particular, as the first serious African-American presidential candidate, would feel the need to prove his credentials to the Jewish community. Black leaders have been accused in the past (with varying degrees of justification) of anti-Jewish sentiment, as when Jesse Jackson’s “Hymietown” remark helped sink his 1984 presidential bid. One of the great black leaders of his generation, Andrew Young, was appointed ambassador to the U.N. by Jimmy Carter, only to be fired for talking to the PLO at a time when it was still considered a terrorist group. Given this history, Obama may feel that he has no choice but to set minds at ease with an early statement of support for Israel. But does he have to do it in such a pandering way? For once I would like to hear an American politician say, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but self-defense doesn’t mean bombing a family who are asleep in their homes.”

Moving on from the Middle East, there is the larger question of how Obama sees our role in the world. In a major foreign policy speech in Chicago, he lays out his vision, which seems designed to reassure those who want to believe that America is still “leader of free world” and “the last, best hope of Earth.” “Best hope” is bad enough, but “last, best hope”? What right do we have to proclaim ourselves the “last” hope of humanity, as if no culture will ever come along to improve on ours? This kind of exceptionalism, this sense of privilege in being an American (no doubt offered, in Obama’s case, with the best of intentions) is what has led us into countless misadventures, and blinded us to our responsibility for the deaths of millions, from Hiroshima to Vietnam to Iraq.

Obama’s rhetoric is marred by the naive and dangerous equations “America = hope” and “America’s interests = human interests.” I give him credit for being more aware of what is going on in the world than most presidential candidates, but his vision for America is a megalomaniac one. He sees a borderless world with America as the leader. Isn’t that another name for empire?

Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease…the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries. […] We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people. […] And America must lead by reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners…who want our beacon of hope to shine its light their way.

Someone should remind him that a beacon only shines in one direction. I wish the U.S. would try listening for a change. We’ve had a century to lead the world. Haven’t we done enough? In fairness, though, towards the end of his speech, Obama slips into a more progressive groove. After making the requisite nod to “using force—unilaterally if necessary—to protect ourselves,” he switches gears, calling on us to “ensure that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.” I want to believe this is the real Obama, but how do I know?

The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice. Delivering on these universal aspirations…requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy—a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth.

The corruption I heard about while visiting parts of Africa has been around for decades, but the hunger to eliminate such corruption is a growing and powerful force…. We must couple our aid with an insistent call for reform. We must do so not in the spirit of a patron, but the spirit of a partner—a partner that is mindful of its own imperfections. Extending an outstretched hand…must ultimately be more than just a matter of expedience or even charity. It must be about recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people.

On a symbolic level, I feel that Obama is the right face for America to show the world in these troubled times. The election of a president whose father was a student from Kenya would be a powerful statement of the values we claim to uphold. Bill Clinton is still popular in places like Morocco because he treated the people there like his own constituents, no doubt giving their leaders a few lessons in democracy in the process. I sense that Obama will be like that. But will he orchestrate a change in policy, or simply give the empire a new face? At a minimum, whoever is running America needs to be on guard against the sense of entitlement that goes with leadership of the most powerful nation in history.

The French blogger leblase has some thoughts about this in his latest post. He is disussing the wealthy democracies and how they function as exclusive clubs.

In Europe, the airline Air France is the one that sends back the largest number of people by force. These rejects, who have often undergone frightful ordeals in order to reach our exemplary country, are sometimes accompanied by the police and handcuffed to their seats. As we know, it even happens that their mouths are taped shut if they make a scene. If by chance you are in the same plane, protesting against this treatment could get you investigated for obstruction of justice.

conditions necessary for maintaining our lifestyle

I will close with something I wrote two summers ago in Morocco, after the 2004 presidential elections made me realize the irony of choosing the “leader of the free world” through a vote of just five percent of the world’s population. If Obama could appreciate this irony and begin to educate the American people about it, I might be able to support him as enthusiastically as I would like.

I think it is fair to say that we live in a time when the very idea of democracy is in question, not least because of its own failure to deliver on the promise of universal justice and human rights. Democracy is rightfully an ideal to be aspired to, but once established, it tends to become nothing more than a process that can easily be hijacked to serve as an enabler and apologist for the accumulation of wealth. What we have now is a core group of wealthy democracies that seek to protect themselves from the pressing demands of those excluded from the game. Within these democracies, it is tempting to imagine that an empire would be a more direct way to achieve the same ends, since it would no longer be necessary to pay homage to outmoded ideals of liberty which place limits on forthright action. Outside these democracies, another question poses itself. If this is the true face of democracy, what use is it to us? Why should we seek to enter a game that is stacked against us, where we aren’t even welcome? In these conditions, if democracy in its true sense is to survive and flourish, there is an urgent necessity to reaffirm its original impulse, which is a message to all humanity. All human beings, everywhere on the planet, have the right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. All human beings have the right to organize, to assemble, to openly debate questions of public policy, to disagree in good conscience, to choose their leaders and their form of government. The common interest ultimately prevails over private interests, but the common interest must be the product of consent. In extreme cases, when decisions are imposed without consent and no redress is possible, all human beings have the right to revolt, to throw out the contract and try again. In a world where decisions made in one country can affect lives half a world away, islands of democracy here and there in “suitable conditions” are not enough. Democracy must be universal, or it is meaningless. That is the message for our time.

UPDATE 1: Interesting! Pierre Tristam of Candide’s Notebooks beat me to this by two weeks. Check out his detailed critique of Obama’s latest foreign policy statement—”The Audacity of Fraud: How Barack Obama Is Losing My Vote.”

UPDATE 2: In the Democratic presidential debate the other night, Senator Obama drew attention by agreeing to meet for discussions with any foreign leader, including the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, while Hillary Clinton refused to make such a promise. I see this as a positive sign. Perhaps he is beginning to think for himself a little about foreign policy, rather than follow conventional wisdom. Even more interesting are some private comments he made later, explaining why he is confident that his foreign policy judgement is “better than anyone else in this race.”

I don’t base that simply on the fact that I was right on the war in Iraq. But if you look at how I approached the problem. What I was drawing on was a set of experiences that come from a life of living overseas, having family overseas, being able to see the world through the eyes of people outside our borders.

On the one hand, Obama is like President Bush in that he trusts his judgment more than that of the foreign policy establishment. On the other hand, it’s true that the establishment has unforgivable blind spots. Besides, there is a vast difference in the life experience of the two men. I’ve never heard Bush talk about “being able to see the world through the eyes of people outside our borders.” Is Obama finding his own, progressive voice on foreign policy? His early opposition to war in Iraq proves he can think for himself, and he is clearly a man capable of evolution. For now, I’m willing to give him a few more months.

Pagan / Patriot

9 Replies

An Iranian pagan. Thanks to Homeyra.

The image is from the Persian Gulf Environmental Art Festial, apparently the brainchild of Ahmad Nadalian, an environmental artist who carves fish on river rocks, where they are slowly washed away by the current.

An American patriot. Thanks to Adel.

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Displaying the flag upside down is a symbol of distress.

Here are some comments from the page where this photo is posted.

Now, that is patriotism…

Dissent is patriotic!

Now this is the kind of troop I *CAN* support.

Even though holding the flag like that means surrender, it is a very good example of what the youth of America is feeling. Fuck this war! If our troops are realizing it’s wrong…then that should be a sign. We the people have the right to “de-patronize” our flag if we want to. That isn’t un-patriotic….it’s being an American. America was founded on rebellion. We need to pull out now. NOW.

This is the right way to fly this flag, our country is in DISTRESS!

A flag is a material object. […] THIS I GUARANTEE TO YOU: The U.S. flag will fade into the reaches of time and be FORGOTTEN just like all other flags. How I pity you who hold onto such things. IT IS A MATERIAL OBJECT THAT IS DEAD. […] Are you really foolish enough to believe that an inanimate object is what stores our freedom? That it has RIGHTS above that of a MAN!? A man exercising his GOD GIVEN RIGHT to dissent is freedom!!!

If you have ever sworn to defend this country with your life, then you can say whatever you want. Free speech if something we have vowed to defend with our lives so if I don’t agree with you—it’s your right.

All you superpatriots crying about desecrating the flag, you just don’t get it. […] People are dying, freedoms are being subverted, Bush shits on the Constitution… and you’re all bent out of shape about a picture.

The flag is a symbol. […] It is not a living thing. It cannot be desecrated, defamed, or abused. The very society that the flag represents and symbolizes permits this action and makes that action all the more powerful.

This picture speaks well more than 1000 words… it speaks for the tears that mothers shed, the blood that drips from young soldiers, the families and lives broken in Iraq… I applaud this man for his courage, as well as the other soldiers that hold true to their ideals and morals.

Somebody buy this loyal and patriotic serviceman a beer.

Culture Clash

2 Replies

Adel sent me this. It’s from a 1950s anti-Communist adventure series. I searched for more information on the web and found this description, taken from Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America by Bradford W. Wright.

T-Man

Mossadegh

Meanwhile, thanks to Myrtus I found this wonderful video of an all-burqa rock band!

Tyranny and Resistance

3 Replies

I’ve been having an e-mail exchange with an Iranian friend which began with a discussion of the poet Hafez and went into very different territory. When I mentioned that I was reading Hafez, he said, “Whatever is left of the vision of people like Hafez is what makes this country bearable.” He told me the Iranian people can be “very flexible. Just the opposite of what it seems.”

I replied that I know the Iranian people are open to the world around them, and that people everywhere are different from their stereotypes in the media. I went on to make a psychological observation. “In a crowd it is usually the bullies and extremists who speak first, intimidating the others who are afraid they are in the minority, when in fact the opposite is true. The majority is much more tolerant than the loudmouths who speak. It can take a long time for the tolerant majority to realize that the bullies and extremists do not, in fact, speak for the crowd.”

My friend replied, “A friend, with a very sad outcome in his life, told me once, “One of ‘them’ is enough for a hundred of ‘us.'” There is a handful of loud and extremist people who are more visible that a much larger number of ‘normal’ people. With their intimidating manners or mere brutality, one of them is able to rule over a hundred of us.”

This led me to share with him, and with you, the following thoughts.

— • —

This is why “rule of law” is so important, to contain the bullies. It’s easy for them to get into positions of authority and become tyrants, because that is their nature. So the most important thing in a system of government is transparency and the balance of powers. For example, the police must answer to a civil, elected authority. There must be a process for removing corrupt officials, and so on. No power should be outside the law, or above the rest.

Of course, even then the people must be vigilant, because there is always the possibility of private interests getting together in secret, and using the machinery of government to operate in the dark areas of the law. A friend of mine in Morocco once told me that “all governments are Mafias” and I see his point. In a place like Tunisia or Egypt it is clear, the Mafia is the police. But even in the wealthy democracies, there are private interests that have suceeded in making themselves one with the State, carefully hiding themselves.

I’m an anarchist at heart, so I used to think that the answer was to do away with all government. But then I realized that “rule of law” is the only thing protecting us from a Mafia state. Whatever its imperfections, the constitutional system should not be discarded, but strengthened—by exposing its contradictions and reforming it, by making it more transparent, by increasing citizen control—all on the principle that no one is above the law. Those who resist tyranny should do so in the name of the law!

Here’s where I’m stuck. The principle of civil disobedience, as taught by Thoreau, Ghandi and King, tells us that we have the duty to resist unjust laws. We do this is in the name of a higher law, an ideal law that doesn’t exist on earth. Each time the law reforms itself, it tries to get closer to this ideal. But where does the ideal come from? I can’t accept that it comes from some holy book, for the simple reason that the universe is not frozen in time. We, God’s creatures, are expressing God’s revelation in new forms each day. This is my answer to the fundamentalists. Universal law comes from us. It represents the spirit of humanity, our image of what we should be. Yet because the law is evolving, there is no fixed point of reference. The laws of two centuries ago aren’t the laws of today. We notice their limits and we push against them. We see a hole in the law and we sew it up. Since the law is always changing, by what standard do we accuse a tyrant of injustice? He will answer, “My people aren’t ready. They know only the stick. First let them prove their discipline, then we will see about your ideal laws.”

Meanwhile in Iraq

11 Replies

Two days ago, a car bomb exploded in a crowded Baghdad market, killing 200 people. Unlike the 32Â victims of Cho Seung-Hui, we will never see their photos or hear their life stories. According to witnesses:

The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood.

Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion. There were pieces of flesh all over the place.

So is the surge working in Iraq? According to General David Petraeus one month ago:

Sure we see improvements, major improvements…. We got down at the people level and are staying. Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen.

How wonderful it is to be “at the people level” in Iraq! “All kinds of things start to happen” thanks to the American occupier!

Just for comparison, here is what life is like in Iran, a nation next door which is not under American influence.

Thanks to Black Iris of Jordan for the Baghdad photo (original source: AFP viaÂ BBC) and to Forever Under Construction for the photo of Tehran (original source: online gallery of photographer KamyarÂ Adl).

eatbees blog

"If not now, when?"