eatbees blog

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

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.”

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.

An Iranian pagan. An American patriot.

“U.S. Treasury agent Pete Trask…bursts into the room, throws a squealing pig at the Iranian official, and says, ‘Here rag-head! Take this little fellow home and barbecue him for breakfast!’ The agent then flees, having effectively sabotaged the treaty.”

The reason why “rule of law” is important is 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.

Two days ago, a car bomb exploded in a crowded Baghdad market, killing 200 people. Unlike the 32 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.”

Remember that Iranian diplomat who disappeared from the streets of Baghdad two months ago while buying a video for his daughter? The captured diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, is back in Tehran today, and he says he was tortured by the CIA during his two months of captivity.

Regardless of where the border may or may not be, let’s not forget it was the Iranians who decided to make a move they knew was provocative. I think the Iranians are much better chess players than their opponents, so they must have calculated their options and decided that whatever the possible countermove, they would hold the advantage.

Since President Bush first threatened to “seek out and destroy the networks” that are supposedly attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, I have read hundreds of articles and blog posts about the conflict with Iran. This crisis may be a largely manufactured one that interests only Americans, but there is still a lot to be learned about it, which I will summarize here in no particular order.