Letters to the Editor
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Strange you would spend most of your article parsing Irans own words and splitting hairs
Your spend most of your article closely parsing Iran's agitprop and by the end you comfort yourself that either a) contrary to what they say they probably won't exterminate all the Jews, and b) Even if they do, it's because of politics not because they hate anyone so it's acceptable, rather clever even and certainly not their fault.
Did I say strange? I meant same-old same-old. Sorry for the confusion.
I know this is heresy for Salon but the key to Iran is Iraq, not Salon's bigotry, ignorance and official antisemitism. Nice try though.
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The problem of geo politics...
Given Iran's size, history, population, location, wealth, resources, education and military might,
I'm not quite sure about those last couple. Military might? Really? A country that has little to no Navy, a barely existing Air Force, and impeded Iraq mostly through brutal attrition and "wave" attacks not unlike WWI trench fighting?
Wealth and resources? While oil is certainly a prize, go ask any of the number of Iranian trade unionists (who are increasingly ending up in jails these days) about the wealth of the Islamic Republic.
The problem with Parsi's perspective is its so dominated by geopolitical "strategery", that it forgets that people actually live in all these damn countries and they themselves have the most say in the issue. And whats happening on the street may not be welcome to either Iranian mullahs or American overseers. Is it any wonder the first people locked up in the Pakistani crackdown were secularist democrats? That Iran's new student revolts are extremely hostile towards the mullah regime? That Israel is scared of a one state solution because it would rob them of their artificial, non-majority standing in their own country? None of these things should come as surprises, and I think, as always, the real reform is going to come from below.
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I somewhat disagree..
1) Hezbollah isnt a terrorist group per se...sure the United States and Israel branded Hezbollah as one..but then again..what does one expect?... they could take Rummy's ass and brand it as delicious ham and then would expect all of the world to believe it. As Ken Silverstein of Harpers noted, Hezbollah is more than just a militant group, they have a community activism wing complete to free clinics, charities, schools, local political parties etc. The militant wing is only one component of it and they see themselves as legit resistance group..no different than when Americans were fighting the Brits sometime back then. I am not saying that makes Hezbollah a nice or savory organization to deal but by branding groups and countries as terrorists willy nilly oversimplifies the problem..which is why we landed in Iraq in the first place.
2) who says war with Iran seems remote? if there is one thing I have learned observing Cheney and Bush, expect the unexpected. The neocons have sensed that if Bush doesnt attack Iran, it may be another 10 yrs before they will get US to attack Iran (Of course Hillary in the midst of reelection could always decide to pick up some crappy little country and throw it around) If Bush says he doesnt even care about what the NIE says and doesnt quite believe its findings, then whats to stop him from asking the USAF to carpet bomb Iran?
3) uh, US is appalled at Iran's human rights record? eeeeyyyeah....a little ironic considering US had to deal with some minor transgressions such as destroying torture evidence, waterboarding prisoners, deny prisoners habeas corpus, spying on its citizens, overthrowing regimes it doesnt like, prisoner renditions to black sites where all forms of getting medieval on their asses techniques can be applied....I bet Iranians are feeling so bad about having such poor human rights record.
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This "Misunderstanding" Has Been Going on For Half a Century at Least
The U.S., Great Britain, various other European abettors, all have given Iran a series of bitch slaps over the decades which would have made most other countries so unstable that we'd have long since been forced to go in and get our arrogant ass kicked. Install a Shah. Overthrow the Shah. Put the Shah back again. Remove the Shah and finally leave the place to sort itself out after nearly 1000 years of preeminence in the Muslim world with a little smacking around tacked on at the end and what else could we possibly expect but a nation not in the best of financial health or with the greatest self esteem?
Parsi's observations are pretty much on target. Iran very desperately wants to be recognized as at least legitimate if not great, and given its recent treatment by the west for reasons inexcusable at best, the superficial behavior of its leaders (whose hierarchy is still poorly understood by western leaders even after all our various involvements there) is not really that hard to interpret. That is, assuming one bothers to learn, first, anything about the Persian character, let alone the long and once-glorious history of the country.
Gary Kamiya interprets the situation well and presents Parsi's views pretty accurately. We ("we" being the west) remain sadly inept and ignorant of the middle east in general, of Islam, of Persian history and the surrounding mostly Arab world. There is so much in the article that would come as a surprise to the discerning reader that it really boggles the mind.
How do we manage to remain so ignorant? We have traded our local lynchings of Negroes and Jews for giant military lynchings of whole countries, and that after decades of playing with the middle east as though we were New York and the region was New Jersey.
It's not enough that we not go to war with Iran (where we would, I am convinced, get bogged down in a way that would make even Viet Nam look like a picnic); we need to start giving some respect to our fellow man around the globe, yes, even to those "towel heads" who slake our bottomless thirst for oil. This rock's too small for these sorts of games anymore. Something is going go blow eventually if we don't wise up and start cultivating peace and mutual respect on the planet, and we'd best start with Iran, because we've already wasted Iraq and we'd not get off as lightly if we bumbled into the home of the Assassins.
Or we could just kick some ass and get our rocks off yet again. It's worked so well in the past, after all.