"(Religion) With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
The real US - Iran situation and how the US can (can not) deal with it
Juan Cole's response to President Obama's speech on Tuesday. As noted and also all over the MSM it doesn't stop the Limbaugh/McCain/Bohener/Graham/Beck/Palin/Graham/Malkin... hate & lie machine.
But there are dangers here. Obama
will likely be as helpless before a crackdown by the Iranian regime as
Eisenhower was re: Hungary in 1956, Johnson was re: Prague in 1968, and
Bush senior was re: Tienanmen Square in 1989. George W. Bush, it should
remember, did nothing about Tehran's crackdown on student protesters in
2003 or about the crackdown on reformist candidates, which excluded
them from running in the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections, or about
the probably fraudulent election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. It is hard to
see what he could have done, contrary to what his erstwhile supporters
in Congress now seem to imply. As an oil state, the Iranian regime does
not need the rest of the world and is not easy to pressure. So Obama
needs to be careful about raising expectations of any sort of practical
intervention by the US, which could not possibly succeed. (Despite the
US media's determined ignoring the the Afghanistan War, it is rather a
limiting factor on US options with regard to Iran.) Moreover, if the
regime succeeds in quelling the protests, however odious it is, it will
still be a chess piece on the board of international diplomacy and the
US will have to deal with it just as it deals with post-Tiananmen China.
And,
the more Obama speaks on the subject, even in these terms, the more he
risks associating the Mousavi supporters with a CIA plot. Iranian media
are already parading arrested protesters
who are 'confessing' that 'Western media' led them astray. In
nationalist and wounded Iran, if someone is successfully tagged as an
agent of foreign interests, it is the political kiss of death.
The
fact is that despite the bluster of the American Right that Something
Must be Done, the United States is not a neutral or benevolent player
in Iran. Washington overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953
over oil nationalization, and installed the megalomaniac and oppressive
Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, who gradually so alienated all social classes in
Iran that he was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1978-1979. The
shah had a national system of domestic surveillance and tossed people
in jail for the slightest dissidence, and was supported to the hilt by
the United States government. So past American intervention has not
been on the side of let us say human rights.
More recently, the
US backed the creepy and cult-like Mojahedin-e Khalq (People's Holy
Warriors or MEK), which originated in a mixture of communist Stalinism
and fundamentalist Islam. The MEK is a terrorist organization and has
blown things up inside Iran, so the Pentagon's ties with them are wrong
in so many ways. The MEK, by the way, has a very substantial lobby in
Washington DC and has some congressmen in its back pocket, and is
supported by the less savory elements of the Israel lobbies such as
Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson. I am not saying they should be
investigated for material support of terrorism, since I am appalled by
the unconstitutional breadth of that current DOJ tactic, but I am
signalling that the US imperialist Right has been up to very sinister
things in Iran for decades. A person who worked in the Pentagon once
alleged to me that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was
privately pushing for using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. And
Dick Cheney is so attached to launching war on Iran that he
characterized attempts to deflect such plans as a "conspiracy." Given
what the US did to Fallujah, it strikes me as unlikely that a military
invasion of Iran would be good for that country's civic life. And there
are rather disadvantages to being nuked, even by the kindliest of WASP
gentlemen of Mr. Rumsfeld's ilk.
Moreover, very unfortunately,
US politicians are no longer in a position to lecture other countries
about their human rights. The kind of unlicensed, city-wide
demonstrations being held in Tehran last week would not be allowed to
be held in the United States. Senator John McCain led the charge
against Obama for not having sufficiently intervened in Iran. At the
Republican National Committee convention in St. Paul, 250 protesters were arrested shortly before John McCain took the podium.
Most were innocent activists and even journalists. Amy Goodman and her
staff were assaulted. In New York in 2004, 'protest zones' were
assigned, and 1800 protesters were arrested, who have now been awarded
civil damages by the courts. Spontaneous, city-wide demonstrations
outside designated 'protest zones' would be illegal in New York City,
apparently. In fact, the Republican National Committee has undertaken
to pay for the cost of any lawsuits by wronged protesters, which many
observers fear will make the police more aggressive, since they will
know that their municipal authorities will not have to pay for civil
damages.
It was a crudely stage-managed insult to everyone involved. By Christopher HitchensPosted Sunday, June 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM ET
For
a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I
quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular
updates:
I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally
and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about.
Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told
they're special.
It's hard to better this, either as an evocation of the rancid
sexual repression that lies at the nasty core of the "Islamic republic"
or as a description of the reserve strength that the Iranian
para-state, or state within a state, can bring to bear if it ever feels
itself even slightly challenged. There is a theoretical reason why the
events of the last month in Iran (I am sorry, but I resolutely decline
to refer to them as elections) were a crudely stage-managed
insult to those who took part in them and those who observed them. And
then there is a practical reason. The theoretical reason, though less
immediately dramatic and exciting, is the much more interesting and
important one.
Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite
theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This
totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery
promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui.
Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in
charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the
insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of
the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over
before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council
determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper
referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts,
and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the
ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!") Shame on all those
media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week.
And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she
hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be
reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency
was deliberately forestalled to begin with.
In theory, the first
choice of the ayatollahs might not actually "win," and there could even
be divisions among the Islamic Guardian Council as to who constitutes
the best nominee. Secondary as that is, it can still lead to rancor.
After all, corrupt systems are still subject to fraud. This, like
hypocrisy, is the compliment that vice pays to virtue. With
near-incredible brutishness and cruelty, then, the guardians moved to
cut off cell-phone and text-message networks that might give even an
impression of fairness and announced though their storm-troop
"revolutionary guards" that only one form of voting had divine
sanction. ("The miraculous hand of God," announced Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei, had been present in the polling places and had announced a
result before many people had even finished voting. He says that sort
of thing all the time.)
The obvious evidence of fixing, fraud, and
force to one side, there is another reason to doubt that an illiterate
fundamentalist like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have increased even a
state-sponsored plebiscite-type majority. Everywhere else in the Muslim
world, in every election in the last two years, the tendency has been
the other way. In Morocco in 2007, the much-ballyhooed Justice and Development Party
wound up with 14 percent of the vote. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the
predictions of increased market share for the pro-Sharia parties were
likewise falsified. In Iraq this last January, the local elections
penalized the clerical parties that had been making life a misery in
cities like Basra. In neighboring Kuwait last month, the Islamist
forces did poorly, and four women—including the striking figure of Rola Dashti,
who refuses to wear any headgear—were elected to the 50-member
parliament. Most important of all, perhaps, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah
was convincingly and unexpectedly defeated last week in Lebanon after
an open and vigorous election, the results of which were not challenged
by any party. And, from all I hear, if the Palestinians were to vote
again this year—as they were at one point supposed to do—it would be
highly improbable that Hamas would emerge the victor.
Yet somehow
a senile and fanatical religious clique that has failed even to
condition the vote in a country like Lebanon, where it has proxy and
surrogate parties under arms, is able to reward itself by increasing
its "majority" in a festeringly bankrupt state where it controls the
media and enjoys a monopoly of violence. I think we should deny it any
official recognition of this consolation. (I recommend a reading of "Neither Free Nor Fair: Elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran"
and other productions of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation. This
shows that past penalties for not pleasing the Islamic Guardian Council
have included more than mere disqualification and have extended to
imprisonment and torture and death, sometimes in that order. A new
movie by Cyrus Nowrasteh, The Stoning of Soraya M.,
will soon show what happens to those who dare to dissent in other ways
and are dealt with by Ahmadinejad's "grass roots" fanatics.)
Mention
of the Lebanese elections impels me to pass on what I saw with my own
eyes at a recent Hezbollah rally in south Beirut, Lebanon. In a large
hall that featured the official attendance of a delegation from the
Iranian Embassy, the most luridly displayed poster of the pro-Iranian
party was a nuclear mushroom cloud! Underneath this telling symbol was
a caption warning the "Zionists" of what lay in store. We sometimes
forget that Iran still officially denies any intention of acquiring
nuclear weapons. Yet Ahmadinejad recently hailed an Iranian missile
launch as a counterpart to Iran's success with nuclear centrifuges, and
Hezbollah has certainly been allowed to form the idea that the Iranian
reactors may have nonpeaceful applications. This means, among other
things, that the vicious manipulation by which the mullahs control Iran
can no longer be considered their "internal affair." Fascism at home
sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later.
Meanwhile, give it its right name.
More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution - and
many of them are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of
being gay, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.
According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to
start executing them in batches of 20 from this week. There is, said
Mr. Hili, at least one member of Iraqi-LGBT who are among those to be
put to death.
And the London-based group, which believes that a total of 128
executions are imminent, is calling on the UK Government, international
human rights groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in
Geneva to intervene "with due speed" to prevent "this tragic
miscarriage of justice" from going ahead.
It gets worse:
"Iraqi-LGBT has been a banned from running activities on Iraqi soil," he revealed.
"Raids by the Iraqi police and Ministry of Interior forces cost our
group [to the extent of] disappearing and killing of 17 members working
for Iraqi-LGBT since 2005.
"The death penalty has been increasing at an alarming rate in Iraq since the new Iraqi regime reintroduced it in August 2004.
"In 2008, at least 285 people were sentenced to death, and at least
34 executed. In 2007 at least 199 people were sentenced to death and 33
were executed, while in 2006 at least 65 people were put to death.
"The actual figures," Mr. Hili suggested, "could be much higher as
there are no official statistics for the number of prisoners facing
execution."
I'm sure glad we gave Iraqis the freedom to live in a brutal theocracy. (link)
Why does the US support Israel? (I'm not saying the Palestinians are the good guys - as so succinctly stated in the post below "the entire Middle East is just one ginormous Groundhog Day clusterfuck.")
Hopefully the relationship with Israel will cool a little or "disimprove" as 43 would have said. How is this not genocide on the the level with what the US is doing in Iraq? The other number in various links is 57% - percentage of fatalities in Gaza which were children.
Wounded Palestinians pour into overrun hospitals as Israel continues to
pound the Gaza Strip in the 10th day of its offensive Link to this video
The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled
floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One
had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth
half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes.
For a week the Samouni family had taken shelter in their small, single-storey home in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza
City, and there they survived wave after wave of Israeli bombing and
artillery strikes. Then came Israel's ground offensive, the next phase
in what Israel argues is a necessary and justified battle against the
Palestinian militants firing rockets out of Gaza.
The Israeli
prime minister, Ehud Olmert, promised an "iron fist" for Hamas and said
he would treat the civilian citizens of Gaza with "silk gloves," though
the Palestinians of Gaza know perhaps better than most that there are
few silk gloves in war....(link)
And sing me the song of how completely blameless the Olmert is for this. Read the story, the actions are indefensible.
Bush
and Cheney are also responsible for the same pictures in Iraq. Bush and
the Sharon/Olmert government have made the U.S. and Israelis into two
sides of the same over-reactionary coin.
It is NOT self-defense
to respond to rocket attacks that kill not even a couple of dozen
people over several years (as tragic as that is) by killing hundreds of
civilians in reprisal. And it is NOT defending the SOBs of Hamas to say
so.
Amazing how the GOP can take the US from a fairly well liked country, to one of the most hated to one of the most laughed at so quickly
This is beyond disgusting. Why does McCain have such contempt for the US and is striving to bring the US into ruin. BinLaden can only dream of being this destructive.
Palin: average isn't good enough
by Sam Harris, Los Angeles Times
If you haven't seen this video, watch it first, then read Sam's article.
She's not qualified to be president, and in picking her, McCain shows that he has little respect for the presidency.
So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every
thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the
44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood
clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th? ...(link)
But I’ll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn’t a
day on the calendar that causes my hatred — and I do indeed mean hatred — of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.
“On Memorial Day, we honor the heroes who have laid down their lives
in the cause of freedom, resolve that they will forever be remembered
by a grateful Nation, and pray that our country may always prove worthy
of the sacrifices they have made,” reads Bush’s official Memorial Day proclamation, issued by the White House on Thursday.
The Chickenhawk-in
Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet’s blood boil but stuff
like saying that he prays “…that our country may always prove worthy of
the sacrifices they have made” is almost vomit inducing. ... (link Crooks and Liars)
Thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans are returning home only
to become casualties of war - at their own hands. Suffering from
psychiatric injuries, 1,000 veterans under Veterans Administration care
are attempting suicide each month. Almost 40 percent of the young men
and women returning from combat almost have proven mental health
injuries that include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, major depression
and traumatic brain injury.
Great commentary by Keith Olberman on monkey boy giving up golf.
... “Mr. President,” he was asked, “you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq? “Yes,” began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans — on our history.
“It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died
to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the
families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And
I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” Golf, Sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush - their lives blighted forever — care about you playing golf? Do you think, Sir, they care about you? You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you gave up golf? ... (link Crooks and Liars)
BAGHDAD - Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon.
The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead. eath toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon.
The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead. (link MSNBC)
51 Iraqis had the same sort of day that the 4 US soldiers above
The
shelling started just before 6 a.m., mortar fire shaking buildings and
sending early risers in the Green Zone here running for shelter. Sirens
went off, and loudspeakers blared, “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!” A
thick column of gray smoke rose above the embassies and government
buildings in the area.
The early morning onslaught on Sunday was
one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the Green Zone in the
past year, and it ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives
of at least 51 Iraqi civilians and soldiers, including two children. (link AMERICAblog)
