Friday, September 18, 2009

The Twitterings of War

Once again the wretched hordes of war are circling around the people of Iran. Like schoolchildren who must prove their rectitude, some American observers are taking gleeful note of how the people of Iran are willing to step into harm’s way to overthrow the current regime. There are no certainties of the outcome, except one: when the rulers of Iran tire of the disruptions, they will send the protesters into oblivion. What else can these safe-in-their-homes commentators say, then, except, we the righteous western champions of goodness must uphold what we think are unchallengeable moral certainties. These electronic picadors do not get near the bull they taunt.

Even if a new set of rulers rise from deadly chaos, and they are given the task of cleaning the flesh and blood from the streets in Teheran, what do U.S. commentators know about how the new regime will change Iran? Nothing. The waste of lives may very well continue under a new regime; like many revolutions, they only provide a new set of fingerprints on the guns. The commentators will have moved on, by then, seeking a new field for their games of empire, unchastised, unbloodied and well-paid for their efforts.



We are forcing the hand of the current leaders in Iran. It is only one day after President Obama said our missile defenses will be turned against Iran. What would you do if you where in charge of Iran, under these circumstances? History’s largest empire, most certainly the nation with the greatest military might in history, the country that overthrew your government a little less than 60 years ago and that has never recognized the legitimacy of your rule, is egging on your people (this is from their point of view) to topple your rule.

Soon, we will find out if President Obama can stand up to the dogs of war and further America’s interests in peaceful ways or if he has to make another “compromise” and start a new, unwinnable conflict. We can only hope he is more John F. Kennedy than Dwight D. Eisenhower (the latter authorized Project Ajax, the operation that overthrew Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the man elected prime minister of Iran in 1953). Even though Kennedy was as cold a warrior as they came, he refused to be dragged past the point of no return during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He also nixed an all-out attack on Cuba when the Soviets put nuclear missiles there. I hope President Obama has read The Guns of August.

From one of the tweets coming out of Iran: Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’ll die for Iran. If that is your wish, yes you will. And you will only succeed in adding your corpse to the piles.

I do not credit the Iranian regime with pure motives. They are as wicked and dangerous as any set of rulers. The continued incarceration of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal, the hikers who, it seems, accidentally walked into Iran in August, appears to be indefensible. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has linked their release to Iranian diplomats he says Americans have arrested. The U.S. did arrest five Iranian diplomats in Iraq, allegedly for arming Shi’ite militias, but they were released in July. The backpackers have become pawns in a wretched, global war game. How they may be sacrificed or returned has nothing to do with their own actions. This is senseless cruelty and may still escalate, wasting three more lives.

It looks like the hot, violent repression has been cooled, for today. We will probably see a spate of show trials, forced confessions and executions. The Iranian officials will be using enhanced interrogation techniques to force confessions. Maybe they can outsource that nasty chore and hire Blackwater USA (pardon me, Xe Services LLC) or our own CIA; we can offset the cost of health care insurance if we are shrewd in negotiating a good fee.

Remember, America, Iran and Israel were backroom buddies, once (maybe still, ala Margaret Thatcher). In 1986, under the auspices of President Reagan, Israel supplied Iran with weapons and the U.S. resupplied Israel with new weapons, for which we got cash. Some of that loot went to supply anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, the Contras, in Nicaragua. Also part of the deal was that Iran would do what it could to help in the release of six U.S. hostages who were being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is what we know. My guess is that there exist unknown unknowns in the tangle that we call American foreign policy.

Nothing the U.S. government says about Iran should be believed. It wastes time trying to intuit the real story. We should not be twittering away the lives of Iranians on such flimsy evidence. They have their own ways of needlessly dying.