This was one of the most memorable lines from Barack Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: “the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.”
Those of us who took him at [...]]]>
This was one of the most memorable lines from Barack Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: “the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.”
Those of us who took him at his word hoped that they would apply not only to domestic issues, but to foreign policy too. This author actually had the optimistic temerity to pen a piece imagining what the new president’s “new politics” toward Iran might look like, in an Alternet piece headlined, “What President Obama’s Letter to Iran Should Really Say.” Here is an excerpt from its conclusion:
Your interests and ours do not, and will not, always coincide, nor will we always view the challenges facing the world from the same perspective. Nonetheless, Iranians and Americans need to speak with one another, to share ideas, to work together on issues about which we already agree in principle, and to learn from one another on those with which we are in accord in practice. We can then, with mutual respect, build upon the relationship we have created to approach the more difficult issues — those that have locked our relationship into a confrontational dynamic for the past 30 years.
(An Iranian colleague informed me at the time that my letter, minus its byline, was e-mailed around Iran, sparking speculation as to whether or not Obama had written it himself!).
While my proposed Letter wasn’t exactly the same message that Obama transmitted to the Iranians during his 2009 Nowruz speech, there were sufficient resemblances between the two to offer, at least temporarily, some grounds for optimism:
We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.
But the president’s Iran policy was soon channeled toward the “the same old politics with the same old players.” Robert Gates stayed on as Secretary of Defense, minimizing any meaningful change in rhetoric or policy from the previous Bush years. Veterans of the Clinton administration, such as Dennis Ross, were recycled and brought on board to deal with Iran policy. Sanctions continued to be equated with “diplomacy,” and cudgels confused with “carrots.”
Weeks before the 2012 US election, President Obama now finds himself in a situation where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has made no secret of his hope that Obama’s Republican rival will be elected in his stead — is attempting to play Obama’s puppet master. Netanyahu’s ultimatum: either the US issues a “clear red line” for an American attack on Iran that is acceptable to Israel, or the Israelis will strike Iran on their own. And if the Israelis start a war, the US president will have no choice but to back Israel by getting involved. There remains the politically untenable option of Obama declaring openly that the US and Israel are not on the same page and that the US will not back an Israeli strike on Iran, but in the current political environment, that is highly unlikely.
Is there any way out for Obama? According to Akiva Eldar, a senior political correspondent for Haaretz, there is. Obama should buck the hysteria from the right-wing in the US and Israel and go to Iran as Richard Nixon went to China in 1972:
Obama lost the battle long ago for Netanyahu’s fans in the U.S. Jewish community and among the Christian right. If the Iran issue was critical to the U.S. presidential election then Obama should have already started packing. Instead of trying to bring the Iranians to their knees, he can offer them a way up toward restoration of their self-respect. What does Obama have to lose by flying to Tehran to begin a dialogue about ending the nuclear arms race and stopping Iran’s support for terror organizations and for the genocide in Syria?
Eldar, who served as Haaretz’s US Bureau Chief and Washington correspondent from 1993-96, was designated as one of the most prominent and influential commentators in the world in 2006. In 2007 he received the annual “Search for Common Ground” award for Middle East journalism. He regularly appears on major television and radio networks in Israel, the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, and has appeared on Nightline, the Charlie Rose Show and on CNN and CBS news programs. So it is significant when a seasoned Israeli commentator like Eldar suggests Obama give a reconciliation speech in Tehran that says:
“No single nation should pick and choose which country holds nuclear weapons. And that’s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations possess nuclear weapons. And any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I’m hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal” (from Obama’s remarks in Cairo on June 4, 2009 ).
Such a move, Eldar suggests, would not just be good policy, it would also be good politics: “after his historic visit to China, Nixon was reelected.”
Eldar’s op-eds appear in The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Jewish Week. Will this one make its way into the American press? It’s a groundbreaking article that deserves more widespread attention than it has thus far received, epecially from President Obama, who really needs a game-changer on Iran to stave off disaster.
As candidate Obama said back in 2008, “the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.”
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Here’s an excerpt:
Given the broad consensus that Osama bin Laden and Co. carried out the 9/11 attacks, it’s easy to understand that mentioning his group continues to elicit strong emotions — among them fear, anger, and a resulting desire to continue to wage war against Al Qaeda.
So when hawks are trying to drum up support for a war in the Middle East, it’s natural for them to try to connect the target country with Al Qaeda. This pattern was easily observable in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Cliff May, having already morphed from a journalist into the president of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies by 2002, opted to paint with a broad brush: linking people together because they think alike. They’re “Jihadists,” he wrote, and that was enough to slap bull’s eyes on a wide variety of Arab and Muslim heads.
The Jihadist framework even allowed him, as he outlined in a September 2002 column for the Scripps Howard News Service, to “easily accommodate true religious fanatics such as Osama bin Laden as well as those like Saddam Hussein…”
[...]
As his [new NRO article conflating Iran and Al Qaeda] draws to a close, May gets even more specific about the “Jihadi” connections: Iran, he says, is working toward fulfilling Al Qaeda’s “mission”:
Al-Qaeda and the terrorist groups it leads have a mission. Iran’s revolutionary theocrats and the terrorist groups they instruct have goals and a strategy to achieve them.
Then comes a thinly veiled threat of a military attack against Iran: “Iran’s rulers should be under the guns — metaphorically for the present….” But the present, too, shall pass. And when it does, May, pressed by Glenn Greenwald, has made his policy preferences clear.
The “Al Qaeda link” lives on, with just as little evidence as there was in Iraq. Secular Arab nationalists, Sunnis, Shiites — all the same: “Jihadis.” “Al Qaeda and Iran,” the mantra goes, and emotions will run high. It remains to be seen if the U.S. public will fall for the ruse again.
Read the whole piece here at AlterNet.
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In early July, news came that the Islamic Republic of Iran decided to issue fashion guidelines for men. Unveiling a large poster showing headshots of a half dozen men, in frontal and profile views, the Iranian culture ministry announced that certain haircuts were immodest and violated the Islamic Republic’s national and religious sensibilities. The ban covered gelled spikes and mullets, and the poster showed six acceptable styles, all seemingly ripped from the 1950s (the side part, the comb-back, and even a little flop over the ears are acceptable). Recovering from a beer-imbued long weekend, complete with fireworks, Americans returned to work on Tuesday to find a slew of articles and blog posts on the new restrictions. Even Stephen Colbert got in on the action, declaring that Iran had approved his own hairstyle. Everyone had a good chuckle.
The reaction seems innocuous – just poking a little fun at what is, on its face, a ridiculous regulation on a whole nation of people thousands of miles away. But laughing at the expense of Iran is not quite as harmless as it seems – not when the U.S. has occupying armies on two sides of Iran’s borders, and a large chunk of the D.C. strategic establishment speaks belligerently about U.S. or Israeli bombing runs on the country of 65 million. There’s something crass about it, actually. The fact that Americans feel free to laugh about Iran in a climate where a former CIA chief tells CNN he thinks attacking Iran “may not be the worst of all possible outcomes” speaks to the likelihood that Americans administer their empire from their unconscious minds. Humor, of course, is a gentle way to convince people – propaganda for the unwitting part of the brain.
In the modern era, humor has worked again and again to dehumanize target countries as a standard part of war propaganda. In a democracy, where support of the population at large is supposedly a prerequisite for attacking another country, jokes are a common means of dehumanizing, demonizing and generally placing the population of the targets of the attack into the category of Other. Empathy plummets; and civilians in the aggressor state find it increasingly difficult to put themselves in the (Islam-approved) shoes of those on the receiving ends of the bombs.
Most troubling is that liberals and progressives – those you might expect, ostensibly, to oppose a U.S. attack on Iran – are just as likely to laugh the country to war as hawks. Maybe more: Hawks in the media, at neocon rags and mainstream outlets alike, take Iran far more seriously. Those liberals snickering about mullets play into the same sort of joking that occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War – dehumanizing the soon-to-be targets. But instead of the Butcher of Baghdad, today’s monsters are the “mad mullahs” in Tehran.
Read more here, at AlterNet.
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