Becoming Somebody

If the United States wants to piss and moan about Iran being an evil state, it should do so because its government still forces its citizens to do things like this, not because it gets off on smack talking Israel and wants to develop a nuclear-energy policy.

Gay Iranian Wins UK Asylum Fight, from CNN.com:

LONDON, England — Britain has granted asylum to Mehdi Kazemi, a gay Iranian student who faced deportation from the United Kingdom and feared execution in Iran for being homosexual, officials confirmed Tuesday. […]

Kazemi, 19, moved to London to study English in 2004 but later discovered that his boyfriend had been arrested by Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged.

Fearing the same fate, he applied for asylum in Britain but was denied in 2007.

The office of Simon Hughes, the member of parliament who took up Kazemi’s cause, said the Home Office has granted Kazemi leave for five years.

Why doesn’t President Bush, or any other politician regardless of party affiliation, stand up for this kind of injustice in Iran? Why is empty rhetorical bombast and nuclear energy a greater threat to the civilized world than a government that unapologetically hangs people because of their sexual orientations? It’s nice to know where our priorities lie.

With Barack Obama narrowing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, in recent days both he and John McCain have switched their campaign strategies from primary to all-out general election mode. In 2004, this meant a lot of talk about partisan, red-herring issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. This time around, though, the opening round of debate has focused primarily on foreign policy, something that is actually crucial to a president’s duties in office.

It’s an encouraging sign for American politics, and I’m hopeful the majority of people can handle such a weighty topic. But the more I hear McCain’s delusional, neoconservative rhetoric — all of which seem to have been pulled, unrevised, from an outdated and misguided Cold War playbook — the more I fear what could come if this senile, ill-tempered kook is elected into office.

Not only has McCain butchered on several occasions the vital difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a distinction at the heart of the post-invasion sectarian violence in Iraq that has taken the lives of thousands of American soldiers, a group McCain has sworn to protect despite never stating how he would achieve that goal, but he has also abandoned his role as a so-called maverick, choosing instead to fall in lockstep with the Bush administration’s foreign policy of condescension, vilification, and alienation. Of course, this system has done nothing to curb the influence of terrorist groups or sure up our standing in the Middle East, thus making the United States a more vulnerable target than it could have been had a more robust diplomatic approach been taken.

In the last two weeks alone, McCain has revealed what would be a disastrous approach to international relations, a series of plans that would likely keep the U.S. at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come and, to the satisfaction of military contractors alone, start a few new ones along the way. To recap, he has taken an abrupt about-face on dealing with Hamas, the democratically elected majority government in Palestine, saying to do so would be “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.”

He has referred to Hamas, and implicitly the majority of Palestinians, as a “transcendent evil,” which, even if the claim were true, fails to accept the reality of the situation: that Hamas is the political wing chosen by the Palestinian people to lead their government and represent their interests; that the United States, through the tough-talk and thuggery started by Bush-Cheney and echoed by McCain, has only emboldened Hamas and other extremist groups that use violence to achieve political ends and speak of eliminating the state of Israel.

He has agreed with President Bush’s ignorant, historically inaccurate claim that those who wish to engage Iranian leadership through tough diplomacy, because the Bush policy of antagonizing Tehran has only strengthened fundamentalist rule in the country, are the equivalent of those who handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938. McCain followed this up by once again proving he knows nothing about the nuances of Middle East politics — remember the persistent Sunni-Shiite confusion — when he was unable to accurately tell reporters who makes and sets Iranian foreign policy.

Joe Klein of Time magazine confronted McCain over false claims made by the Senator regarding Obama’s expressed willingness to meet with Iran’s leaders. McCain has taken this to mean Obama would sit down with Iranian President, and easy-bake villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presumably because it more easily reinforces the idea that Obama is a hack who wants to appease a raging anti-Semite. But, as it turns out, Obama has never said this. He has said he would meet with “Iranian leadership” to negotiate with them on matters of foreign policy and their nuclear program. In Iran, the person responsible for these areas is not Ahmadinejad, as McCain continued to insist even after Klein informed him of the error, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know,” McCain said to Klein, referring to Ahmadinejad. “Go ahead. Or anyone who’s well-versed in the issue.”

First of all, anyone who is well-versed in the issue, to use McCain’s words, should at the very least be aware of the most basic facts of Iran’s political system, one that places Khamenei at the head of government and reduces the president to little more than a spokesman for the government with little influence on setting foreign and domestic policy. McCain is then, by his own definition, not well-versed in the issue and unfit to be president.

And isn’t the job of the president to inform the American people on the facts, correcting public misconceptions when necessary, and to not simply go with the flow when the flow is horribly and dangerously wrong? We have seen the effects of allowing a president to advance the false assumptions of the majority (Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida, was responsible for 9-11). By once again endorsing the misinforming of the American people, McCain is setting this country up for another foreign-policy disaster, one it cannot afford at this time in history.

But McCain’s crash course around the globe doesn’t stop in the Middle East. Just this morning, in a town hall meeting in Miami, McCain expressed his unwillingness to advance U.S.-Cuban relations. McCain insisted his policy on Cuba would maintain the embargo that has led to nothing more than an impoverished Cuban population unable to fundamentally alter its nation’s course from the ground up. Instead of easing the embargo in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation, which Obama and many experts agree would provide numerous people with economic and social resources, ultimately strengthening the position of the U.S. on the ground and helping move Cuba to a more democratic system, McCain wants to keep things as they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War.

This has been the American approach for fifty years, and nothing at all has changed. There is no indication that the Cuban government is willing to make the “fundamental reforms” the right-wing insists are necessary before discussions can take place. It is time to try a different approach, to realize the benefits of a strong U.S.-Cuban relationship, to offer incentives and rewards for Cuban action, and to not simply stand tough, hands on hips, like a bully demanding Cuba’s lunch money if it wants to avoid a beating at recess.

Perhaps this best describes John McCain’s worldview, though: The United States must force other countries to yield to its demands or risk absolute destruction or global alienation. He comes from a family with a long military history, after all, one that stretches back to battles with Native Americans in colonial times. His grandfather fought in World War II; he and his father served in Vietnam; his own son is now a Marine who has served in Iraq. War is all this family seems to know, and the McCain now running for America’s highest office has shown he intends to use these kindred ties to shape his foreign policy, consequences be damned.

But not all American’s gleefully share in this legacy of war — at least those who are well-versed in the issues, a group whose numbers are increasing, according to most polls, as more and more people realize that not all problems have a military solution.

At this point, after seven and a half years of repeated foreign policy blunders, half-truths and misstatements, it is hard to believe George W. Bush continues to provide new and glaring examples of his diplomatic ineptitude. Speaking earlier today in Israel, Bush likened Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers, because the likely Democratic presidential nominee has said he favors “tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” to the deaf ears, blind eyes, and military bravado of Bush, John McCain, and the other right-wing savages whose lust for Middle Eastern blood and oil seems impossible to satisfy.

While no one has been more front and center than Obama in the recent debate over whether or not the U.S. should talk with nations with whom it disagrees, Bush did not name Obama explicitly. The president chose instead to lavish his smear on all those who prefer diplomacy to war, people like Jimmy Carter, former CENTCOM commander Admiral William J. Fallon (who “resigned his post” in March after publicly criticizing the administration’s position on Iran), and the great majority of Americans who are sick and tired of watching their sons and daughters return home in metal boxes, stuffed in the hull of a transport plane, for no good reason. But the president’s implication was nevertheless clear.

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals,” Bush said in a speech before Israel’s parliament, “as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

I would like to know which history Bush is studying here, because diplomacy has been proven to work time and again throughout our history. Need we remind Bush that the world was spared a nuclear disaster because John Kennedy and his administration were open to discussions with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the most hostile moments of the Cuban missile crisis? Hell, even Richard Nixon, with his black soul and paranoid dementia, visited Mao’s China in 1972, helping to normalize relations and, perhaps, extinguish an international fire before it sparked.

Bush hides behind the dubious claim that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. But regardless of what the president thinks, Iran is a sovereign nation, not a terrorist organization, and it should be treated and dealt with as such. By treating Iran (and Syria and Lebanon) like dirt on his boots, imposing sanctions and choking civil discourse, Bush has done nothing but fuel the sentiment that has led many in the Middle East to sympathize with and support in elections groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The only way to stem the tide is to treat these nations firmly, but with dignity as well.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, apparently among the other appeasers, has also called for increased dialog between the U.S. and Iran. “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage … and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said yesterday. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.” Gates, apparently, has spent a bit more time than his boss studying international relations.

But Bush’s misunderstanding of history doesn’t end with his brushing off of the effectiveness of diplomacy. Comparing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler, and Iran to Nazi Germany, is so inaccurate it would have been met with laughter had Bush made the juxtaposition in any other country but Israel. It is undeniable that Ahmadinejad spews anti-Semetic, anti-Zionist rhetoric at every turn. However, neither his political nor his military power is anywhere close to that which Hitler accrued in the latter half of the 1930s. Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map” has all the practical force of a left hook from a geriatric amputee. It is nothing more than rhetorical posturing from an insecure little man without the faculties to otherwise lead his nation. Rather than dignifying the remarks by taking them seriously, as Bush apparently does, they should be ignored and ridiculed by civilized members of the global community.

And this is perhaps the most egregious of Bush’s many miscalculations vis-à-vis Iran. By acknowledging Ahmadinejad, the president gives him more authority than he would have otherwise. What Bush and his minions fail to realize is that Ahmadinejad no more speaks for his people than Bush does for his. Both men have seen their approval ratings dip to near record lows as they speak more and more radically, growing more and more out of touch with reality, threatening the peace and prosperity of their nations.

Like Bush, Ahmadinejad’s core support comes from lower income, less educated, and more religiously radical citizens who are more susceptible to fear tactics and rallying cries for the expansion of nationalist interests at any cost. These groups, as they grow more afraid and deeper into economic and social despair, become more willing to accept the idea that their enemies lie overseas, rather than within their borders, remaining blind to the fact that their own governments are manipulating the truth and preventing real progress by not focusing on the true cause of their problems: a stunted economy, the misappropriation of resources, too little focus on education and social welfare programs, things that limit the ability of people to rise out of their poverty and achieve better lives for themselves and their families.

Bush views himself, and in turn all heads of state, including Ahmadinejad, as the infallible mouthpiece of his country, despite the factual inaccuracy of this delusion. He also chooses to see only the worst in everyone else, their most divisive and cynical elements that are easily exploited and frightened into submission. The fact remains, however, that people simply want peace. They want economic security. They want access to education for their children. And they want these things whether they live in D.C. or Tehran or Kabul or Baghdad. No amount of chest thumping from seedy, evil leaders can change that fact.

Bush’s actions, a cheap, inaccurate fear card only he would play, are unfit for the office of the presidency, not the first time he has disgraced the position. Time and again, he proves himself nothing more than a snake-oil salesmen, using lies and empty propaganda to pitch gullible or willingly misguided people the poison that will ultimately kill them. And he does it so easily, a mischievous glint in his eyes, his mouth a twisted grin, a telltale sign revealing a seemingly logical impossibility: He truly believes his own misguided venom. I would love to spend a day inhabiting such a fairytale. If only the consequences weren’t so dire.

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Update (Thursday, 4:45 p.m. ET): For the record, for those who were unsure, I looked up appeasement and found a practical, working definition: “the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles. Usually it means giving in to demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war.”

Diplomacy is defined as: “the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. It usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations through the intercession of professional diplomats with regard to issues of peace-making, trade, war, economics and culture.”

If appeasement means passively giving into the demands of an aggressor, and diplomacy means actively negotiating to achieve a mutual benefit, how, then, are the two terms synonymous, as President Bush suggested in his brainless comments?

I’ll answer that question. They aren’t. The man is just a manipulative scumbag, a complete idiot, and a degenerate, lowlife piece of trash, the worst kind of politician that has ever existed and likely ever will.

I think I’ve lost a little bit of political vision since the campaign season has heated up, and it nearly burnt me up again with all the recent shenanigans happening on the side of the race I am most interested in, but I need to take a second to think about something going on now that is probably more important than who the wins the Democratic presidential nomination.

Our hapless leader, President George W. Bush, is touring the Middle East right now, and he’s waving that anti-Iran flag with full war-mongering zeal. First, we learned of the “naval incident” between U.S. and Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, which has spiraled downward into a he-said, she-said propaganda battle. Frankly, in light of suspicious inconsistencies in the U.S.’s side of the story and after all the lies told in the buildup to the Iraq War, I, and many others, are hesitant to take the establishment’s word. That’s a sad commentary on how far we’ve fallen in just seven years, but such is the legacy of Bush and Cheney. Some critics have charged us unpatriotic, socialist traitors with simply looking for an event to call our own Gulf of Tonkin. I say, If the shoe fits. Besides, we already have one of those.

Next, the Half-wit at the Helm proclaimed that the world (read: the few places left that don’t hate and resent the U.S. and Israel) must unite against Iran “before it’s too late.” I’ll let The New York Times provide the context (all emphasis added):

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — President Bush on Sunday urged wary Persian Gulf allies to rally against Iran “before it is too late,” even as the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that the country had agreed, yet again, to answer outstanding questions about its nuclear programs within four weeks.

In an address to government and business leaders in an opulent hotel here, Mr. Bush focused not only on what the United States believes are Iran’s nuclear ambitions but also its suspected support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He called Iran’s government “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” and accused it of imposing repression and economic hardship at home.

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” he said. “So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.”

(Editor: Does this song sound familiar to anyone else?)

The announcement … could undercut efforts to build international support against Tehran. It came after a visit to Iran this weekend by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, who met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. … Read the full story

The tough talk doesn’t stop there, though. In the upcoming issue of Newsweek, we can all read the following in Michael Hirsh’s article, titled “Bothersome Intel on Iran”:

But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document [the National Intelligence Estimate released in early December that stated Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003], said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. ‘He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views’ about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity. … Read the full story

I find it hilarious that Bush, The Decider, the man who supposedly takes his direction from god himself, who does not believe in evolution, who is, by all accounts and by all evidence culled in nearly two full terms in charge of this country, a complete and utter moron, still thinks “his own views” matter to anyone with an IQ greater than that of old cheese. Give me a break. If I want to know about country music, a good bar to go to in Texas, or where to get the best blow at Yale, then maybe I’ll take “his own views” into account. For all other matters, I’ve learned it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Perhaps I am, dare I say, too optimistic to think this strategy can work again after it failed so miserably and so embarrassingly the last time. The world is certainly not as gullible as it was five years ago. I only hope the same is true of the many I still reluctantly call my countrymen. Luckily, the Iranian government is doing a decent job at defending itself from the rhetorical jabs of the Americans, rightly accusing Bush and Co. of spreading Iranaphobia.

If the strategy does work, however, and this country is again steeped in a war of its own making, it will be time for the masses to finally admit to the world something that many have felt for a long time but never owned up to: that the government of this country no longer acts according to the will of its people; that it is a rogue agent, a tyrant, a modern manifestation of the very entity from which its founders declared their independence.

Once that acknowledgment is made, we should all apologize to and ask forgiveness from the people who have been oppressed in our name by the swine we have for so long allowed to represent our interests. I’d like to think that some form of massive libertarian socialist revolt will take place at that time, but that is just wishful thinking. All we can really do is hope the rest of the civilized world, and the people who lead it, show more mercy and understanding than our government has shown them.

Until then, we remain a dangerous, weapons-wielding joke to the international community. Rescuing the nation from this fate is the real challenge of the next president. Think about that when you step inside the voting booth.

Since the latest National Intelligence Estimate was made public last week and stated that Iran discontinued its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, I have been trying to make sense of the various possible developments put into motion by this admission. After months of drum banging and soaring, hawkish rhetoric, our president once again made us pose familiar questions: “Is this guy a liar, or is he just a moron?”; what does this mean for troops on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East; will neoconservatives somehow hijack the facts of the report and twist them to their own ends, as they have done time and again during the reign of this failed, Bozo-the-Clown administration; how will this affect the broader endeavor to a peaceful Middle East, cliché be damned?

Unfortunately, it is beyond me at this time to come to any settling answers. I am too skeptical, too biased by cynicism, to think anything positive will come from the sudden acknowledgment that Iran is years away from having the ability to weaponize its nuclear technology. I am also convinced that the United States will never allow Iran to develop into a regional power, not as long as its leaders insist on maintaining a hard-line, fundamentalist stance toward Israel. Allowing Iran access to the military technology necessary to confront Israel is, at least in the zeitgeist of American politics, a suicidal concept.

It is for good reason then that a significant portion of the international community views the U.S. as a nation opposed to pro-Islamic regimes, first because of its unconditional backing of Israeli interests that are, by their nature, diametrically anti-Islam, and second because of its imperialist drive in the Middle East, which, it can be argued, is intrinsically linked to its misguided love affair with Israel. Say what you want about terrorism and national security, the crux of the so-called Islamic threat faced by the U.S. and its dwindling core of allies is rooted in their blind support of Israel, both politically and militarily. When the West chose sides in this archaic, fundamentalist battle, it damned itself in the eyes of the Muslim world. And the more the United States aligned itself with Israel, the greater the threat grew.

The actual Truth of these claims is less important than their perceived truth. In this case, the truth is relative to what people believe. After all, it is the people, more so than any government, who make up the core of the militant extremists bent on the destruction of Western ideals. And, as long as the United States is viewed in this light, it will be unable to foster genuine peace anywhere in the world. Whatever gains it makes will be political and strategic, handshake agreements between liars and thieves that ultimately crumble under the weight of their own improbability.

The only way out of this situation, at least as far as my limited mind can comprehend, is for the U.S. to distance itself from Israel and open its mind to the idea that the world has changed since the post-World War II global reconstruction that led to Israel’s formation in the first place. While I believe the U.S. was on the noble side of history when it backed the partition of Palestine — though I also believe the division was unjust and irresponsible — I now think Israel and its guns-a-blazin’ attitude, more so than Iran or Al-Qaeda or a mounting mujahideen, pose the greatest threat to American security. And, worse yet, there is little anyone can do to change it.

(more…)

This surely strikes a major blow to the jugheads running for the Republican presidential nomination. I’m pretty sure the foundation of all their foreign policies centers around blowing up Iran because they were allegedly seeking nuclear weapons. Of course few mentioned the primary reason Iran might want to pursue these weapons: The only way to make sure the U.S. doesn’t blow you up, overthrow your government, or make Israel do either of these things for them, is to have nukes of your own.

The report, of course, says what Iran has been saying, and what various international organizations have echoed, for a while now. Iran cut its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. They weren’t lying after all. I wonder when Georgie will send the apology letter to Mahmoud. That’s right, he can’t. Ehud might get mad and not let him sleep over next weekend.

It’s nice to see my country finally decided to accept the thinking of the global community. Not to be too cynical, but, as pleased as I was to read that the U.S. finally caved to common sense, it still makes me sick for two reasons: (1) Everyone already knew Iran was no longer working to make nuclear weapons, so we’re once again late to the party, and (2) I know it won’t matter because the current administration will just make something else up if it wants to bomb, invade, or overthrow the government of Iran.

In other news, a United States intelligence report confirms water is, indeed, the primary component of melting glacial ice, though no link to global warming has yet been confirmed. Thanks, guys. You’re doing a bang-up job.