Tag Archives: Iran

Political Rants

Enemy factory.

There was some reporting by Patrick Cockburn this week about ISIS and the planned campaign against the group in Mosul, which is slated to begin in April. Cockburn says that the World Food Program is putting resources in place to handle a mass exodus of Sunni residents from the city, perhaps as many as a million. This is expected because the main fighting force that would retake the city will likely consist of Shia militia. Sunnis are terrified of these forces – much more so than they fear ISIS – hence they will take their chances on the highway rather than on the wrong end of the knife.

The latest mad dog by-product of bad policy.So, once again, we are on the verge of creating another catastrophe in Iraq, the predictable consequences of which will be a further radicalization of the Sunni community, just as our 2003 invasion gave rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of ISIS. Same story, over and over again, and we somehow expect a different ending. Our imperial foreign policy is an enemy manufacturing machine, as the past sixty years have amply demonstrated. Quite an efficient system; one generation is caught up with fighting the jihadists spawned by the one that preceded it.

We could start at any point since World War II. Our sponsored coup in Iran in 1953 ushered in the Shah who was replaced a generation later by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we are constantly threatening with war. The CIA had some relationship with Saddam Hussein as early as the late 1950s, when he attempted to assassinate then-Iraqi leader Colonel Qasim, and later we bankrolled and supported his eight-year war against Iran. (Later, of course, the love affair soured.) Our support for jihadists in the Afghan war of the 1980s gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which are now our principle enemies. And of course, ISIS is Al Qaeda in Iraq 2.0. The gestation period seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

If we renew this war and kill thousands and thousands more, who can we expect to be fighting five, ten, fifteen years from now?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Fear itself (again).

These grim days remind me a bit of the far worse days of late 2001, when our nation was reeling from the 9/11 terror attacks and the world seemed to be falling in on itself. (It happened that my family life was imploding at the same time, but that’s another story.) I guess what reminds me most of that time is the visceral fear evident not only in mass media culture but in everyday life. People are scared, very scared about some relatively minor threats, while at the same time seemingly unconcerned about the real dangers facing us.

Year 2 of the Romney foreign policyThis is a cultivated disconnect, certainly no accident. Every day, the news media hammer away at the threat of Ebola, of ISIS, of Russia, and to a lesser extent North Korea and Iran. In the case of the former, we’re reaching a near hysteria about a virus that has affected only a handful of Americans, and only three cases in the U.S. The public has been worked up into such a lather that politicians are falling over themselves to try to benefit from it, take advantage of it, channel it in some way that is useful to them. One only wishes we could evoke this sort of reaction on actual threats, like our disastrous automotive transportation system that kills over 30,000 of us a year.

I only raise that particular example because it’s the 24th anniversary of my brother’s death behind the wheel of a crappy, very common unsafe-at-any-speed vehicle. There are far greater threats, though – those of climate change and of nuclear war, for instance. The former we cannot bring ourselves to seriously address; the latter we have discounted and essentially forgotten, unless our attention is turned to an official enemy, like Iran or North Korea. If our news media were reporting on these issues the way they report on a hemorrhagic African virus that’s not half as contagious as the flu, we might ultimately feel motivated to do something about them. So far, no potato.

We are probably the most fearful people ever to run an empire. It’s something we need to overcome, so that we can arrive at the kind of clarity we need to see what actually confronts us.

luv u,

jp

Uncategorized

Week that was, part IX.

Sure, there’s a lot going on, and my inclination is to comment on some of it and leave the rest on the shelf. Hence, this is the week that was. Again.

Iraq Redux. It’s worth noting that Obama’s 300 military advisers have arrived in the nation we destroyed, ready to counsel the leaders of one of Iraq’s rump states on how to stitch the mangled limbs back onto the dismembered torso of that nation. I have heard a lot of T.V. commentator theories over the past few weeks about how this situation came to be, but perhaps only one U.S. based analyst – Steve Clemons at the Atlantic who has Unintended consequences: the next generation.bothered to follow the money back from ISIS to their funders in Saudi Arabia, a nation our own John McCain and others have praised to the rafters for funding the Syrian opposition. Once again, we are staring down the barrels of our own guns, scratching our heads in wonder.

Tea Party: zip. We had a primary here in upstate New York, the 22nd Congressional District, in which incumbent corporatist Republican Richard Hanna was challenged by a tea party convert named Claudia Tenney, who claimed Hanna wasn’t a true conservative. You’ve heard this before. Hanna won the G.O.P. primary, mostly because our district simply isn’t as blood red as Claudia Tenney likes to think it is. This is Centerville, Claudia – always has been. Hanna is a center-right Republican, essentially pro-choice, anti-tax, but not afraid of appropriations. This drives the reactionaries mad, while Democrats and those on the left must content themselves with watching from the sidelines – we have no candidate this year. Didn’t send in enough boxtops, I guess.

Big Loss. Last week, Central New York lost one of its most committed peace activists, Dr. Sunithi Bejekal. Sunithi was always encouraging me to do more, attend meetings, write more letters to the editor, etc., very likely because she herself had accomplished so many things through the course of her life. I will miss her encouraging, always kind words, and will try to heed them even in her absence. But more than that, I will miss seeing her on the street, in the shops, and in the pages of the local paper, stirring the pot, making some noise, and hopefully moving some minds in a more humane direction. OM SHANTI SHANTI.

Next week: SCOTUS decisions.