Haley Barbour: Koran Burning
page
Keep your goals to yourself
page
Christine O'Donnell's Views On Sex And Porn Take Social Conservatism To The Extreme
page
Sid Meier's Civilisation V
page
Alwar Balasubramaniam: Art of Substance and Absence
page
Vanessa de Mata/Ben Harper: Boa Sorte/Good Luck
What Should Obama Do About Iran?
What Should Obama Do About Iran?

Republican critics of the Obama Administration are having a field day with the crisis in Iran. To them, Obama's less than forceful criticism of the Iranian government's crackdown on protesters  in Tehran smacks of the lack of resolve typical of Democrats. Some have compared Obama to Jimmy Carter, whose bungled handling of the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 irreparably hurt his presidency. Others have noted the the popular uprising in Tehran is a vindication of the Bush Administrations confrontational policies towards Iran, and the former President's emphasis on bring democracy to the Middle East, if necessary by force.

But the reality is that there isn't much that the Obama Administration can do to put pressure on Iran that hasn't already been tried. The U.S. already has sanctions in place. The two countries haven't had diplomatic relations since 1979. Most Iranian assets in the U.S. have long been frozen. The U.S. has already designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp -- the highly politicized miltary wing most likely overseeing the crackdown on opposition protests -- as a terrorist organization. And already the U.S. government spends millions of dollars a year on regime-change propaganda and covert operations inside Iran.

These policies failed to change Iranian behavior in the past. Iran's nuclear program continues apace, and Iran continues to support what the U.S. considers to be terrorist groups -- Hamas and Hizballah. Tough talk has back-fired too. Fundamentalist leaders in Iran have been cracking down on reformists ever since Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech in 2002.

And there's no reason to believe that a harder line would work in the future. America's interference in Iranian domestic affairs have made it easy for the allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to portray those protesting his re-election as tools of U.S. counter-revolutionary elements. To many of his supporters that makes sense. After all, the CIA engineered a coup that retuned the hated Shah of Iran to power in 1953, and today U.S. funding earmarked for covert operations may in fact be leaking its way into the hands of al-Qaeda linked terrorists inside Iran responsible for a domestic bombing campaign.

  www.mideast.blogs.time.com, to read full click view

Comments

Please log in to leave a comment.
You need to have been a member for 24 hours and validated your email before leaving a comment.

Tags

 

Related Articles

Iran missile tests set stage for talksJEN DIMASCIO
30 sep  |  Iran announced Monday that it had successfully test-fired two types of medium-range missiles on Sunday, just four days before a meeting with U.S. and other international officials to discuss the country’s nuclear programs and two days after President Barack Obama revealed the existence of a new uranium enrichment plant near Iran’s holy city of Qom. by Jen Dimascio

  . . read more

Obama visits Cairo- By Sean Maguire
4 jun  |  President Obama’s speech at Cairo yesterday was not quite a revelation, but contained interesting elements, and quite a clear ideological break from those articulated by previous administrations.  . . read more
No 'Sorry' From US as Iran Plan Tragedy Marked
7 jul  |  No 'Sorry' From US as Iran Plan Tragedy Marked . . read more
Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing - From Marc Lynch
14 jan  |  "Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Gulf dignitaries in Bahrain last month. But in reality, everywhere you turn, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, you now see Iranian leaders shattering longstanding taboos by meeting cordially with their Arab counterparts.

The Gulf has moved away from American arguments for isolating Iran. American policymakers need to do the same. The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are accommodating themselves to Iran's growing weight in the region's politics. They remain key parts of America's security architecture in the region, hosting massive U.S. military bases and underwriting the American economy in exchange for protection. But as Saudi analyst Khalid al-Dakheel argues, they are no longer content sitting passively beneath the U.S. security umbrella and want to avoid being a pawn in the U.S.-Iranian struggle for power.

Flush with cash, they are not interested in a war that would mess up business. That's why America's attempt to shore up containment against Iran increasingly seems to be yesterday's battle.  . . read more

The Cheney Doctrine - From Dave Lindorff
5 aug  |  Some people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report by journalist Seymour Hersh that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as Iranians, and then put them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake attack on U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with fake Iranians shooting at U.S. ships and U.S. ships firing back, he suggested, could be used to spark a war between the U.S. and Iran. I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national security. After all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.

Besides, Cheney is in good company in this kind of thinking. We know from reports of the meeting filed by British intelligence that President Bush engaged in the same kind of thing when he was having trouble getting the country and the rest of the civilized world behind his and Cheney’s plan to attack Iraq. It was disclosed years later that in early 2003, Bush suggested to Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US could paint a U-2 spy plane in UN colors and fly it over sensitive parts of Iraqi airspace, so that Saddam Hussein would order it show down. That, he argued, would anger enough UN member states to win a security resolution to support a war on Iraq, and failing that, would give the U.S. an excuse to go in on its own. Blair was reportedly horrified at this kind of kamikaze thinking — but not horrified enough to expose the president as a nutcase.

So that’s where we are today folks. A president and a vice president who both think that it’s a great idea to either send some of your own troops under false flags into harm’s way to get shot at so you can start a war, or, even worse, to dress up some of your soldiers as the enemy you want to go after, and have them open fire on your own guys so that you can claim you were attacked, and then go to war. [More] . . read more

Is War With Iran Evitable?
2 oct  |  When it comes to the USA attacking Iran, satirist Stephen Colbert hopes President Bush does the one thing that is inevitable - whatever he wants. . . read more
Lies of Aggression - From Paul Craig Roberts
17 may  |  On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran. Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the U.S.

It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush’s American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view: “what’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.” It is the U.S. that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing here.

It is members of the Bush Regime and U.S. generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign. It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression. [More] . . read more

Fox News Attacks Iran
22 aug  |  Murdoch owned Fox News has been the mouthpiece for the Bush administration for the past six years. Here's evidence that Fox is repeating the same distortions and fear mongering on Iran as they did with Iraq before the U.S. invasion. . . read more
blogs   100words
student
 
Man was matter
By Sean Maguire

In comparison to other passages from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 it isn't often quoted, but it should be.

The haunting and beautifully simple piece reads:

'Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all'.

The passage takes place after the protagonist Yossarian watches young Snowden die in the back of his plane. The event is repeatedly told throughout the novel always teasing at this great revelation that Yossarian had experienced- the revelation that 'man was matter'.

Not special, not a product of a breath of divinity but matter like everything else. 

After being in a potentially fatal car accident last week this line has been constantly coming back to me. I remember waking up just after the accident in a hospital with a doctor telling me I was having a cat-scan to check if I had brain damage.

Man was matter, and the centre of man (the mind) was also matter. We might generally conceive of the mind as somehow separate to the body- a floating you that is intangible and neverending, but in one fell swoop it can be brought back to what it really is: a fragile and spongy bit of tissue that can be destroyed in the stupidest and swiftest of seconds.