Foreign Policy: Missing a History Lesson on Iran?

The recent vice presidential debates had me cringing at some of the answers from both sides, particularly on the issue of marriage rights. But there were other areas where I am not so sure that any of the major candidates seemed to be very strong - one of those things is with regard to Middle East foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Iran. Here is a segment from the Biden/Palin debate last week:

IFILL: Let's move to Iran and Pakistan. I'm curious about what you think starting with you Senator Biden. What's the greater threat, a nuclear Iran or an unstable Afghanistan? Explain why.

BIDEN: Well, they're both extremely dangerous. I always am focused, as you know Gwen, I have been focusing on for a long time, along with Barack on Pakistan. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons.

Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean. Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be very, very destabilizing. They are more than - they are
not close to getting a nuclear weapon that's able to be deployed. So they're both very dangerous. They both would be game changers.

But look, here's what the fundamental problem I have with John's policy about terror instability. John continues to tell us that the central war in the front on terror is in Iraq. I promise you, if an attack comes in the homeland, it's going to come as our security services have said, it is going to come from al Qaeda planning in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's where they live. That's where they are. That's where it will come from. And right now that resides in Pakistan, a stable government needs to be established. We need to support that democracy by helping them not only with their military but with their governance and their economic well-being. There have been 7,000 madrasses built along that border.

We should be helping them build schools to compete for those hearts and minds of the people in the region so that we're actually able to take on terrorism and by the way, that's where bin Laden lives and we will go at him if we have actionable intelligence.

IFILL: Governor, nuclear Pakistan, unstable Pakistan, nuclear Iran? Which is the greater threat?

PALIN: Both are extremely dangerous, of course. And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was the General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there and it's probably the only thing that they're ever going to agree on, but that it was a central war on terror is in Iraq. You don't have to believe me or John McCain on that. I would believe Petraeus and the leader of al Qaeda.

An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider. They cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons period. Israel is in jeopardy of course when we're dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel as he termed it, a stinking corpse, a country that should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, others who are dangerous dictators are one that Barack Obama has said he would be willing to meet with without preconditions being met first.

And an issue like that taken up by a presidential candidate goes beyond naivete and goes beyond poor judgment. A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous because leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel should not be met with without preconditions and diplomatic efforts being undertaken first.

I honestly don’t think that either the Democratic or the Republican candidates, or, for that matter, most of the people in the American foreign policy establishment, have a real grasp of the issues that Iran poses toward stability in the Middle East.

Indeed, the single most destabilizing presence in the region is the presence of the American military in Iraq, and the single most destabilizing event was the ill-conceived and catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq. The result of the American invasion has been the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure and the balkanization of that nation as competing mostly-sectarian interests, previously held in check by the authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein, have erupted into violence.

No one seems to take into account the history of the region, and the fact that the United States has since 1953 succeeded to the colonialist mantle in the region previously held by the British, dating back to their “great game” diplomacy in which there were twin goals of (a) exploiting resources in the region, and (b) denying Czarist Russia, and later the Soviet Union, access to a warm water port to maintain a powerful navy fleet.

Both Iraq and Iran have suffered from American interventionism, and Americans, sadly, do not seem to have maintained a proper historical perspective. Essentially, we seem to suffer from a collective amnesia when it comes to politically expedient short-term “solutions” that have turned into long-term nightmares.

First, let’s look at some truly “ancient history.” Iran is one of the few nations in the world to have had an independent existence that goes back to ancient times: the Persian empire, the Parthian empire and Persia, with some intervening occupations by Macedonian Greeks, Mongols, and some others, have evolved into modern Iran. When Islam swept across the region, Iranians developed their own version of Islam, Shi’ia, which has doctrinal differences with the Sunni Islam that prevails in much of the rest of the middle east (excepting, notably, southern Iraq, which has a Shi’ite majority).

More recently, Persia/Iran has been humiliated by British colonialism in its “great game,” much in the same way the Brits humiliated the Chinese empire. Unlike the situation in which China was opened up to Western exploitation by British foisting of opium on the Chinese in trade for Chinese goods and the auctioning of areas of Chinese influence to other western powers, the Brits forced the Persian government to accept British control of its tobacco and petroleum industries, in return for nearly nothing.

Smarting from the abuse of the British, the Persian government developed close ties with Nazi Germany, prompting an allied (pre-American involvement in World War II) imvasion and occupation of Iran – the British military forces smashed the Shah’s armies in a month.
After World War II, Iran emerged with a constitutional monarchy, and a democratically-elected government, headed by the dormer sha’s son as monarch, and led by a Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

In 1953, spurred on by false reports from the British that Mossadegh was going to transform Iran into a communist country, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sent the CIA in to effectuate a coup d’etat against the democratically-elected government. Iran had already nationalized its oil industry, giving the boot to the British control of its petroleum industry. In 1953, the American-sponsored coup succeeded, leading Iran into a brutal dictatorship under the leadership of Shah Reza Pahlavi. America succeeded to Britain in the exploitation of Iranian oil resources during this time, and as long as the Shah was an American friend, the United States looked the other way at the brutality of the regime.

During the time of the Shah’s regime, the only freedom existed in the mosques, and even so, many of the Shi’ite religiousl leaders ended up in exile, including the Ayatollah Khomenei, who spent many years in France.

When the revolution came in Iran, it was led by the religious elements, and the Ayatollah set up a religious theocracy in the country – a development that was not forseen by the Eisenhower administration when it engineered that coup in 1953.

During all that time, while the government of Iran was America’s friend, it was clear that America was not the friend of the Iranian people. And when the Iranians took American embassy workers hostage, and painstakingly reconstructed shredded embassy documents that showed the extent of Americn complicity in the Shah’s regime, American amnesia took hold.
President Jimmy Carter declared that the 1953 coup was “ancient history,” during a February 13, 1980 press conference:

Q: . . . Mr. President, do you think it was proper for the United States to
restore the Shah to the throne in 1953 against the popular will within Iran?

PRESIDENT CARTER: That's ancient history, and I don't think it's appropriate
or helpful for me to go into the propriety of something that happened 30
[actually 27] years ago.

(See the analysis published by the conservative Cato Institute in 1991 .) The Cato Institute paper covers a lot more than just the Iran situation – and all of what it does cover is relevant.
What is clear to me is that since 1953, the United States has consistently messed up in the Middle East. Support for Israel, while an important part of our foreign policy, has only played one part in the drama.

Right now, Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. China has nuclear weapons, as does India and Israel. Iran may well develop them, regardless of the further efforts the United States makes to alienate the Iranians.

While Senator Barack Obama’s avowed willingness to meet with the Iranian government “without preconditions” has met with hostility from the MaCain/Palin camp, it may well be that going to Iran with an olive branch and an acknowledgment of the wrongs done to Iran by America in the past, and acknowledging Iran’s interest in the region, including as a part of the solution to the Iraq crisis, will go far to help create an atmosphere in which relations can be repaired over time.

Of course, this is farther than even Barack Obama is openly willing to propose.

In the debate on this point, Senator Biden gave a better answer – that Pakistan is perhaps a greater danger in the region at this point than Iran. The best intelligence estimates has the Al Qaeda leadership in the ungovernable mountain region of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan – and points out the numerous anti-American Islamist Madrassas schools that have sprouted like mushrooms in the border areas of Pakistan, training potential future Al Qaeda militants.

Of course, all one has to do is look at the legions of “home-schooled” American kids whose parents espouse a different sort of religious fundamentalism, and the many public school systems in the United States that still teach thinly-veiled Christianist mythology as if it had any scientific validity. In many regards, these are no better than Madrassas schools, yet they are tolerated and even encouraged.

If America does not change our own course into the future, if we do not learn from the mistakes of America’s past foreign policy and present military policy, the future of our foreign policy looks as bleak as the dystopian vision of the “social conservative” Republican Orwellian nightmare does for domestic policy.

As our own “home-schooled” and ill-educated children grow up into future Sarah Palin clones, America will have a lot more in the way of collective amnesia, when dealing with the products of Madrassas schools where a great deal of the hatred instilled in the students is actually based on things that Americans don’t learn about in our own history.

We have an opportunity with this presidential election, to stem the tide of the “social conservative” dystopia that had its roots in the Reagan administration and has only begun to flower under the regime of George W. Bush.

Still, the road ahead isn’t guaranteed to be bump-free. It is going to take a decade to repair the economic damage the Bush Administration has wreaked on the American people with its “asleep at the switch” oversight of the mortgage lending market, antitrust, and wall street investment firms, combined with the economic devastation the cost of its ill-conceived and disruptive invasion and occupation of Iraq. The destabilization of the Middle East caused by the invasion and occupation, and the ignorance of the Bush Administration’s “lone cowboy” foreign policy has damaged America’s leadership role, prestige and honor in the world.

I don’t see the Obama/Biden ticket as a panacea. They’re wrong on important issues like marriage, but even on that, they’re less wrong than McCain/Palin. They’re better on every other foreign and domestic issue as well.

Does Sarah Palin secretly support Obama?

First, here's how we're doing with the Trans Community Supports Obama campaign:



Now, on to my current thoughts:

I don't really want to pick on Sarah Palin, perhaps because there are times she seems to be somewhat defenseless. While I would not criticize her for being a woman, or being "qualified" to be President (the proper age and a natural-born citizen - something John McCain actually isn't!), and I think it's nasty to harp on her so-called lack of "foreign policy experience" as a so-called qualification, when the last President to be elected who wasn't a Governor or Vice President was then-Senator John F. Kennedy. Obviously, foreign policy expericnce wasn't important when people elected either George W. Bush (all right, he was technically appointed by the Supreme Court as part of a bloodless coup) or Bill Clinton.

Anyway, all that aside, I saw a Katy Couric television interview of Governor Palin, and here is a Q&A from the interview transcript that intrigued me (emphasis added):

Couric: When President Bush ran for office, he opposed nation-building. But he has spent, as you know, much of his presidency promoting democracy around the world. What lessons have you learned from Iraq? And how specifically will you try to spread democracy throughout the world?

Palin: Specifically, we will make every effort possible to help spread democracy for those who desire freedom, independence, tolerance, respect for equality. That is the whole goal here in fighting terrorism also. It's not just to keep the people safe, but to be able to usher in democratic values and ideals around this, around the world.

Whoa! Avowed "social conservative" Sarah Palin is actually calling for us tio spread democracy to bring freedom, independence, tolerance and respect for equality?

Is this the same Sarah Palin who called for a referendum to change the Alaska constitution tom deny same-sex partner benefits? (while she did veto a law that would strip the rights after the state supreme court held that same-sex partners are entitled to insurance benefits, she did so because she took good advice that the law would be unconstitutional. However, she wants to change Alaska's constitution to take away equal rights.

Is this the same Sarah Palin who opposes same sex marriage?

Is this the same Sarah Palin who opposes women's reproductive health rights?

Is this the same Sarah Palin who supports freedom and equality only for people who share her narrow religious beliefs? who thjinks the Iraq war is God's war against Islam? Who thinks the Iraq war is a fight against Al Qaeda? Who cut financing for a shelter for young unwed mothers?

If Sarah Palin really meant what she said, she means she is voting for Barack Obama! Because she and Senator McCain don't support freedom, respect, or tolerance for people who don;t fit their narrow view of who is entitled to freedom, respect, or tolerance.

On the other hand, she obviously means those words in the usual conservative Republican Orwellian Newspeak way:

Let's translate what she really meant to say:

(Not the real quote - biut translated into American English from Newspeak):
Palin: Specifically, we will make every effort possible to help spread [democracy] Conservative capitalistic Western American Culture for those who desire [freedom] to lose their cultural heritage, [independence] the loss of independence and an enforced alliance with the United States, [tolerance] enforcement of Traditionalist Christianist or similar fundamentalist-type Values, [respect for equality] and tolerance of inequality for those who don't agree or who are different.

All the more reason to make that donation to the Obama campaign - have you given yet? It's still not too late!

Here's the link again.

Barack Obama and the Compromise with Evil

I thought Barack Obama gave a pretty good speech when he accepted the Democratic nomination for President last week.

That is, I thought it was pretty good up to the point where he started to speak about "our sense of common purpose" with the enemies of freedom in the Neo-Con and Christianist right wing that represents the core of the Republican party.

Here are the dangerous words from Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, with my comments inserted in the place of the pauses for applause:

"America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that's what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country."

(APPLAUSE: The Republican party is in the thrall of Religious and other "social" conservatives who have no respect for the rights of women, particularly women’s reproductive rights, unless the sole expression of those "rights" is to "choose to have babies." The Republican party and its standardbearers in this presidential election, John S. McCain and Sarah "Barracuda" Palin, are both sufficiently "social conservative" enough to oppose the quite sensible Roe v. Wade decision, to oppose any sex education oher than "abstinence only" education that leads ignorant teens into accidental pregnancies. The "social conservatives" in Congress have passed barbaric laws that curtail women’s reproductive rights. Seeking "compromise" on this vital issue is a weakness. But now that the applause has died down, back to Senator Obama . . . )

"The -- the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals."

(APPLAUSE: Hmmm. I won’t argue too much on the Second Amendment – just this year, the Supreme Court has spoken, quite unconstitutionally and somewhat irrationally, on the subject (at least IMO, but they're the ultimate arbiters of "what the Constitution really means", and I'm not), divorcing the right to bear arms from its attendant constitutional responsibility and purpose – that of providing for a well-organized militia.

I’d like to see Washington D.C. pass a law that requires those who are licensed to have guns also take mandatory militia training and help patrol the streets of the City, and see what the Supremes think about that. But that isn't presidential campaign stuff - the nation itself, as a result of the Second Amendment, really is a bit gun-crazy, unlike the civilized folks over in Europe, who don't need to see too much news to view most Americans as ignorant cowboys, anyway. So, let's see what sort of "compromise" is out there . . . and now back to Barack for the scariest "compromise" item . . . )

"I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination."

(APPLAUSE: This raised my ire just as much as the idea of compromise on women’s reproductive rights. The idea that we should play politics with basic human rights that should be beyond the "right" of the oppressive majority to impose on the oppressed minority by a so-called "democratic majority vote" sickens me, especially when it comes from the very people who should be the strongest allies of the poor, the weak, and the oppressed. When will friends like Barack realize that we should be entitled to the same rights as his parents? When will friends like Barack realize that we are getting tired of beign oppressed? When will friends like Barack get ready to take us seriously?

I’d like to see Barack Obama supporting a full civil rights law for LGBT people, and not the sad caricature of an employment non-discrimination act that Rep. Barney Frank (D. Mass.)keeps watering down because he wants to pass something, anything, in the spirit of compromise on civil rights. It’s not just about repealing the Defense Against Marriage Act (something Barack Obama does support, and the one point where he had a better position than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the person who really should have been the Democrat’s presidential candidate . . . )

I’d like Barack to reverse the October 2002 change in Social Security regulations that leaves transitioning transsexuals and non-op transsexuals in limbo, without proper identification documentation.

I’d like to see Barack reverse "don’t ask, don’t tell" and I’d like to see immigration rules for gay and trans people be put on a par with the rules for straights. I’d like to see the bizarre rules banning people with AIDS from entering the country lifted. I’d like to make sure that tax dollars are not spent to support religious discrimination in the providing of social services and medical care. The applause has died down again, time to see what Barack has to say next . . . )

"You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers."

(It would have been nicer if Barack had mentioned the separation of people in same-sex relationships here, too. There wasn’t a pause for applause here – but the immigration issue is more like the Second Amendment issue – one that might well be amenable to compromise, but not with the hard-core white supremacist right wingers. It isn’t just about Mexicans "taking American Jobs" by crossing the border. American businesses these days steal American jobs by using the current version of NAFTA to exploit cheap Mexican labor.

It seems like Republicans support NAFTA so that jobs can be exported to Mexico, and Democrats (these days) seem to oppose it. I think that NAFTA needs fixing – there should be a level playing field on the issue of minimum wage (in equivalent currencies among the trade partners, which would not free-float against each other, ultimately leading to a common currency), worker’s rights, and other sisues, so that it will not be any more advantageous to locate an industrial plant in Michigan, or Tennessee, or Sonora, or Manitoba. If we were to improve NAFTA to bring the standard of living for Mexicans, Canadians and Americans to equivalent standards, maybe there wouldn’t be a need for a Metal Curtain on America’s border with Mexico.

An improved NAFTA could also bring along other friendly nations in our hemisphere, and perhaps we could encourage South American nations to form a SAFTA - with a view toward eventually entering into a hemispheric treaty and an economic union that would go beyond the borders of the United States. Such ideas aren’t forthcoming from any of the candidates – Democrat or Republican. Let's let Barack sum up this segment of his speech . . . )

"But this, too, is part of America's promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer, and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values.

And that's to be expected, because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters."

(APPLAUSE --- Despite these qualms and misgivings, and since Hillary Clinton isn’t running any more and she's also supporting him, I will support Obama for President. Even if he isn’t perfect, he represents the best available hope for keeping the darkness and oppression of "social conservatism" at bay.

Postscript: Listening to Sarah Palin this evening, I realize that if it weren’t for the scary "social conservatism" aspect of the McCain/Palin ticket, the part that makes them totally wrong for the country, they wouldn't seem terribly different from the Obama/Biden ticket. This explains why Americans "in the middle" often seem to have such a problem identifying the better candidate - they aren't hurt by oppressive "Social conservative" Republican policies, so they're more likely to be unaware of it, or perhaps they don't care. (Hard core Republican conservatives either don't care or they're the types who aren't terribly different from their Islamic fundamentalist jihadist counterparts - ready to stome people like me in stadiums.)

Both sides are pushing for winning against terrorism (though Obama actually understands that it’s Osama bin Ladin and Al Qaeda who are the enemy, not the people of Iraq), both sides want America to be energy independent (though Democrats appear to be divided on the oxymoronic "clean coal", and Republicans add more nuclear and oil drilling to the mix), both sides are "patriotic" (though the Republican version of patriotism is a scary sort of McCarthyite, jingoist, Orwellian thing, while Democrats know that one really doesn’t have to wear a flag pin to be patriotic).

The rhetoric of "Bush's Third Term" or "Hero, Not Zero" doesn't impress me. My choice is based on what's Right for America, or at the very least, to stave off the people I know are Wrong for America. I don't need scare tactics to be afraid of McCain/Palin. I already know what they think of me, and what they're likely to do to my people.