The New York Times Magazine has a good piece today on how the Bush team has boarhawged Iranian democratic reformers.
It doesn’t matter that Bush’s intervention has worked out disastrously for Iranians working on the side of curbing dictatorship.
All that matters is that the Iranian government response to U.S. intervention creates new pretexts for Bush to demonize Iran – and to sway more Americans to acquiescing to more U.S. government slaughter abroad.
I chucked stones at the same topic last year in a piece for the American Conservative (and in more detail in Attention Deficit Democracy):
In February [2006], the Bush administration announced it was seeking $75 million in “emergency” funding to promote democracy in Iran. (The U.S. government was already spending $15+ million – along with unknown amounts of covert spending to destabilize the government). The new funds would be dabbled out for expanded TV broadcasts, scholarships for Iranians to study in America, and fostering an independent media. This last goal is a hoot, considering the uproar over the ongoing U.S. program bribing “independent” Iraqi newspapers to publish articles praising U.S. military operations.
The Bush administration’s efforts seem geared far more to domestic strutting than to the survival of Iranian democrats. The open profusion of American money makes it far easier for the Iranian government to tar all reformers as Fifth Columnists and traitors. Iranian human rights activist Emad Baghi bitterly complained “We are under pressure here both from hard-liners in the judiciary and that stupid George Bush.” Vahid Pourostad, editor of the pro-reform National Trust newspaper, told the Washington Post that whenever the United States “came and supported an idea publicly, the public has done the opposite.”
It is unclear whether the Bush administration honestly wants to advance democracy in Iran – or whether it is merely creating another pretext to start bombing. If the Iranian regime responds to Bush’s brazen intervention by rounding up reformers, further repressing free speech, acting even more paranoid, it may help Bush sway Americans on the need to bomb Iran in the name of democracy.
We should have completely (though gradually) normalized relations when Khatami was there. Yet another example of how piss-poor Colin Powell was…and likely how much he was undermined by Rumsfeld…
You’re right.
Don’t forget Cheney’s role in vetoing an overture from the Iranian government in 2003 because “we don’t deal with Evil.”
Amazing that folks would not burst out laughing in his face when Cheney rails against “evil.”
…If the truth’s known, The neo-Cons would like nothing better than to re-establish the Peacock throne of The Pahlavi Monarchy. Ya know, after they use borrowed US Dollars to Nuke the place.
Slightly off topic but what is the endless fascination by the political elites for the Middle Eastern countries – besides that liquid black gold? I mean, come on, has the little spoiled brat from Connecticut or Bill’s dumpy little housewife from Illinois ever spent some serious time on the streets of Middle Eastern countries? These places are hot as hell, there’s sand in everything, the bazaars are interesting for the first few days, but they become monotonous very quickly. It’s hard to find alcohol – with the monotonous of Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad (once upon a time), and parts of Israel – much less find a good beer. And we won’t even get into the endemic corruption in almost every official transaction.
Who wants to own such a place?
If you have to have foreign territory, wouldn’t owning the south of France or the Swiss/Italian Alps, or maybe the English Midlands be a much more attractive proposition. Then we could just buy that liquid black stuff with all the tourists dollars generated in European resorts…
Sorry, last post should read, “It’s hard to find alcohol with the exception of…”
If brazen crooked kookyness aint the answer for what Torquecheney does, perhaps it can just be ascribed to the old Neo-Con Bolsheviki Credo, “Creative Destruction”. These hopeless cranks actually think that once they get the entire place in flames and shooting, they’ll be able to put together their Thousand Points of Blight Oil-Starved New World Order Coalition to go in there and put all the uncooperative Ayrabs , Egyptians , Persians and Turkomen on Reservations and Establish a conglomerate of U.S. Inc., Europa International and the China Corporation firmly in control over a puppet coalition of despots. The Israelis will play that Edward G. Robinson Part from “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (“make those mud bricks….seeee?”). Moses, of course, will be played by whoever wins this upcoming election of comic worser evils (aside from our Mr. Paul of course).
This will all have the added benefit of firmly re-igniting the Cold War with Russia because that is what is needed to sustain the manifest scams of the Security State. Typical adherants to the White Mans Burden Routine, the current leadership either forgot or never learned that the Islammable-Fashishts are far more organized and potentially lethal (despite their constant and enduring animosities)than the Native Americans ever were. They have also lost sight of the fact that rugged individualist settlers and explorers have been replaced with a generation of fecklessly consuming retahds that still thinks their money will be fungible after these clowns are done. Osama watched Ali run his rope-a-dope strategy as he was growing up, internalized the lesson and runs it on these whackos like a master.
The Congress is just as susceptable to jingoistic piffle as it has ever been because it fosters the kind of stemwinding hoo-haw that plays well at home. Watching them now is fully reminiscent of the ugly idiocy running up to the Civil War. The only difference is that there aint nobody around with the sense or nuts to start caning. Funny thing now though, most the folks at home are looking at their Congressional Reps with just as much disgust and dismay as they greet the President with.
This never has been about any kind of conspiracy. No, they’ve telegraphed their intent all along and simply institute enough confusion and jingoism to properly distract an already distracted citizenry that cannot quite get their heads around the fact that their government is not simply just a weekly sitcom that will turn out ok in the end. I imagine Dickie-boy’s loin girding sessions with the Kummander in Cheef are 1 Part Spanky and our gang, 1 Part Twilight Zone and 4 Parts throwing a ball for the spunky little Terrier to wear him out. Nobody needs any further demonstration of how utterly dim the President is…he was the perfect stooge for these back-room dealers to run with. To get an idea of the intellectual capacity and general sense of the Vice President though, read his wife’s book/s, if laughing your ass off aint going to cause a problem with keeping your pants up. There is nothing written or spoken by the Veep himself to gauge his intellect because he either erases the records or speaks in grunts in public.
We’ve had worse governments but none so transparently bad even though they claim a kind of keystone cops secrecy that makes the Eleventh Hour Ceremony at the Elks Club look like the British House of Lords. If you doubt this,just disect this little CIA “Family Jewels” scam for 60 seconds and you’ll come to understand what I mean.
The vice president, a surly spawn of the Nixon era has cultivated a kind of superhuman image of scary omnipotence and the media swallows it hook line and sinker. The charade will not really be exposed until they run the entire joint into the ground and demonstrate, once and for all that the meritocracy has been hijacked by a society cocktail party intelligencia that has all the brains of a recently minted giggolo. The U.S. Government is like 1980’s Antioch without it’s better professors, or maybe the average Montesorri School , where the “self-esteem” entitlement class gets to learn how to socialize with it’s fellow Swells without the clarifying effects of either grades or common-sense expectations. At least the old Wealth Class read Greek and had a little class, this one reads the Wall Street Journal and calls that literature. If I’m wrong or a tad over-reaching on this, there would be a bonafide opposition to the ongoing muck and there simply isn’t one of any significance….yet.
Still though, surprisingly enough, we could still turn it around! Perhaps in another 5-10 years the chronicles of the Bush Administration will read like a satiric Detective Magazine written and produced by Monty Python. Too bad so many people have to die and so much money be spent in furtherance of destruction , making the word tragicomedy seem wholly inadequate.The World waits for the United States to snap out of it and they will be forgiving when we do because this administration, like the Reich and every other righteous sanguinary crusader did throughout history, has chronicled their tortured agenda quite well. They took an obliging public on a ride.
“Bulgarian Muff”…..? Talk about Extraordinary Rendition.
You left out the key to the point.
SHOTPUTTER
As a former discus thrower, I recognize that shotputters are usually not as far along on the path of Evolution.
Neocons also like to foment wars because they think that wars are “good” for America. They like to talk (in what they imagine are gruff Klingon-like voices) about how soft peace makes us.
This is extra funny to me because I’ve never seen a neocon who didn’t look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. If somebody needs toughening up I would think the neocons should be at the head of the line.
Alpowolf,
Yes, the old “War is good for the economy” canard. I suppose it is for War Profiteers but everyone else is advised to suck wind and smile, if they survive. Funny how eras of war seem to be so closely allied with champions of Fiat Money……the old “get something fer nuthin” routine. The FED as somekind of mumbo-jumboing Oracle of Delphi, in absence of the volcanic gaseous vapors that caused the Oracles to speak in pidgeon whackery. No, the Fed really thinks their dense phrasing contributes to anything other than a delayed reaction to the effects of Fiat Money when in the hands of charlatans and opportunists…both in extraordinary supply now days.
Jim,
A serious oversight, my apologies,
Bulgarian Shotputter Muff has a very nice ring to it and there is nothing like the image of an eastern-block female athlete to put the kabosh on any kind of prurient interest for even
Rill Dawgs. I really miss those old days of the Olympics during the Cold War when East Germany and the Soviets would trot out wimmin athletes that looked like Dick Butkus’s ugly brother.
Those woman had about as much estrogen as El Dyslexishrub has brains. Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, they at least had some rudimentary estrogen.
Dirk – great analogy on Dick Butkus!
Reminds me of the time when sports analogies packed a punch – they could resonate. Nowadays, if you get beyond ‘home run’ or ‘strike out,’ people get befuddled.
As for those East Bloc athletes: I have always been wary of any woman who could out-bench press me.
Jim,
The entire journalistic edifice, like virtually everything else in this besotted but still charmingly quixotic Republic…… aint what it used to be. Journalism , along with other basic reportage, used to be an art and sports journalists, in particular, were it’s kind of Hammet-Hemingway artists.
Now it’s mostly statistics or sordid gossip or the same damned thing over and over. Again, Journalists sans smoky bars equals journalists sans power and value. The Public sans journalists in smoky bars deserves what it gets which is the carnivorously banal stupidity of Paris Hilton “growing up in jail” or the rest of Fiat Reality on the ijit box. Some television journalists seem to be awakening to it all and this alone should cause general alarm because if there is anything so supremely impervious to either reality or intelligence…or art….. it would have to be a television “journalist” ….something akin to a “compassionate conservative”. If they’re noticing it, it really must be beyond alarming.
Bench pressing would be the least of your fears with some of these old Cold War “Female Athletes”. The entire extended family was put on notice that unless they won, Auntie Hilda or Uncle Vlad would have an appointment with the Institute of Soviet Chiropractic.
But boy oh boy were these ladies a tad strange. Governator Ahhhnnnnulld could do a credible rendition of “I’m Pretty, Oh So Pretty” in comparison. If they still suffered PMS, one would be obliged to characterize it as a weapon of mass destruction.
I’ve known and loved some , ahem “ugly wimmen” but these woman made a Cat D-8 look demure. At least they didn’t say much because with the stuff injected in them , like they were Chicago Stock being readied for slaughter, well, it must have been a twisted scene…kind of like ammo night at the University of Texas Clocktower. Not for the faint of heart or liver.