Everything Old is New Again

Look at this picture and think about it for a minute. On the left, of course, is Vladimir Putin, semi-autocratic President of the increasingly un-democratic Russian Federation. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran is on the right. These two leaders are in attendance at a summit meeting of Caspian Sea nations this week. Russia and Iran both border the oil-rich Caspian Sea. This is the first time any Soviet/Russian head of state has visited Tehran since Stalin was at the Tehran conference during WWII, by the way. This is the same Putin that George Bush 'looked in the eye' and dubbed to be someone 'I can work with'. OK, whatever...

To a large extent, this picture represents the end result of a half century of mistakes and miscalculations in U.S. foreign policy. Beginning with the CIA backed coup of Mohammed Mosaddeq, the democratically elected Iranian leader, in 1953 and the placement in power of Shah Reza Pahlavi, the "Shah of Iran". This coup was orchestrated by the U.S. to insure an Iranian government that was 'friendly' to western petroleum companies. Mosaddeq actually had the gall to nationalize the Iranian petroleum industry, so that Iran itself might actually profit from the oil under it's own soil instead of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - later renamed British Petroleum in 1954. How dare he. If these links to Wikipedia articles are bothersome to the anti-Wikipedi-ites out there, here's a link to a CIA produced article on the topic. Rest assured, many more Iranians are aware of this little piece of history than are Americans. No surprise there.

Fast forward past the 1979 Islamic revolution and hostage crisis in Iran, to the Iran-Iraq war. The Iran-Iraq war resulted in over 1 million casualties on each side. During this war in the 1980's, we backed Saddam Hussein against Iran (see famous Rumsfeld-Hussein meeting at left). We even supplied him with the technology to produce chemical weapons, which he was not shy about using against the Iranians and the Kurds alike. I can assure you that not too many Iranians are unaware of this little piece of history either.

Now let's look at Russia. Recently, I was fortunate enough to see ex-Senator Bill Bradley speak at a conference and he took some questions. One of the questioners asked him what world leader he met who was the most impressive. Without hesitation, he said Mikhail Gorbachev. He went on to describe how Gorbachev had the vision to realize that the Soviet Union was being crushed under it's own weight and had to be dismantled. Senator Bradley then described a recent meeting with him, where Gorbachev described a meeting with Jim Baker when he agreed to withdraw all Soviet military forces from the eastern-bloc nations in exchange for one thing: that NATO not be allowed to expand into these nations. Bradley then went on to remind us how we went back on that promise during the 1990's against the protestations of Yeltsin and now, more forcefully, of Putin.

The reason Gorbachev knew this was necesary is because of Russia's centuries old xenophobic nature. They have always been fearful of outsiders invading the 'motherland' and our NATO expansion among other factors, was fertile ground for an ultra-nationalist like Putin to amass power and become uncooperative to our foreign policy goals.

So, Russia and Iran are only two examples of the dozens of countries that we've pushed around, lied to or otherwise screwed over in the past fifty or so years alone. Maybe this picture makes more sense now.

Backbone

Conservatives may claim that, unlike liberals, they have backbone. In reality, liberals have backbone also, the difference is we choose to use the brain that rests atop it.

On Monday, Sept. 24 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got to speak at Columbia University. Shortly after stepping onto the stage, he would surely regret it. While close minded, lock-step conservatives and strutting chicken hawks, from the once admired John McCain to the unintelligent cesspool that is Rush Limbaugh, screamed bloody murder about Ahmadinejad being allowed to speak at Columbia, Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia, had different plans. See video below of his opening remarks before Ahmadinejad spoke:



What the McCains, Limbaughs and FoxNews-philes of the world don't understand in their limited black and white intellectual spheres, is that by letting someone talk freely, doesn't mean you agree with them. Indeed, sometimes the more you let someone like Ahmadinejad speak, the more of an idiotic, lying despot they appear. You'd have thought the Republicans would have figured that out after six years of Bush.

Lee Bollinger called Ahmadinejad out - to his face, by the way - not by blathering into a TV studio camera or a radio microphone. In case anyone forgot, Bollinger's pointed, stern, yet humble closing remark is what real intellectual leadership looks like. This video is from YouTube, we should hope it gets many millions of hits in Mr. Ahmadinejad's home country.

Goldstein of the Week

Yes, once again George Orwell must be somewhere laughing - or crying - or both. On the heels of al-Qaeda's fall season video premiers over the last couple of weeks. including "Tora Bora Martyr Makeover", the media and assorted local New York and national political 'leaders' have turned their collective blood-lust onto a new target- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Case in point:

Ahmadinejad announced last week that he wanted to visit ground zero, ostensibly to lay a wreath to honor the dead. The dead that he thinks were killed by a Zionist conspiricy, of course. I was of the opinion that he should've been allowed there, however surrounded by a few dozen members of the Ironworkers local, some off duty members of 'NYs finest' and a few guys from a half dozen FDNY ladder companies to boot. My guess is if he was stupid enough to go into his 'America is Satan' schtick at that point, he would've been choking on his own teeth after about ten seconds. Maybe these were the 'security concerns' that officials cited last week in their denial of his request.

That said, I think all the haters need to take a deep breath. If an auditorium full of Columbia undergrads and graduate students can't intellectually slice up this guy nine ways to Sunday, then we may have a bigger problem than we think. Actually, excluding the Holocaust denying, the Israel map wiping off and the Zionist 9/11 conspiricy stuff, this guy makes some valid points. Really, what has he said that was any more idiotic than "they want to take away our freedom"? Uhhh, no George, I don't think they give a shit about our freedom, and besides, they're not taking it away, YOU ARE! Not to mention making a holy f#*king mess out of everything you touch.

What gets a lot less play is that Ahmadinejad may actually be worse at running Iran than Bush is at running our country. Despite sky-high oil prices, employment is down in Iran, poverty is up, there is more underground unrest and the government is much less secular than in recent years - oops, my mistake - I guess we'll call that last one even.

(the style of this post inspired by JS, BM and of course HST)