Iran and the British Sailors
In blog terms this is already ancient history, but I thought I'd mention that this episode reminded me what kind of people we're dealing with in the Iranian government, and one of the reasons I so despise such people.
I suppose there are some people out there who watch a tape of an obviously terrified and exhausted prisoner denouncing his country and take it as evidence that said country was in the wrong. But, lord, that ain't me. And I can't believe it's most people. When a country puts out a tape like that it's like putting out a tape showing a vast, high-end musical number called "Why We Suck!" It's like a time warp taking us back to the days of the USSR, or to the Cultural Revolution. A tape like that just screams TOTALITARIAN PSYCHOPATHS.
So if you, like me, were starting to obsess a little too much about our own moral failings and a little too little about those of the other guys...well, maybe those tapes helped to rouse you, too, from your dogmatic slumbers.
And it didn't help to see that they were forcing the female sailor to wear a head scarf. As far as I'm concerned, that's in the same general ballpark as making someone wear a yellow star or a pink triangle.
In blog terms this is already ancient history, but I thought I'd mention that this episode reminded me what kind of people we're dealing with in the Iranian government, and one of the reasons I so despise such people.
I suppose there are some people out there who watch a tape of an obviously terrified and exhausted prisoner denouncing his country and take it as evidence that said country was in the wrong. But, lord, that ain't me. And I can't believe it's most people. When a country puts out a tape like that it's like putting out a tape showing a vast, high-end musical number called "Why We Suck!" It's like a time warp taking us back to the days of the USSR, or to the Cultural Revolution. A tape like that just screams TOTALITARIAN PSYCHOPATHS.
So if you, like me, were starting to obsess a little too much about our own moral failings and a little too little about those of the other guys...well, maybe those tapes helped to rouse you, too, from your dogmatic slumbers.
And it didn't help to see that they were forcing the female sailor to wear a head scarf. As far as I'm concerned, that's in the same general ballpark as making someone wear a yellow star or a pink triangle.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:39 PM
7 Comments:
WS,
I agree with your main point -- the Iranians had clearly intimidated (at the very least) their British prisoners into making those statements.
I'm not so perturbed about the head scarf. The Yellow Star & Pink Triangle were intended to stigmatize their wearers, to make them stand out from the general populace. The scarf is intended to have the prisoner conform to the standards of behavior held by her captors, to make her blend in more.
(If, e.g., our government were to capture intruders who happened to be nudists, we would probably require that they wear clothes while in captivity.)
I think part of the problem (and fuck yeah it bugs me) is that those of us on the left who are inclined to recognize that Iran is run my theocratic totalitarian psychopaths are worried that our recognition of that will be taken to justify an invasion.
I mean, in the run up to war in Iraq, I heard so many times something along the lines of "Saddam is evil! Getting rid of Saddam is good! That's all you need to know!"
It hasn't actually turned out to be all we needed to know. Golly.
But yes, the dudes running Iran are not good people. They're actually really evil. Psychopathic, even.
I completely understand your first point, Joshua. The worst part about this whole Iran thing is that, if we had to pick a country in the middle east to invade, Iran should have certainly been it.
Not only do they hold annual I-Hate-America rallies where they burn American flags and preach hatred for Americans to all of their constituents, but their president also spouts genocidal policy every chance he gets. Now they're developing nuclear capabilities at least on some level, and when you've got someone talking genocide and then developing nuclear capabilities, that should at least warrant some diplomacy.
But no, we've completely illegitimized ourselves in the view of the rest of the world thanks to bush and his idiot cronies who invaded Iraq for no good reason, despite the fact that the rest of the world was clearly not supporting us.
Now, anything we do about Iran will seem at least in part like just another episode of "When Americans Attack".
It sucks. It sucks really, really badly.
A conventional invasion of Iran has never been in the cards. It has twice the population of Iraq, and far more many mountains.
In fact, Iraq was selected for invasion precisely because it's not Iran. The idealistic/hubristic goal was to drive a stake of democracy into the heart of darkness that is the political tyranny of the Arab Muslim world, a darkness that was adjudged to be the "root cause" of bin Ladenism.
Great plan.
Also:
I'm still inclined toward the head scarf/yellow star analogy. I think that head scarves are expressions of misogyny. They are strongly associated with the view that women are the source of evil and temptation.
Well, temptation...o.k., but it's the evil part I'm objecting to.
Also:
One problem with pulling a big boner like Iraq is that you then put yourself so far out on a limb that you aren't in a position to deal with a real, unavoidable emergency should one come up. If we'd have been acting reasonably for the last six years, we'd have lots more leverage in this case.
On the other hand:
Some monkes use the following strategy:
They act crazy, attacking others who infringe on their interests almost randomly. This puts everybody on alert, and everybody gives them a wide berth.
So there's that.
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