New at Reason
April 11, 2008, 3:00pm
Do you ever worry that the United Nations is getting better?
In "Same as It Ever Was," reason Associate Editor Michael C. Moynihan introduces you to Princeton University's Richard Falk, champion of the Ayatollah Khomeini, endorser of 9/11 conspiracy theorists—and the new United Nations Human Rights Council's newly elected special rapporteur on the "situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."
And then there's Swiss socialist Jean Ziegler, supporter of Holocaust deniers, friend of Moammar Kaddafi—and recent nominee to the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee.
Read all about it here.
tarran | April 11, 2008, 5:03pm | #
Well, Tarran, how do YOU want to deal with the Iranians trying to acquire a nuclear weapon?
Oh quite simple, STOP THREATENING TO BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF THEM NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO.
After September 11, they tried to assist the U.S. govt with intelligence against Al Queda. They agreed to provide assistance with Search and Rescue efforts for downed U.S. airmen
In 2003 they
proposed negotiations with the U.S. They had serious and substantive discussions with State Department officials intended to normalize relations with the U.S.
This despite
the fact that.
1) In 1953, the U.S. government overthrew the government of Iran as a favor to British Petroleum. As part of the CIA operation, thugs were paid to go out and beat up or even kill innocent Iranian civilians while pretending to be communist agitators.
2)The U.S. government set up, trained and funded the Iranian secret police who brutalized the Iranians in much the way that Saddam Husseing's goons brutalized Iraqis.
3) When the religious fundamentalists rode a wave of popular hatred of the Shah into power, the U.S. government then encouraged and assisted Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, intended to deny Iranian access to a significant portion of Iran's oil-fields.
4) After an attack by Iran's enemies against the U.S., the U.S. president labeled the Iranian government part of an Axis of Evil along with their enemy, the Iraqi government, and North Korea with whom they have nothing to do.
5) Furthermore, after the attack, the U.S. occupies or makes basing agreements with every country adjacent to Iran, surrounding them with U.S. troops, warships and aircraft.
6) The U.S. government torpedoes negotiations designed to ease the stated concerns the U.S. has over Iranian actions.
7) After the U.S. occupational government is replaced by a semi-elected government dominated by a pro-Iranian faction, the U.S. starts claiming, blatantly falsely, that the Iranians are trying to undermine their allies.
8) The U.S. government, including all the politician vying to be president (with the exception of then long-shot Ron Paul) all publicly emphasize their willingness to use nuclear weapons on Iran.
See a pattern there, Neil?
What started out as a favor for a U.S. ally has escalated to the point where the U.S. government is contemplating using nukes a second time, all because the U.S. government can't stand the idea of a bunch of camel jockeys and ragheads not bowing their heads to U.S. hegemony.
If I were an Iranian government official, I would want nuclear weapons, simply because once a country gets nuclear weapons (Al Queda ally Pakistan, cough, cough), suddenly the U.S. becomes really, really nice to them.
The first step to ending a conflict is to stop escalating it. Iran, for the most part, reacts to U.S. escalations. Most Iranian officials want to be at peace with their neighbors. The fact that the U.S. government consistently signals to the Iranian government that the U.S. wants nothing but war with Iran does not make Iran less likely to become belligerent. Rather it encourages them to be more belligerent since they have nothing to lose.
tarran | April 11, 2008, 6:35pm | #
OK neil,
"And what do you think Iran's President means when he says he wants to "wipe Israel off the map" and "have a world without the United States".
Why *does* the Iranian president say that about the U.S. and not, say Japan?
For extra credit, why do Iranians permit a guy saying those things to stay in power? Why don't they rise up and overthrow this dangerously unstable guy like they did the Shah? The shah was far more brutally repressive than the current government. Could it be that a large portion of the Iranian public, who know their own country's experiences at the hands of the U.S. think that the U.S. is a threat to them?
Tarran your post was leftist anti-American claptrap. So we had to do some dirty things to stop the commies, so what? What matters is that we won the Cold War.
Oh man, just yesterday I was being called a reactionary right wing conservative! My week is complete!
Ok neil, so what you are saying is that the Iranian government should say "Thank you America for overthrowing our parliamentary system and installing a monarch who taxed the shit out of us and tortured entire families if one member was a dissident. You did it to stop the Russians, and we are so grateful? Thank you U.S., We *were* far better off under an autocratic monarch than with elections?"
Wow! You *are* a fucking moron! :D
Neil, seriously, you're a great guy; rarely do fans of American Exceptionalism demonstrate their inability to understand human nature so straightforwardly.
Here's something you might want to chew on: until we got rid of the parliament, the Iranian communists were not anti-American. And, you might want to think about this as well, our ally Italy has also had communists win elections and form a government. Yep, a NATO country with a communist government that had access to U.S. defense secrets, yet somehow the republic didn't fall (Although, to be fair, the Italians *did* release Abu Nidal after seizing him from U.S. custody - some allies they were.. Maybe Reagan should have ordered a punitive airstrike on those terrorist-enablers in Rome huh?).
