The Trouble with Iran . . .

[NickDG 23]

If you have the attention span of a lightning bolt, equate American foreign policy to a football game, or believe the U.S. has some kind of divine manifest destiny stop reading please.

If you believe nation states have the right to determine their own destinies in the bounds of peaceful pursuits, can see history as the one and only truth of things, and can empathizes with your fellow human beings, then see if you agree with me on the following.

If I was an Iranian citizen I'd be one pissed off son of a bitch . . .

Let me preface by saying I spent a lot of time with young Saudis, Iranians, and Iraqis while attending a University with a large Middle Eastern student body. But this isn’t about there's okay people in every culture. Nor is this about Anglo-American bashing as we have the ability to put the past into perspective and turn things around on a dime. But only if we have the knowledge and the will to do so. I'm also pro-military. And I served in the Marines during that other conflict in the South East Asia when no one, and I mean no one, gave a hang about the troops.

The world's problems not just now, but over all times, can be laid directly on the door step of misunderstanding, greed, and jingoism. These are not insurmountable problems if we only gave a damn. Misunderstanding can be cured through education, Non-greed you learned in kindergarten when you were taught to share, and jingoism is fine when it's being proud of your nation, but not so much when that pride turns to cracking heads for murky reasons.

That all being said our chickens are coming home to roost. One problem we humans have is a short memory. And I don't mean forgetting the lessons of ones own lifetime I mean forgetting the lessons of history. And that isn’t so much a flaw in our character - it's a flaw in our genetics. If only our DNA carried these lessons over from generation to generation think how much better off we'd be. We do carry over some basic survival lessons as crawling infants have been proven to fear heights, loud noises, and so on, but not much anything else. So you only have 70 or so years to get hip to the world. Some people struggle to gain that insight all their lives and some sadly never begin the journey at all.

We were once very good at passing these life lessons from one generation to the next. When elder black woman gathered their young on the porch in the late 19th century in the American south and told the life stories of their aunts, uncles, grand mothers and grand fathers, it wasn't to pass the time; it wasn't about pride, or even continuing a culture. It was simply equipping the next generation for the pitfalls and problems ahead of them. Most cultures did this until our lives became so inundated with information, most of it noise, and our biggest failing became a staple of American life, a disdain for things old. We are a forward looking people by nature now. And that would be okay if we aren't so forward looking we forgot how we got were we are.

We talk about our rights all the time, but not enough about our duties. You have a duty to educate yourself to the world, and you have a duty to pass that trait onto your offspring. I'm not too much a proponent of the global village idea, as I already hate the fact here in America every town looks like every other town. And I'd loath to see our varied cultures dissolve into some kind of homogeneous goop, but I do believe we are all earthlings with a common goal.

So before accepting being spoon fed the current view of others please take an afternoon, even if it means a day away from the DZ, to sit in a library and read. Even a few hours spent reading the modern history of Iran will open your eyes to the real issues. This isn't about assessing blame. No one reading this is directly responsible for what happened in Iran anymore than anyone reading this is directly responsible for black slavery in this country. This is about fixing things and not repeating the same mistakes.

If an afternoon with you nose in a musty book is beyond you, pick up this months issue (December 2008) of the Smithsonian and read the article "Inside Iran's Fury." It'll take you all of a half hour.

I'm old enough to remember the Iran Hostage crisis and wondering why they did that. I'm curious enough to have looked into it and learned how first the Russians and Brits than Americans installed by subterfuge and by force favorable regimes in Iran and exploited their resources. The Russians and Brits both treated Iran as a colony until the Russians pulled out too consumed with their own eternal problems. In 1891 the Brits nationalized the Iran tobacco industry and used their oil up to the 1940s to fuel their naval fleets.

This triggered a revolution in Iran and a man named Mohammad Mossedegh came to power. He wanted to take back Iran's oil industry for the good of his own people who were by now living in poverty for the most part. Naturally the Brits objected, pulled out their oil technicians, and actually blockaded their ports. The Brits even went to the UN and pleaded their case to steal another countries resources. This is when Mossedegh came to the U.N. himself and stood up to object to imperial power. And it was pretty much the first time any lesser power did that. Time Magazine made him the man of year in 1951 for his show of balls.

In 1953 when President Eisenhower took office the current crisis was communism. The still pissed off Brits told Ike that Mossedegh was taking Iran toward communism, which was a big fat lie, and Ike sent the CIA into Iran to overthrow him. Using bribery the CIA organized protests, than mobs and from the basement of the American Embassy managed to create the impression that Iran was about to implode. Led by a CIA backed mob the police and military surrounded the home of Mossedegh and he barley escaped the country and into exile.

It was the end of democratic rule in Iran and we, America, did it.

We brought in Reza Shah, known to most Americans, and who I knew growing up as the Shah of Iran. I always figured he was the ruler of Iran by virtue of his own people and it wasn't until the hostage crisis of the 1980s did I learn that we installed him. He brought in the secret police and squashed any dissidence with an iron hand. He was an American puppet and his power was backed by our power. So essentially we took over Iran in the 1953. The hostage crisis of the 1980s when Iranians overran our Embassy and took American hostages they eventually held for 444 days was them taking back their own country. Their turning to religious fundamentalism was their only avenue to ensure a new ruler wouldn't again sell out to foreign interests.

And even now misunderstanding is again taking us down the wrong road. When Iranians chant "death to America" it's not a literal translation. It's their way of saying "down with American interference." The average Iranian doesn't really want to see Americans die or our country collapse. The average Iranian actually likes America. And when the Iranian President recently came to the UN and said about gays, "We have no similar problem in Iran" we all laughed but again we misunderstood. There is a thriving underground gay community in Iran. In fact the majority there also drink and party as hearty as we do with only one big difference. They do it in their homes and not in the streets. But what the Iranian President meant is they have no open gay rights movement in Iran. That was the "problem" we have that they don't and what he was talking about. And he was also trying to be humorous about it but we are so anti-middle eastern the joke went right over our heads.

So why did I take the time to write all this down and post it here. In a day or two it will get buried, and most skydivers won't have even read it. If you're the America right or wrong type you'll wave me off with a who cares? If you don't sometimes wonder why my brother Marines are kicking in doors in Iraq, and maybe someday soon also in Iran, you won't care and maybe even call me a kook.

But I write these things for myself. I write these things to educate myself not you. The fact I post them somewhere makes me more careful about what I say. I write these things down because as an American I have a duty to not repeat the mistakes of the past . . .

NickD

• Quote

[jclalor 12]

That was a nice essay on Iran, I don't think a lot of Americans know about the real Iran. A couple of years back I spent a month traveling the middle east ( Turkey, Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Egypt) My family and friends all thought I was nuts but it was the trip of a lifetime.

I never once felt in danger in Iran, the people were thrilled to meet an American and while they may have not liked our government to much, they were very able to separate the American people from the government.

The Iranian people loved everything about America (except the government) and were also very proud of their own culture and their history. Most I met were not to happy with their government but were hopeful things would get better in the near future.

I would love to go back but with my new found hobby of jumping it might be a while. If anyone ever gets a chance to visit Iran or any other middle eastern country jump at the chance, you will never look at them the same.

[billvon 3,107]

Good post. Much of what you said echoes what Mina, a co-worker, said about the country she grew up in.

[shropshire 0]

Great post

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[jcd11235 0]

Excellent post.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[diverborg 0]

Sometimes we pay the price for the mistakes of those that came before us.

However, most of what you say on Iran is true, but I'm not so much concerned about what the current president or people say about us, but what they say about Israel. I don't understand how the desire to wipe away an entire country because of a long deeply-rooted conflict will solve anything for the future. This guy needs to go for the good of his own country, but the fact that he got elected in the first place is concerning to me about the people there (assuming it was a fair election). I'm sure there are some wonderful people in Iran, I just hope most of them have the sense to not jump on the bandwagon with their current president.

[Darius11 12]

Thank you.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[jclalor 12]

The supreme leader of Iran is Khamenei and he is a lot less inflammatory than Ahmadinejad.


In 2005, Khamenei responded to Ahmadinejad's alleged remark that Israel should be "wiped off the map" by saying that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country." Moreover, Khamenei's main adviser in foreign policy, Ali Akbar Velayati, refused to take part in Ahmadinejad's Holocaust conference. In contrast to Ahmadinejad's remarks, Velayati said that the Holocaust was a genocide and a historical reality.

In June 2007, Ahmadinejad was criticized by some Iranian parliament members over his remark about Christianity and Judaism. According to Aftab News Agency, Ahmadinejad stated: "In the world, there are deviations from the right path: Christianity and Judaism. Dollars have been devoted to the propagation of these deviations. There are also false claims that these [religions] will save mankind. But Islam is the only religion that [can] save mankind." Some members of Iranian parliament criticized these remarks as being fuels to religious war.



His criticism of the West has been controversial among some members of Iranian Parliament, leading to attempts to compel him to go to the parliament to answer questions.


Many reformist and independent political parties, including some of those that boycotted the first round of the presidential election, have called for an alliance against Ahmadinejad, calling it "a national alliance against fascism. Critics, including some independent ones, have mentioned that while there are some similarities between the actions and rising of supporters of Ahmadinejad with those of fascism, the movement differs because it is neither nationalistic nor racist and lacks corporatism.

Some dissident groups also accused him of being a ruthless interrogator and torturer in the 1980s.


On December 11, 2006, some students disrupted a speech by Ahmadinejad at the Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. According to the Iranian Student News Agency, students set fire to photographs of Ahmadinejad and threw firecrackers. The protesters also chanted "death to the dictator." It was the first major public protest against Ahmadinejad since his election. In a statement carried on the students' Web site, they announced that they had been protesting the growing political pressure under Ahmadinejad, also accusing him of corruption, mismanagement, and discrimination. The statement added that "the students showed that despite vast propaganda, the president has not been able to deceive academia." It was also reported that some students were angry about the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.

[NickDG 23]

If interested this is a new book out just this month that's worth a read . . .

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
By Hooman Majd

Published by Doubleday, 2008
ISBN 0385523343, 9780385523349
256 pages

Available on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Ayatollah-Begs-Differ-Paradox-Modern/dp/0385523343/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222714365&sr=1-1

The author is an Iranian who grew up here in the States. You can listen to a NPR radio interview he did here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95029424

NickD

[vortexring 0]

An interesting and partially related article; titled: 'The Need for a New Iran Strategy: The United Nations Security Council’s Multilateral Approach Fans the Fire',by Najmedin Meshkati, can be found here.

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[nerdgirl 0]

Interesting read - thanks!

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[hangdiver 1]

I agree with NickDG that we have a duty to educate ourselves on the realities of history. Also the duty to search for the truth about what has really been said as opposed to what the media spins as the "truth". Although I am not a fan of any religious extremists, especially those representing their country to the rest of the world, Iran's President Ahmadinejad's statements have been widely misrepresented in the American press. Take the Mike Wallace interview, on "60 Minutes" for instance, where Wallace confronts Ahmadinejad about the alleged statement about "wiping Israel off the face of the earth" omitted answer Ahmaninejad is refferring to the Zionist extremist regime not the country of Israel or its' people.
Education,Diplomacy and truthful reporting of the FACTS are much more conducive to peace than the distorted spin Mr. Wallace uses to inform the masses of the "TRUTH". Scare tactics work on an emotional level to influence those people who find it to tedious to read for themselves what the World Leaders are actually saying. When people find it easier to just listen to the spin fed to them by the media to re-enforce their emotionally distorted views it becomes almost impossible to get them to see another perspective based on facts, truth and logic.

"Mans got to know his limitations"
Harry Callahan

[akarunway 1]

Quote

If you have the attention span of a lightning bolt, equate American foreign policy to a football game, or believe the U.S. has some kind of divine manifest destiny stop reading please.

If you believe nation states have the right to determine their own destinies in the bounds of peaceful pursuits, can see history as the one and only truth of things, and can empathizes with your fellow human beings, then see if you agree with me on the following.

If I was an Iranian citizen I'd be one pissed off son of a bitch . . .

Let me preface by saying I spent a lot of time with young Saudis, Iranians, and Iraqis while attending a University with a large Middle Eastern student body. But this isn’t about there's okay people in every culture. Nor is this about Anglo-American bashing as we have the ability to put the past into perspective and turn things around on a dime. But only if we have the knowledge and the will to do so. I'm also pro-military. And I served in the Marines during that other conflict in the South East Asia when no one, and I mean no one, gave a hang about the troops.

The world's problems not just now, but over all times, can be laid directly on the door step of misunderstanding, greed, and jingoism. These are not insurmountable problems if we only gave a damn. Misunderstanding can be cured through education, Non-greed you learned in kindergarten when you were taught to share, and jingoism is fine when it's being proud of your nation, but not so much when that pride turns to cracking heads for murky reasons.

That all being said our chickens are coming home to roost. One problem we humans have is a short memory. And I don't mean forgetting the lessons of ones own lifetime I mean forgetting the lessons of history. And that isn’t so much a flaw in our character - it's a flaw in our genetics. If only our DNA carried these lessons over from generation to generation think how much better off we'd be. We do carry over some basic survival lessons as crawling infants have been proven to fear heights, loud noises, and so on, but not much anything else. So you only have 70 or so years to get hip to the world. Some people struggle to gain that insight all their lives and some sadly never begin the journey at all.

We were once very good at passing these life lessons from one generation to the next. When elder black woman gathered their young on the porch in the late 19th century in the American south and told the life stories of their aunts, uncles, grand mothers and grand fathers, it wasn't to pass the time; it wasn't about pride, or even continuing a culture. It was simply equipping the next generation for the pitfalls and problems ahead of them. Most cultures did this until our lives became so inundated with information, most of it noise, and our biggest failing became a staple of American life, a disdain for things old. We are a forward looking people by nature now. And that would be okay if we aren't so forward looking we forgot how we got were we are.

We talk about our rights all the time, but not enough about our duties. You have a duty to educate yourself to the world, and you have a duty to pass that trait onto your offspring. I'm not too much a proponent of the global village idea, as I already hate the fact here in America every town looks like every other town. And I'd loath to see our varied cultures dissolve into some kind of homogeneous goop, but I do believe we are all earthlings with a common goal.

So before accepting being spoon fed the current view of others please take an afternoon, even if it means a day away from the DZ, to sit in a library and read. Even a few hours spent reading the modern history of Iran will open your eyes to the real issues. This isn't about assessing blame. No one reading this is directly responsible for what happened in Iran anymore than anyone reading this is directly responsible for black slavery in this country. This is about fixing things and not repeating the same mistakes.

If an afternoon with you nose in a musty book is beyond you, pick up this months issue (December 2008) of the Smithsonian and read the article "Inside Iran's Fury." It'll take you all of a half hour.

I'm old enough to remember the Iran Hostage crisis and wondering why they did that. I'm curious enough to have looked into it and learned how first the Russians and Brits than Americans installed by subterfuge and by force favorable regimes in Iran and exploited their resources. The Russians and Brits both treated Iran as a colony until the Russians pulled out too consumed with their own eternal problems. In 1891 the Brits nationalized the Iran tobacco industry and used their oil up to the 1940s to fuel their naval fleets.

This triggered a revolution in Iran and a man named Mohammad Mossedegh came to power. He wanted to take back Iran's oil industry for the good of his own people who were by now living in poverty for the most part. Naturally the Brits objected, pulled out their oil technicians, and actually blockaded their ports. The Brits even went to the UN and pleaded their case to steal another countries resources. This is when Mossedegh came to the U.N. himself and stood up to object to imperial power. And it was pretty much the first time any lesser power did that. Time Magazine made him the man of year in 1951 for his show of balls.

In 1953 when President Eisenhower took office the current crisis was communism. The still pissed off Brits told Ike that Mossedegh was taking Iran toward communism, which was a big fat lie, and Ike sent the CIA into Iran to overthrow him. Using bribery the CIA organized protests, than mobs and from the basement of the American Embassy managed to create the impression that Iran was about to implode. Led by a CIA backed mob the police and military surrounded the home of Mossedegh and he barley escaped the country and into exile.

It was the end of democratic rule in Iran and we, America, did it.

We brought in Reza Shah, known to most Americans, and who I knew growing up as the Shah of Iran. I always figured he was the ruler of Iran by virtue of his own people and it wasn't until the hostage crisis of the 1980s did I learn that we installed him. He brought in the secret police and squashed any dissidence with an iron hand. He was an American puppet and his power was backed by our power. So essentially we took over Iran in the 1953. The hostage crisis of the 1980s when Iranians overran our Embassy and took American hostages they eventually held for 444 days was them taking back their own country. Their turning to religious fundamentalism was their only avenue to ensure a new ruler wouldn't again sell out to foreign interests.

And even now misunderstanding is again taking us down the wrong road. When Iranians chant "death to America" it's not a literal translation. It's their way of saying "down with American interference." The average Iranian doesn't really want to see Americans die or our country collapse. The average Iranian actually likes America. And when the Iranian President recently came to the UN and said about gays, "We have no similar problem in Iran" we all laughed but again we misunderstood. There is a thriving underground gay community in Iran. In fact the majority there also drink and party as hearty as we do with only one big difference. They do it in their homes and not in the streets. But what the Iranian President meant is they have no open gay rights movement in Iran. That was the "problem" we have that they don't and what he was talking about. And he was also trying to be humorous about it but we are so anti-middle eastern the joke went right over our heads.

So why did I take the time to write all this down and post it here. In a day or two it will get buried, and most skydivers won't have even read it. If you're the America right or wrong type you'll wave me off with a who cares? If you don't sometimes wonder why my brother Marines are kicking in doors in Iraq, and maybe someday soon also in Iran, you won't care and maybe even call me a kook.

But I write these things for myself. I write these things to educate myself not you. The fact I post them somewhere makes me more careful about what I say. I write these things down because as an American I have a duty to not repeat the mistakes of the past . . .

NickD

Well stated. I've been studying quite a bit of history in my spare time the last few yrs. Hopefully people will learn that greed and imperialism don't work in the long run. I never was one that liked shiny objects. That being said, why aren't people learn from past mistakes? Sheesh

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[434 2]

Good post Nick, and keep them coming!

[Braz933 0]

I agree with diverborg. I have no problem with the Iranian people, but I think you are giving Ahmadinejad WAY too much credit. Time will tell.

[masterblaster72 0]

Brilliant post. Bravo sir, and thank you.

Be humble, ask questions, listen, learn, follow the golden rule, talk when necessary, and know when to shut the fuck up.

[434 2]

Europeans have fucked up the world for so long time, and we still have to deal with it! One thing is that humans learn very little from the history, and like to repeat it again and again! Greedy small viruses!