It is a well-known fact – except among the American
media, the American government, and about 98.7 percent of the American
people – that Iran is not a monolithic state where sheep-like masses
bray with a single voice in chorus with their demented leaders, but is,
on the contrary, a complex society where many conflicting opinions on
matters political, religious, social, historical, etc., contend with
each other in open debate. True, it does have a government dominated by
repressive clerics, who exercise the kind of veto power over secular
law that George W. Bush's vaunted "base" dreams of seeing established
in the United States; but Iran is far more open than, say, Saudi Arabia
or China, just to name two countries where the Bush Family and friends
have long engorged their bellies through insider connections with the
ruling cliques.
Therefore it must have come as a great shock to the system for Americans this week to hear Iran's former president, Mohammad
Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his
successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts
after the jump below.) Or rather, it would have come as a shock to the American system to hear Khatami's words – if Americans had actually been told about
them. But it serves no interests among America's own ruling cliques to
dilute the current line of the day: that Iran is a hellhole of
unremitting evil, a new Nazi Germany led by a new Hitler. So Khatami's
remarks, reported widely elsewhere in the world, were not allowed to
disturb the lie-drugged slumber of the American consciousness.
No one knows  what
dark dreams stir in Ahmadinejad's noggin, of course; he seems from most
accounts to be an unpleasant character, as rabid fundamentalists
usually are, proud of his willful ignorance,
which he mistakes for steadfast integrity. (The type is not unknown
among world leaders today.) However, in coming to grips with the Iran
"crisis" that is being forced upon us, there are two salient facts to
keep in mind.
First of all, Ahmadinejad's malevolent blather does not represent the
entirety of the Iranian people – or even the entirety of the Iranian
government, as even a cursory examination of current Tehran politics
shows – any more than George W. Bush and his rapacious gang of cronies
and cranks represents the entirety of the American people. (Although at
the moment, Bush has far greater control over the American government
than Ahmadinejad has in Iran.)
Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is highly unlikely that
Ahmadinejad would have ever been elected president if Bush and his
crony-cranks had not relentlessly and ruthlessly undercut every attempt
by the moderate government of Khatami to forge a new relationship
between Iran and the United States. The greatest opportunity came after
September 11, of course, when Iran sought to help the US break al
Qaeda, a common enemy that threatened both nations. But Bush and his
circle, as we now know, were not interested in breaking al Qaeda or
fighting terrorism; they were interested in "establishing a military
footprint" in Iraq, as part of a wide-ranging plan to "project
dominance" over the energy resources of the Middle East and Central
Asia, while fomenting "creative destruction" throughout the region, in
the belief that when the resultant rivers of blood had at last
subsided, there would be a series of obedient client regimes installed
in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – including, in the
dreams of some of the crankiest cronies, new, even more obedient
American satraps in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, there could be no accommodation with moderate elements in
Iran; on the contrary, the existence of a moderate faction within the
Iranian power structure could only be a hindrance to the Bushists'
avowed goals. How could you maintain the profitable, fear-fomenting
image of a dastardly nation – a member of the "axis of evil," no less –
bent on the destruction of "the American way of life," if its leaders
are trying reach an accommodation with you, if they speak of
moderation, of a "dialogue among civilizations"? Khatami – already
hemmed in by the hardline mullahs, unable to deliver all of his
promised domestic reforms – was also left with nothing to show for his
moderate foreign policy. Instead, Bush confirmed the mullah's criticism
of Khatami: "You reach out to the infidels, and what do you get? They
spit in your face, they try to destroy us."
(There is a remarkable parallel here to the curious dynamic between
Bush and Osama bin Laden, whereby almost every action undertaken by
Bush tends to confirm bin Laden's vision of the world: "You see? I told
you America was a Crusader Nation bent on attacking Islam – and now
Bush has invaded Iraq and all its holy sites for no reason whatsoever.
You see? I told you America regards Muslims as nothing more than dogs
and beasts – now see how they treat our brothers in their secret
prisons!" And so on and depressingly on. Even Bush himself has
acknowledged this odd symbiosis, when, just this week, he admitted that
bin Laden's (or "bin Laden's") sudden appearance in the closing days of
the 2004 presidential election tipped the race in his favor. As Eric
Alterman and others have noted, bin Laden is more than savvy enough to
know
that such an intervention would have precisely that effect: bolstering
Bush. Both men need each other to stoke the fear and hatred they feed
upon.)
Just as the September 11 attacks were openly regarded by the Bushists
as an "opportunity" for implementing their long-planned militarist
agenda – "Through my tears, I see opportunity," Bush declared just days
after the strike – so too the election of Ahmadinejad was a god-send
for the gang: a hard-line goon straight out of central casting, waving
the red flag of Holocaust-denial before the world. Now some serious warmongering
and fear-fomenting could be done! For who would defend such a moral
cretin? Through him, you could defame and dehumanize an entire nation:
the necessary prerequisite for any mass blood-letting you have in mind.
But one doesn't have to defend Ahmadinejad – or Khatami, for that
matter – in order to oppose the instigation of a foolish and murderous
military action against Iran. It is self-evident that such an action
would kill thousands of innocent people and set in motion a chain of
monstrous consequences beyond anyone's control – including the
certainty of more terrorism and more hatred for
America, the great likelihood of global economic ruin, and the very
real possibility of actually launching the world war between the West
and Islam that the Bushists like to pretend is already taking place.
Yet that appears to be where we are heading. Although some say that the
Bushists are now too weak politically and perhaps militarily to strike
at Iran – an argument that is more of a projected wish than a reality,
I fear – no one should ever underestimate the foolishness,
recklessness, avarice, greed and callousness of the Bush Faction. The
disaster in Iraq stands as indisputable proof of their own moral
cretinism and incompetent folly.
So it would be nice if the American people could be given a more
variegated view of Iran, as represented in the comments below from
Khatami and some of the Iranian press. But where's the "opportunity"
for war profits, war powers and world dominance in that?
Excerpts from Agence France Presse:
Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami has described the
Holocaust as a "historical reality" - a stinging attack on his
controversial and revisionist successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "We
should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don't forget that one
of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German national socialism was the
massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews," the cleric said in
comments carried in the Iranian press Wednesday.
The Holocaust, he asserted, should be recognized "even if this
historical reality has been misused and there is enormous pressure on
the Palestinian people." Ahmadinejad has caused international outrage
by insisting the Holocaust was a myth used to justify the creation of
Israel.
Khatami served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005, and attempted to
open up Iran to the West and initiate a "dialogue among civilizations"
- in stark contrast to the ultra-conservative agenda of Ahmadinejad.
The former president, who has shied away from the political limelight
since leaving office, also asserted Muslims were not out to persecute
Jews.
"The persecution of Jews, just like Nazism, is a Western phenomenon. In
the east, we have always lived side by side with them. And we follow a
religion that states that the death of an innocent person is the death
of all of humanity," Khatami said…
Ahmadinejad also came under attack from the prominent and centrist
Shargh newspaper, which complained that "the Holocaust has, as wished
for by the president, become a topic of our foreign policy. The Jewish
question was never a problem for Iran or Islam, and is a
Christian-European problem," the paper argued. "Don't we have enough
with the nuclear question, human rights, free elections and political
in-fighting, so do we need to add another problem to that?" it said,
saying Iran would be better off "thinking of the creation of a
Palestinian state rather than the destruction of Israel."
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