“They” No Longer
Over at Talking Points Memo, M. J. Rosenberg expressed a very important distinction about the events currently taking place in Iran. That regardless of the outcome, the neoconservative mouth-foaming to just bomb the place back to Jesus is pretty much dead forever in America. Iran has been demonized in our shared culture as a country full of fanatics and religious extremists who go to bed every night in actively-on-fire American Flag bedsheets and stone to death anyone to the political left of Osama bin laden. And those days are over now.
The American people have seen the Iranian people taking to the streets, fighting back riot cops with stones and bare knuckles, demanding at least some semblance of accountability from their already dubiously structured quasi-Republic. The comments section for that article was immediately flooded by the kinds of liberals that make me hate being a liberal – a self congratulatory smugfest to let Rosenberg know that they’d never been so uninformed or reactionary, and that it must be his inside-politics, self-imposed deafness that led him to view Iran thusly.
Well good for fucking you. But out in the real world, where most people don’t masturbate to the idol of their own enlightenment, Rosenberg made a very valid and meaningful point – and he wasn’t alone in doing so. Now, to TPM’s credit, plenty of other readers showed up to defend Rosenberg’s point. And yes, most people who are educated about the Middle Eastern political climate were aware that the Iranian people live in what would elsewhere be called a Banana Republic.
But that’s not how the media has portrayed them or how the right wing has used them as a political lever. Those aren’t the rational, oppressed people that John McCain was joking about when he sang “Bomb, Bomb Iran”. For some of the center and almost all of the right Iran was indistinguishable from Ahmadinejad himself, a fact that doubly expressed their lack of information since Khamenei has always been the man calling the shots.
And speaking of “Bomb, Bomb Iran”, when John McCain wants to stop making 1950′s jokes about dropping heavy explosives on civilians, he can then criticize Obama’s handling of the Iranian riots. But that day ain’t coming soon. The same goes for Lindsey “Five Rugs for Five Bucks” Graham. On one hand, I understand where their emotions are. The world was almost rid of Ahmadinejad as a global agitator, and now it’s damn obvious that he’s stolen the election. I think both liberals and conservatives can agree that having a more moderate, sane President in Iran would be better for just about everyone.
But even on a point where both sides are in agreement, there apparently can’t be any common ground. It was a pretty big deal when Obama admitted in Cairo, almost in passing, that the CIA meddled in Iranian politics fifty years ago. I mean, everyone in Iran damn well knows it, but officially we never bring it up when we’re out in public. It’s the dirty little affair that never comes up at Thanksgiving but everyone is thinking while they stuff their faces full of pie. But by mentioning American involvement, it was Obama’s own form of dog whistle politics that said, “I’m not going to jerk you guys around.” And by all accounts it worked.
But the most important thing that America can do – if what we want really is to help Iran move out of the political dark ages – is to not dip our grimy fingers into their bowl. Haven’t we learned by now that when we try to manipulate Middle Eastern politics to serve our own desires it ends up blowing up in our faces? Exactly how many times does that have to happen before guys like McCain and Graham figure it out? By interjecting ourselves into the Iranian riots, we’d be playing right into the role that we’ve suffered as a stereotype in the Middle East. The arrogant, meddling, self-interested, imperial Americans.
Of course, if we had some sort of actual diplomatic relationship with Iran, there might be some covert, back-scratching pressure we could exert on them. But we’re not allowed to talk to them because they’re terrorists. Sort of. Or something. So right now it may feel like sitting on the sidelines and saying, “Geez, this is freaky!” is about the best thing that we can do as a country. But that’s not entirely true.
We can remember. And we can force our countrymen to remember – especially those that are looking for a convenient and foreign enemy. Ahmadinejad may be our enemy. Khamenei may be our enemy. Hell, the entire Guardian Council may be our enemy (though there are rumblings that the majority of the Council has also just about had it with Khamenei’s bullshit as well). But the Iranian people? The ones who are out in force, risking their lives to save their country from itself? The ones who are standing up to a government that disappears dissenters and shoots civilians in the streets? And the ones who would be most devastated by some half-cocked American military excursion? They are not our enemy.
They are us.
I’m not mentioning this to be obsessively and annoyingly corrective (because the whole thing is definitely coming from a red scare type of mentality) just mentioning it to comment on it. The Bomb, bomb Iran song was a 70s joke from the time of the hostage crisis. I remember because I was a kid then and we had quite a few really stupid (hey, at least I was less than 10… we were allowed to be stupid) jokes. Mostly starting with “Are you a dumb Iranian or a smart American?” Sad. I’m glad to see us growing up at least in this area. In fact I’ve been glad over the last couple of decades to hear more people saying things like “It’s the government over there (over wherever) that’s screwy, not the people.
I didn’t realize that it was a thing in the 70s during the crisis. I’m not sure if that makes it lamer or not that he tried to bring it back during the 2008 campaign. I was only familiar with the original Barbara Ann, which, to be honest, I never really liked in the first place.