It’s pretty clear the Obama Administration is itching to kick Iran in the dick. This is far from an aberration in American foreign policy.
Not sure if you’re paying any attention to news coverage lately, but the American press is fanning flames mightily in the direction of the classic Persian homeland.
And while I’ve heard small grumblings from the loyal opposition, the American Antiwar movement is typically silent when it comes to criticizing the current Administration.
Fucking cowards.
Please don’t fall for it. Please.
Use your considerable brain power and moral muscle to summon courage enough to resist yet another invasion of a Muslim state by the hideous United States.
My limited contact with Iranians and Persians (not all Iranians are Persians, but nearly all Persians are Iranians) is they’re chill as fuck. Certainly some of the hottest chicks are Persian. Hahahaha. You knew I’d throw that in, huh? Hahahaha. Sorry.
Years ago, I caught the film The Color of Paradise. It’s made by Iranian filmmakers. What a gorgeous piece of film-making and storytelling. It’s the story of a father’s struggle to raise a blind son. There’s considerably more to the tale, but my point in mentioning the film is to point to something deeper.
Iranians and Iranian culture have a lot to teach us.
Iranian culture, at present, is detestable in many ways. No doubt. The treatment of women is an obvious concern. Islam is a sick, gross religion by any standard. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who HATES the Islamic religion more than me. Yep. Read the Koran (unlike the Bible, you can power through the Koran in a couple nights). It doesn’t even pretend to be anything more than a document to kill those with whom it disagrees. Revolting. I just want to make that clear. I am no apologist for the Muslim faith. Not even close.
But that is a far cry from wanting to use the blunt instrument of state force to change a culture.
Can you get that?
Fuck Islamic clerics. Fuck Islam. Fuck the religion’s natural impulse to repress its adherents. Fuck ‘em all.
But don’t KILL them, their families, their grandmas, and their puppies.
The only reasonable way to change a culture is to trade, social intercourse. Give those cultures online access, Western popular culture. Revolutions will spark from within. That’s what ultimately will win the hearts and minds. Trade. Commerce. Industry. Value for value.
The United States military is so over-fed, over-funded, and over joyed at killing for damn near any reason that it lobbies HARD for exercising such energy. And now that the United States has left the ancient culture of Iraq in ruins, it has for sure set its sights on Iran.
The geography of Iran doesn’t help matters. It does appear the United States is closing in, anecdotally at least. Find a basic political map of the world. Pointing toward Southwest Asia, you’ll notice almost immediately the United States is raw dogging countries to Iran’s immediate west (Iraq), Iran’s immediate east (Afghanistan), and the US basically owns Pakistan in everything except name. If this were a scenario on the street, the acidy taste in the back of your throat would tell you you’re being surrounded, fool. Yep. And to worsen things just a smidge, key bodies of water like the Caspian Sea (to the north) and the Persian Gulf (to the southwest) hold strategic interests for Western nations especially as they relate to energy production (the literal lifeblood of our civilization).
The Iran we know and are taught to fear today is largely a product of US meddling. And as with all US fingering of other cultures, the blowback has been severe. SEVERE. The official Irianian state is littered with crazies who wish for nothing more than full military engagement with the US. And though the US will LOSE, the way it has lost EVERY military battle since basically the War of 1812 (and the recent defeats by people living in caves has been particularly embarrassing), the lives taken in the process will be catastrophic. Estimates had the Vietnamese casualties at close to TWO MILLION souls gone, but, YET, it was the US who had to leave with its tail between its legs in the early 1970s. The US never learns. When you invade someone’s home, s/he’ll defend it to the death. Wouldn’t you?
Again, my view of Iranian culture is to engage them socially. Engage them with products. Placing an iPhone in a Persian babe’s burka is so much more radical than bombing her city. Killing her family members and close friends will only serve to emotionally push her in the direction of apocalyptic zealots. An iPhone will get her, in supremely secret moments, shaking her booty to the latest garbage R&B song. Movies will cause her to fall in love with fashions and vampires who play softball while whispering. Hahahaha.
If I could travel, I’d try to go to the Middle East, and Iran in particular. Friends have gone, and they report how WONDERFUL Perisan and Arab people are. They’re incredibly generous, welcoming. It’s like stepping back in time, socially, in many ways. Not always a good thing, I’ll grant, but some people PREFER to live that way, I guess.
It’s so important NOT to be a chauvinist culturally. Yes, of course, I believe some cultures ARE better. I certainly want the comforts of modern Western culture. I am its champion. I love free trade, free interaction, free EVERYTHING. But I also know how destructive our culture is in many ways. It’s a swaggering, macho, dumb way to live. What I want is diversity of ideas, multiple ways of looking at life, and then watching the implications.
Freedom, the ability to decide for oneself, is a basic ontological right. I hold that idea in the core of who I am. I do believe Islamic culture is antithetical to a good life, yes. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I don’t wish to force my ideas on anyone. THAT is the difference.
Ideas cannot be stopped, ultimately. They’ll proceed even when you’d rather they didn’t. The universe doesn’t arc toward justice, nor toward truth, but a person can only change IF THEY’RE ALIVE. Not dead.
It’s the power of example.
And I mean it.
*
Craig Edward Kelso is the author of Anarcho-Capitalism (2014),
a primer on the philosophy of peaceful, stateless cooperation. His
curriculum vitae include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from
San Diego State University, and a Post-Baccalaureate secondary education
credential in both Social Science and English Language Arts. Kelso
taught for nearly a decade in the American public school system, and was
voted by colleagues Teacher of the Year, twice in his short tenure,
earning numerous accolades from chambers of commerce, mayors, state
assembly persons, governors, congresspersons, senators, and even
Wal-Mart. Currently he struggles to earn an opportunity to be employed,
working as a laborer, dishwasher. He is deliriously happily married to
Myra Kelso, living in Southern California with their adorable children.
No comments:
Post a Comment