N.Y. Site Transcends Boundaries
So Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is forbidden by the United States to visit Ground Zero. Iran’s president is to address the United Nations tomorrow, and while in New York, he had hoped to go to the World Trade Center site, as so many visitors do. New York authorities, together with the US State Department, said no. The prohibition was seconded by Hillary Clinton - she called the idea “unacceptable” - and by Rudy Giuliani, who blasted Ahmadinejad for his “threats against America and Israel.”
What else might have happened here? Ahmadinejad is notorious for having denied the Holocaust, threatened Israel, and demonized America. He is also the elected president of a nation that stands, together with the United States, on the edge of an abyss. Does this action move us back from that edge, or closer to it?
No one can visit the World Trade Center site, even as construction daily transforms it, without a vivid sense of the staggering tragedy that took place there. Indeed, the event transcends mundane boundaries, even including old conflicts. In the days after Sep. 11, 2001, one of the first nations to express compassion for American pain was Iran. Then-President Mohammed Khatami, in an interview with CNN, sent, as he said, “deepest condolences to the nation of America and . . . sorrow for the tragic event of September 11. What occurred was a disaster . . . the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen.”
The scorched acreage at what was quickly dubbed “Ground Zero” was, at first, a wound inflicted on the human family. All over the globe, especially through that constantly rebroadcast television footage, people experienced what had happened in New York as happening to them. One fact long gone down the memory hole is that, when the United States launched its military campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tehran was supportive. The old enmity had been transcended, precisely, by the hurt that Iranians, too, felt after Sept. 11. “I would also like to add,” Khatami told CNN that fall, “that the Americans were not the only ones who suffered.” In that suffering, most of the world was united.
Ahmadinejad is no Khatami, but the United States has steadily treated Iran as if it is only an enemy. Today’s rebuff to the current president is of a piece with a long history of omni-political denigration aimed at Tehran. After all, it was when the reform-minded Khatami was Iran’s leader that George W. Bush, in 2002, hung that nation on the “Axis of Evil.” Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University, scheduled for today, has generated fierce controversy, but even when it was Khatami visiting Harvard a year ago, then-Governor Mitt Romney ordered state authorities to have nothing to do with protecting his security.
The extremist Ahmadinejad rode to power on Iranian reactions to the steady insult from America. This new insult reinforces him at home, just as moderate, relatively pro-Western opposition forces are jelling there. (One week ago, Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was elected speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that oversees Iran’s Supreme Leader.)
It was George W. Bush who transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of a singularly American victimhood. Sept. 11, 2001, became our wound alone, and New York’s ravaged precinct became a restricted preserve, as global sympathy for the United States curdled into fear of it.
What if, instead of shunting Ahmadinejad aside as one unworthy to enter the sanctuary of our national trauma, we Americans had said, “Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt. Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place.”
If Americans, across the political divide, are still too traumatized by what Ground Zero memorializes to contemplate such a stance, it is because Osama bin Laden’s crime remains unadjudicated. Bin Laden still at large, releasing videos, inspiring legions, is the living emblem of American paralysis.
Here is George Bush’s most grievous failure: Instead of enabling his nation to reckon with the blow of Sept. 11, and move on from it, he has worsened that anguish immeasurably. Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.
James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe.
© 2007 The Boston Globe
I was about a mile from the trade center when it fell and we all rushed out on the roof and watched the buildings go down. I hate to be insensitive, but it was a fascinating spectacle. Thinking back on the folks who watched it with me, I believe we were all glad we weren’t there that was the main thought going through our heads, and I’m sure we felt remotely for the folks who were. One or two of whom turned out to be friends. A fireman who lived through it, a young lady who died in it. That was sad.
The reality of the trade center at that individual moment in time disconnected from bush and cheney’s war rhetoric was that it was just big buildings crumbling down in new york city, pretty bad for the people who were in it more sorrowful still for their families and friends.
Wealthy tourists flock there now with digital cameras as if an ugly modern construction site is worthy of a photograph. Maybe in the right light I guess.
In truth New York is pretty much a horrible place for human beings unless you are well connected and well heeled live on the west or east side of the park maybe and can afford to eat in restaurants every day - then you have a lot of barriers to reality.
For those who don’t have that big of a wall, tragedies and disasters happen on a regular basis maybe not so big but mostly related to greed, I think. It’s an arrogant, nasty, big business oriented city, even more so now, which thinks little of anyone who isn’t monied. You know, those folks must have failed somehow, chosen poorly - stupid ignorant insecure kinds of judgmental thoughts, kind of like america.
as time went by, I began to think the trade center was nothing compared to Bam in Iran which crumbled, now that was a beautiful city compared to which the trade center was nothing. Any photograph of that place is beautiful. Or the tsunami, or then Katrina. Or the mountain tops that were blasted to bits in Afghanistan, what an insult to nature. I think some celestial god has orchestrated those events pretty well to make that god’s point, which is, well, I think that’s pretty complicated. I for one am still working through it.
I’m not sure ground zero is a holy place anymore than anywhere else in the universe.
Ground Zero is not a “holy place.” We should reject the entire project of making 9-11 into some sort of state religion. Yes, it was a terrible thing. But it should be viewed in context, & with perspective.
Not only have many other countries suffered much greater tragedies than 9-11, but the US govt itself has been the perpetrator of many of these tragedies. It seems therefore that emotions like “anguish” should be felt first for the greatest crimes against humanity, before they’re felt for crimes relatively far down on the list (& that were arguably somewhat retaliatory). For instance, what the US did in Vietnam was immeasurably worse than 9-11. And what the Bush regime has done (supposedly) in the name of 9-11 is far worse than the tragedy of that one day.
Demogogues like Giuliani & Romney are beneath contempt.
bush’s crass and as always ignorant attitude towards iran and its leader is worthy of the gestapo thug that he is.
he has tried to demonize this president - unlike him, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a democratically elected head of state and should be treated with some degree of respect.
truly, this is impossible to do in the united states of israel, but it is unbecoming of a great nation.
iran has never done anything to the united states to warrant this treatment other than excercise its rights as a sovereing nation.
the reverse, however, cannot be said of the united states. the cia using kermit roosevelt (nephwew of teddy) ran operation ajax in 1953 as proxy mercenaries for brtiish petroleum to depose then prime minister Mohammed Mosaddeq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh
and then install the hated shah (thrown out like the trash in 79)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_shah,
who ran a brutal regime of hate and torture, i guess he was man after bush’s heart. two peas in a pod.
chomsky has documented israel’s desire and manipultation of the united states to attack iran since the 80’s and it looks like they are finally getting their way.
while iran is pursuing a nuclear program within the legal framework that any country may pursue, israel and its proxy, the us government, have created a whirlwind of misninformation and lies about their intentions as they beat the drums of war.
Ahmadinejad is villified as the devil but he is not even the leader of iran (he is the president, but that is not like the position stolen/held by bush. it is more of a figure head situation in iran) that job of leader falls to the ayatollahs, who have forbidden the development of a nuclear wweapon.
any reasonable person would admit that it would be suicide for them to build one and they well understand that.
as Ahmadinejad said last night on 60 minutes - the time of the bomb is over.
the only nation who has ever used the bomb is the united states - and you guys dropped two, on the defenceless cities of a defeated country, cities literally made of paper, not to end the war as is often cited - but rather for truman to see the bomb in action (he was curious) and as a warning to the russians.
we also know that nixon, prior to his impeachment threat, was planning to nuke cambodia.
we know that nixon threatened the russians with nuclear strikes and did that often.
you accuse iran of wanting the bomb but you are the only psychos in the world who would ever use them. you and your masters in tel aviv.
get off your high horses.
Despite the lies and distortions aimed at Ahmadinejad, the fact that he was refused access to the site of the twin towers attack where he hoped to lay a wreath as an act of respect and good will says more about the state of our own country than it does about Iran. Iran had nothing to do with the attacks against us but while we distort Ahmadinejad’s words to invent threats, the threats againt Iran by our own extremist and criminal leadership are very real. The world can see the reality of the situation and Iran comes out looking much better for it in comparison to our own niggardly and hateful treatment of Iran’s president.
So Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to be in New York and he is going to talk.
What might he say that has so many GOP sympathetic media outlets crying for him to be silenced or sent away before he can speak?
Remember when a political leader was supposed to speak and influence with words and present a point of view that could be considered, accepted or challenged by any thinking adult with the ability to make up their own damn mind?
What has America (particularly in ‘leadership’ become that a simple speech is so feared that it must be silenced before it can be heard? Which nation is truly tightening the grip of world terror?
It has been said that it would be a ‘travesty’ for him to visit the old WTC site. Why? Is there now clear precursor evidence that Iran sanctioned and supported the attack in 2001? If so, present the evidence and make the case clear.
He has also been accused of having a stated goal to wipe Israel off the map. Not true either. He has stated that Israel being plopped down in the middle of what was sovereign territory after World War 2 is an ongoing irritant, especially since they have been given a huge advantage in military power by the USA to give them threatening capabilities to affect the whole region.
If the actions of Nazi Germany warranted providing all displaced Jews with a stable homeland, then it should have been carved out of Germany’s territory, but Jerusalem was what they wanted to reclaim and after the horrors they faced, they were given what they wanted, local considerations and people in the region almost 2000 years later be damned.
He has also been accused (by the USA) of being an ‘exporter of global terrorism’. Does anyone who reads and posts to CD even need to be told how laughable this is from the source speaking it?
This behavior is ridiculous and the ‘leaders’ in the USA should be ashamed of themselves for this kind of brainless fearmongering.
“The prohibition was seconded by Hillary Clinton - she called the idea “unacceptable” - and by Rudy Giuliani, who blasted Ahmadinejad for his “threats against America and Israel.””
Comments like these show me that Clinton and Giuliani are followers and not leaders. Neither he or his country had anything to do with the attack. Even if we don’t like what the guy says. If he comes in peace and desires to pay his respects, then he should be allowed the visit. As two people seeking this country’s highest position, Clinton and Giuliani could have been civil for a few moments and welcomed him to the site. Thanked him for his consideration and then go back to work. That would have been the American and Christian thing to do.
“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
~ Moshe Dayan ~
This snub shows what Hillary and Giuliani would be like with presidential power. It’s harder to bring the nation together through peace than through war. Neither one gives me any hope that things will change with the 2008 elections.
While this was a good piece overall, I was disspointed that Carroll repeated the distortions and outright lies about Ahmadinejad, even calling him an “extremist”. If he is an extremist, that practically all the US Senate is also.
Carroll wisely relates, “Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt.” That is the key point, one also spoken of by Einstein and the TRUE wise men (and women) of this world.
Bush holds true to his enthrall to the calling of Mars, the god of war, and its human counterpart, the military-industrial complex (now ultimately operating in synch with the prison-industrial complex AND big pharma. Couldn’t have a nation accepting so much insanity if a sizable portion of its population wasn’t under THE influence, notably, complacency-producing anti-depressant drugs, also good for a variety of angst-producing policies, from failed labor rights to poisoned products.)
Today is the onset of Libra, the autumn equinox. Libra, ruled by Venus represents the RULE of law, rather than force first. Libra is the sign most associated with diplomacy, compromise and reaching agreements. Indeed, the opportunity to avert yet another completely unnecessary war is being wasted on Bush and his idiot enablers. Iran’s president will come out looking like the one bringing the olive branch, as this nation of barbarians stomps upon it in the name of self-righteous hubris. The lords of karma are watching as America’s fate, and how intense the blowback of karma becomes… PRAY.
Hey c’mon now Osama said he didn’t do it.
USA police forces don’t think so either.
What might Ahmadinejad have to say at that hole in the ground that the USA gov’t does not want the people to hear?
I thought this was a free country
Since when is visiting a site a crime?
And if anybody saw the Sixty minutes show yesterday, one thing is clear-
He is a much smarter man than Bush.
Looks like Rudy and Georgie and Hilly, and Obie and Mitty won’t get invited to the Ayatollah’s birthday party.
Trite and petty are hallmarks; just like corrupt and murderous.
No one in the US may want to hear what the man might have to say; but, he is an elected official of a large country. Maybe he’d just like to offer his respects and condolences. Maybe he’ll leave the politicizing of wholesale murder to the US politicians for whatever it is worth to them.
Hey, don’cha know “Osama-at-large” is exactly the way Bush wants to keep things. The fear card is being played for all its worth. The more that the American people can be convinced that they are under immediate threat, the more terrorized they feel, the better in the politics of the present administration. James Carroll is a wiser, better writer than to not see through this “holy site” s**t.
Siouxrose September 24th, 2007 1:21 pm
“Iran’s president will come out looking like the one bringing the olive branch, as this nation of barbarians stomps upon it in the name of self-righteous hubris. The lords of karma are watching as America’s fate, and how intense the blowback of karma becomes… PRAY.”
Well spoken… I can’t add another word to improve on this obiter dictum…
I listened to Ahmadinijad’s interview on 60 minutes and quite frankly I’d be more inclined to vote for him than any of our so called candidates. He sounded more to me like Noam Chomsky than a “global terrorist”. Most of his talking points were the same talking points we re-hash here on CD daily. WhiteRose, I too am wondering why they are so fearful of letting this man speak? Perhaps the truth is too dangerous for them?
Welcome to our Free Country. See all the values that you hate us for, from the comfort of your hotel room…..
Since when do we tell Leaders of other Countries where they can go and not go in our wonderfully free country? This sound like communist China, Germany or Russa.
The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu.
“A War is won or lost before it is ever fought”
It is evident here that any War with Iran perpetrated by US Administration is already LOST… US Diplomacy is non existent and highly IMMATURE by International Standards…The rudeness of American Administration is on display for all the world to see…to quote Kristina if I may… “He sounded more to me like Noam Chomsky than a global terrorist”….
I wouldn’t vote for Ahmadinijad - keep in mind he forces women in his country to wear the veil, and he condones stoning. He even wanted two separate sidewalks, one sidewalk for women and one for men. He may be more intelligent than bUSH - wouldn’t take much, but he’s a misogynist as well.
Could it be that tptb are fearful (no, terrified) that Ahmadinejad may have something to say about the TRUTH of 9/11 obfuscated by the Bush administration and the bogus 9/11 Commission???
Marikken, I was being somewhat facetious with that statement but honestly the man makes more sense than Bush ever has and I don’t even speak Farsi!
Um, Marikken.
‘He’ individually does not force women to wear the veil or anything else, but even if his own beliefs differed, he also has a very large power base in his country of very old religious idealogues.
These people, in a direct confrontation would use their influence to make him very dead and probably start a religious civil war in the process.
Those issues, I would suggest are for Iranians to deal with, not Americans.
If the Iranian people move in large enough numbers, leaders will change, either within themselves, or by being replaced.
The USA needs to stop meddling in cultures they’ve taken no time to understand.
“Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.”
Designating it a “holy place” would imply that the people who died there were martyrs of a sort, and the response of the Smirk would be wholly appropriate; it’s not as if the people working there were devoted to improving the human condition. While many of the victims were innocent, the manual workers, the rescue workers, and the like, there were many who earned the title Ward Churchill gave them, the “little Eichmanns” who keep building their nests of the bones of global corporatism’s victims — and they weren’t just American, but of many nationalities.
“Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place.”
The targets in the attacks were living expressions of America’s global terrorism, and the attacks are at one with that terrorism, not separable from nor opposable to it. ‘Terrorism’ does not come from ‘the outside’ at all: it simply catalyzes the existent state terrorism & forces it to manifest itself publically. It is the confession of the system itself; the call for ’solidarity’ is simply the confession of the captive population that they cannot oppose what they pretend to oppose.
Liberals have to attack Ahmadinejad for the same reason that they have to support a ‘real war on terrorism’ while denouncing (but not defunding nor ending) the invasion & occupation of Iraq . Like John Kerry, they have to vote for imperialism because they cannot admit that there is no enemy outside of the empire’s own making & own sustaining. The identity of the enemy of empire is always shadowy and shifting — one day it’s Khomeini, the next it’s Qaddafi, the next it’s Iraq, the next it’s Milosevic, the next it’s Iran or illegal immigrants. In any case, the enemy always needs to be both inaudible or unintelligible, and omnipresent. To be present, limited, and intelligible, even eloquent, makes it impossible to inflate the enemy into demonic status.
Iran is not nearly as “repressive” as our government would like us to believe. What was most laughable about the interview on 60 minutes was Bush’s scathing commentary sent by his stooge for cbs basically accusing Ahmadinejad of everything HE himself is guilty of! Priceless…
Actually the Iranian government is quite repressive. Check this out:
http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2007/09/18/news-from-iran-6/
That’s not to say we should go bombing them by any stretch of the imagination. As we have seen in Iraq, that only gives the fundamentalists more power, which in turn takes all rights from women.
“Here is George Bush’s most grievous failure: Instead of enabling his nation to reckon with the blow of Sept. 11, and move on from it, he has worsened that anguish immeasurably. Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.”
The facts are clear: Cheneybush knew something big was on the way and did not lift a single finger in defense. Cheney, Jeb, Rummy and the rest of the PNACers wished for “a new Pearl Harbor” and got it, coincidentally, less than a year later - that is why Bush could care less about Ground Zero - to him, it’s a Touchdown, a Score, a Dream come True!
To us, Bush desecrated “Ground Zero,” but to Bush: mission accomplished.
And our govt is all for freedom???? get real….. the freedoms we once had in the US are being stripped faster then a stripper eying a big tip. It is our way to destroy any culture who is different from the ideals we set…oh yeah they do have to have recourses we want.So what Ahmadinejad would of laid a wreath at the WTC site and this is a threat?.Have we really been turned into a nation of fearful sheeple? I believe so. The stain on this great countries creditability that the Bu$h Resident in the White House has caused around the world will take far more then words to remove will take deeds not actions of War
I have watched all three Ahmadinejad appearances so far.
Undoubtedly he faced the most hostile and prejudiced crowd of hosts.
CBS, repeating the sabre rattling of the Bushites accused him of having American blood on his hands. We are being forced to believe this accusation but evidence of the Iranian weapons used have never been produced. In one comment Ahmadinejad mentioned that even if a few Iranian weapons had been obtained by the insurgents does the reporter implies that the most powerful military force in the history of mankind has been stalled by a few derepit insurgents using these few weapons? It is a thought provoking statement. CBS reporter asserted that according to President Bush, thanks to the efforts of Ahmadinejad Iran had become a piraiah state. I wonder which of the countries would suite this description better; the US or Iran. And which of the two presidents would be responsible for dragging their countries there; GWB or Ahmadinejad? Whatever the case Ahmadinejad has achieved most of the goals of his travel this time around and mostly thanks to our miscaculations and diplomatic inaptitude.
There are two “ground zeros” on the planet. One is in Hiroshima, the other in Nagasaki.
The 9/11 attack was not “a wound inflicted on the human family”. To see such wounds ypu might want to visit Afghanistan or Iraq.
The hole in the ground where the trade canter towers were is not “sacred”. Just holes in the ground.
Ever since the day that changed nothing, americans have turned out to be the world’s biggest cry babies, acting like the ultimate victims of the most horrible atrocity ever. Also the biggest scaredycats, as they quiver with fear lest someone may be holding a shampoo bottle.
To my knowledge, none of the 19 terrorists ON 9/11 were Iranian, and even though 15 of the 19 were Saudis, Bush has allowed Saudi Princes to visit the WTC site. Bush saw to it that 3 passenger planes were used to whisk away all Saudi and Bin Laden family members the day after 9/11 WHEN NO OTHER PASSENGER PLANES WERE ALLOWED TO FLY,(implications being implicit) The insanity speaks for itself, and so does the modus opporandi. The little fella from Iran has just handed a cowboy his own ass.
KRISTINA said, “basically accusing Ahmadinejad of everything HE himself is guilty of! Priceless.” Right on!
DICTENFREUND: Your analysis of evil (personified) was powerful. I remember when I read CS Lewis I wondered how a mind so supposedly given to Christian beliefs could penetrate the veil of evil with such a profound sense of familiarity. Makes you wonder. How is it that some souls recognize the motives and oeprational instructions of those that seem to issue forth from the dark side?
SIMONHHH: Thank you for the acknowledgement. I often learn from your insightful postings.
Part of the new conservatives is that they need an enemy. Iran fits the bill. They need someone to hate. John Dean called these people Authoritarians. Hiliary seems to be one of them. She must have gotten the brown acid at Woodstock.
Whether or not Ahmadinejad is an “extremist” is irrelevant imo when you consider that a bunch of extremists is running the show here in the USA.
I love how they brought him in ala The Iron Sheik to face Lee Bollinger. What are we all supposed to do? Chant “USA” and throw tomatoes at him while we wait for Hulk Hogan or Sgt. Slaughter to come in and kick his ass while Ahmadinejad had bollinger in the Camel Clutch?
Bush Co. needs a new heel to rail against so that they have an excuse to go raze Iran. After all, the way they see it, Iran’s got more Black Gold and Texas Tea than they know what to do with.
If Iran’s repressive, eh. The USA is repressive. If we truly wanted these nations to be Democracies (and I don’t doubt that Iran’s underbelly is exaggerated by the US media), we’d lead by example. We’d clean our house first.
I mean, we have inequality issues in our own backyard, and we’re going to chastise Iran?
But if anyone truly thinks that our American elites want to go around liberating nations caught in the grasp of extremism, I have property on Pluto I’d like them to buy.
GROUND ‘O’ IS BEING TRANSFORMED INTO A PROPAGANDA COW FOR BUSH AND THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AND THEY DO NOT WANT TO SHARE THAT WITH ANY COUNTRY OR PERSON.
damien… I couldn’t have said it better myself and they are milking the cow for all it’s worth..
Adolf Giuliani once banned the Palestinian leader from a concert arranged for all attendees to UN gathering. It was one of the all time lows for New York, a multicultural city.
George Bush, hypocrite extraordinaire.
Perhaps I’m too sleepy right now to make a fair assessment, but, to me, most of you seem to be missing the point.
What is happening is that all the insulting and all the denigration of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which headlines the dutiful rags a/k/a our “news”papers is a rerun of the demonizing of Saddam Hussein AFTER our government had no further use for him.
Remember, Saddam was supplied with money and arms to fight Iran and the makings of chemical weapons/poison gas by U.S. and European chemical companies. Ronald Reagan and his administration with George H.W. Bush as the-”intelligence”-behind-the-scenes vice president, similar to Cheney’s role now, looked away, lowered their eyes, winked, … whatever … hoping that Iraq would defeat Iran. Impossible. There was a truce, and Iraqi military limped home, and Iraq was now poorer, albeit not necessarily wiser.
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a cruel man, and his sons were even worse, but he knew his country and the opposing factions and kept it all together with an iron hand. For the Shia and the Kurds, Saddam was a very unpleasant fact of life. For the cosmopolitan Sunnis of Baghdad, with women in western dress and no veils, and opportunity for university study and professions, life wasn’t bad at all, and security and safety were the norm.
Less than a century old, Iraq is a country cobbled-together after World War I from bits and pieces of what was called Mesopotamia. It was, it would seem, the careless creation of dipso British diplomats, who with not unusual arrogance and incuriousness about the tribal/sect divisions of the Mideastern area, redrew the map as if they were playing Mideastern Monopoly. A roll of the dice and this or that group of those brown desert people with the flowing robes and with the strange religion were mere pawns to be placed where the British Empire willed. The French were given Lebanon, and the Shia and Sunni folk were moved about hither and yon. As the redrawing of the map was completed with ancient Mesopotamia’s now renamed, divided lands and splintered tribal peoples, one can almost hear the diplomats’ after-a-hard-day’s-work exclamations. “Ah, … jolly good!” “Yes, indeed. Neato, my man.”
It was all about oil then as it is now, and protecting the Persian Gulf Region and the Suez Canal area’s shipping capabilities. The industrial revolution was moving right along and oil and petroleum products were the future. The future came and continues with the same themes.
The self-styled elite of white, patriarchal, Christian, capitalist nations — with foundational underpinnings for many years of the Jewish genius for economics and profit-making financial institutions — fully and arrogantly believe they are the superior model of humankind … MANkind.
And therefore, it follows, who has a better right to all that oil? Mega-wealthy David Rockefeller made a similar comment a few years back.
It seems the principles of King Arthur’s Camelot have no standing anymore. In truth, perhaps it was only lip service anyway, and they never were realized. MIGHT MAKES RIGHT is a concept far more profitable than RIGHT MAKES MIGHT. Thus, for those especially interested in profits and control of resources regardless of where they are, MIGHT IS RIGHT.
Having said the above, I lament that, as I’ve said before elsewhere, there is nothing new under the sun. History repeats itself many times over.
The stories are old now. These are the old ways. We can talk them to death, but, in fact, if we keep replaying them, singing them over the fires, so to speak, we are going to be dead as a species. We’re not playing with muskets, cannon and gatling guns anymore.
Everytime the same ploys are used, why do most of us not recognize them as the same ploys?
We are now reading and experiencing the same-old, same-old Saddam-Hussein-demonizing-mode, but now directed at the Iranian President in order to add to the excuses to bomb the country of Iran and its people for another lying reason … and another … and another … if the Iranian President knee-jerks a throwing-down-the-gauntlet kind of response.
By far, the greatest percentage of the total population of Iran are young people.
Will the sheeple start adding more yellow ribbons with SUPPORT THE TROOPS! bumper stickers to their SUVs’? Will the headlines that appear above about the damage done to Iran by U.S. bunker-busting bombs and the crisping deaths and woundings of the Iranian people evoke just more ain’t-it-awful chatter from those of us “in the know”?
If so, that massive Karmic Payback that Sioux Rose mentioned above would seem to me imminently close, like maybe right on our doorstep.
Respect is due, I believe, to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As a Head of State, he has been grossly insulted by another Head of State and vilified in the newspapers.
For Islamic men, maintaining and protecting their honor is almost above all else. Many of us would not agree about many of the remedies for male-violated honor in Iran, but it certainly should be acknowledged that President Ahmadinejad has kept his cool, even when his overtures by letter or formal requests have been ignored or pissed on by the U.S. President, Vice President, particular band-wagon politicians, and TV and print pundits galore.
Evidently a steely prudence has superceded honor, and that is to be respected. I’m sure it is excruciating to be treated as a naughty schoolboy when you a man and a President of a Nation far from your own shores, and by those who both have no manners and eschew the art of diplomacy, instead choosing the crude behavior of the Ugly, Unreasonable, Ignorant, Hypocritical, Recklessly Dangerous, Gun-slinging American.
We have entered the territory of Lawlessness.
And because of that, the earth itself may be destroyed.
Perhaps we each personally now must seriously consider alternatives to chatter right where we … each … are standing.
I do so love “La Marseillaise.”
Bang on, Cee!
CEE MIRACLES: Of course I agree as per the same script being used against the president of Iran as used to demonized Saddam. AS to the stories repeating, I believe mankind has room for new stories. One reason why his-story repeats is that religions, which I term “homage to the old gods” indeed hold minds hostage. Academe is itself the product of the previous church-state where just about anyone who could boast an education had likely been trained by someone whose basis for belief structures issued from that specific intellectual status quo/nexus. It’s a feedback loop, but one that CAN be (in fact must be!) transcended.
Human beings tend to judge reality by their immediate experience. Our records do not go far enough back to lend witness to societies that followed different scripts.
As for my mention of karma’s boomerang, whether regarded as planet or dubious planetary ambassador, Pluto IS the principle of alchemy. We either practice forgiveness and move towards compassion-based world unity or this nation pays the price for all that it’s abducted by means of force and/or false policy over the past century or so. Pluto has NOT opposed the US July 4 Cancer Sun since the nation became its own entity. This planet, linked to Scorpio, at its best connotes the power of the Phoenix to rise from ashes; however, Pluto, as upper “octave” of Mars, is also related to extreme violence, the retaliatory stinger on that symbolic scorpion.
How many enemies has Bush made sure this nation now has? How many have either primitive nuclear arms or the ingenious capacity to devise simple weapons–like those box cutters–that can induce major harm. As our own recent history aptly displays, our massive, bloated, blood sucking military was NO defense against 911; nor is beefing up its ranks (only to send soldiers home as fragments of the persons they formerly were) going to do anything in the way of augmenting security.
REAL national security comes from just foreign and domestic policy, not insidiously enabling the rich to take advantage of the world’s laborers, poison them and blame them for their fate. What is passing for US policy today IS a crime against mankind, and our own citizens will pay the price. Sure, many already are in the way of low wages, inflated costs, poor medical treatments (if any access at all).
Yesterday one of my best men friends told me he stepped on a nail at a job site. He has no insurance. He held his foot which bled for HOURS and finally the wound closed up. (He did go for a tetanus shot a day later.) A boat buddy of his came by and told me his experience in the hospital emergency room taught him he could pretty much do what they could do. The bottom line was learning to dress and clean a wound, learn to sew stitches. How far are all of us from this necessity?
There are universal laws.. and when a person, organization or government entity bucks them, eventually those agencies of “cosmic homeostasis” act. The US is very close to the enactment of that drama.
I thought the Bush administration were supposed to be Christians, mostly. Sounds like they need to go back to the Bible and see what Jesus said about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. The fundamentalists have stolen Christianity, Islam, and Judaism by appeals to ignorance.
“Yes, Ground Zero is a holy place, but Bush is the one who desecrates it.”
Well said….