(this is Scott Harrop writing)
Keyed to Ameica’s 4th of July celebration, I have the pleasure of publishing an essay with R.K. Ramazani that is appearing in multiple outlets via Agence Global. One version can be found here. Between us, we’ve condensed about eighty years of studies of the American and Iranian revolutionary experiences into a few short paragraphs.
Our core observations in this essay boil down to:
1. Americans and Iranians have much more in common with each other than either side realizes.
2. Both nations have “revolutionary” traditions that first and foremost were about achieving independence. I wrote in greater detail about the American side two years ago here at justworldnews.
3. Even as both countries over time believed that their revolutions stood for distinct values that they’ve offered to the world, both America and Iran have painful track records of not fully living up to their own norms. Professor Ramazani recently wrote about Iran’s freedom deficit here.
4. International legitimacy… matters. Both societies care deeply about their reputation in the world, even as leaders in both countries have conducted themselves in manners than have hurt their nation’s prestige before the world. The world indeed is watching.
5. Howard Baskerville was right; Americans and Iranians do share many ideals, of independence, constitutionalism, justice, faith, and yes, liberty. (See my backgrounder on the 100th anniversary of his “martydom” in Tabriz)
6. Iran’s present crisis is home grown; lasting solutions to the present crisis must come from within. Yet it’s one Americans can recognize and empathize with from the outside.
Consider reading the actual whole text and give us your feedback. This is just the first hints of larger works being hatched.
Both nations have “revolutionary” traditions that first and foremost were about achieving independence.
Please, please, the US has a long counter- revolutionary tradition. Don’t mix everything, It’s a long long time ago that you fighted for your independance from Britain. Since then, you have accumulated much counter-revolutionnary acts than else : after WWII, you worked undercover in order to prevent socialism to take roots in several EU countries, especially in those where the communist party went underground and fighted for liberation of nazism/fascism (France, Italy, Greece.. and why if you were so democracy loving didn’t you fight against Franco and Salazar ? ) .
Then a few decades after that, you reversed several socialist governments in latin America (Chile, Nicaragua etc.. ), to make is short, you have supported the most cruel dictators, provided they were pro-americans.
What you name freedom is only the freedom of the wealthiest to exploit the poorer. For you freedom only translates in free market. But they are not synonym..
So while I understand why you want the US to establish more friendly relations with Iran, please spare us that kind of highly ideological assertions. Because under the present situation
There is nothing to be proud off in your “liberated Iraq”.
..and even as we speak: in Honduras, a dictatorial regime, which, six days ago came to power (with the obvious complicity of the United States) and, immediately set to work, killing opposition political leaders, closing down the Press, imposing a draconian curfew, using brute force to impose its narrow selfish class interests, celebrates July 4th.
And what does the media have to say? Where are the headlines? Where the denunciations of, not just an allegedly stolen election, but a President (the second in five years in the region) dragged from his bed in the morning and rushed into exile by soldiers brandishing machine guns.
It simply is incredible that minds can be so compartmentalised as to denounce in one country what is greeted with indifference, if not enthusiastically welcomed in the next.
You want to talk about elections? There were elections in Haiti recently and nobody voted because the US Installed regime refused to allow the mass partty of the people from running candidates.
And what did the media say?
Not even ‘sorry, we imposed this government on you, we exiled (again) your elected President and now you are ruled by gangsters selected by the State Department.”
A seventeen year old girl was shot and killed in Gaza two days ago; that would make her about the 2000th in the last couple of years killed, in essence by the United States’s agents and allies. And what did the media, its eyes still red from the tears cried over the killing of another young woman in Iran, have to say? Nothing.
Christiane is right: no nation on earth, none, has been the direct cause of more misery, violence, electoral corruption, torture, detention without trial, in a word, more harm to ordinary people than the United States during the past sixty years.
No other country even comes close and where they do, invariably it is shown that they are agents of the United States.
And where they are not, as in the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, no sooner is their genocidal nature discovered than they are embraced and defended against the fury of their victims by the United States.
And all this, I suspect, is as well known in Iran as it is anywhere else.
sigh, I’m guessing neither one of you actually read the essay. And even point 3 above, both countries have “painful track records” of NOT living up the ideals in their own revolutionary narratives….
At the risk of sounding very self-serving, I’ve been getting quite a few private e-mails about this essay…. The word “tears” is in several of them, so strong are the chords and emotions I think we’ve touched. It’s getting wide re-circulation….. even in Arabic I’m told.
In Iran the main language is Farsi.
I would say that you have picked up on the slogans of both countries, rather than the historical and cultural contexts (and differences). And let me assure you, I have read the “essay” (it wasn’t really that difficult). It is fitting that you end with Baskerville’s words, which could be said to be typical of a naive 24-yearold missionary. Sure, ultimately, when you take away our physical appearance and culture, we’re all just human.
Let me just give a few passages which I question:
…Iranians today are less likely to blame foreigners for perceived failings of the Islamic Republic.
Which Iranians would that be? Certainly not the ruling regime! There just as likely to blame foreigners for all their failings.
the meaning of the truth “all men are created equal” was bitterly contested, leading to a blood-soaked civil war in the 1860’s and to the essentially non-violent civil rights movement in the 1960’s.
Here I believe you’re taking the mid-19th century spin on the Civil War far too literally. I think that the Civil War was fought primarily for economic reasons, and the abolition of slavery was just another economic resource that the Southern States felt was unfairly being withheld from them, which is why they seceded in the first place.
…all three challengers to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sharply criticized his foreign policy style and rhetoric, his questioning of the holocaust, for having badly tarnished Iran’s reputation.
How about just saying that Ahmadinejad’s questioning of the Holocaust made Iran look foolish because it simply was not true?
Americans too understand the importance of international prestige.
And what country doesn’t understand the importance of international presige? The fact that protesters chanted “The whole world is watching” in Chicago in 1968 or that George W. Bush was unpopular in the world (or that Obama, despite appearing to be continuing at least some of the previous administrations policies in Pahkistahn, also appears to enjoy great popularity internationally), does not particularly jibe with your argument.
Two short comments to the other posters:
Christiane: Your thinking and understanding of time appear to be muddled. First there was no EU immediately after WWII. Second, you completely leave out the othe side of the equation – Stalin was behind the Internationale. To tell the truth, I’d prefer the US with all its faults over Stalin (and I believe that so would the vast majority of Europeans).
The Spanish Civil War was before WWII and the forces opposing Franco were backed, again, by the Stalinist Internationale – complete with purges, mass arrests and murders. If you haven’t done so already, I’d highly recommend George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. At the end of the book, Orwell (who came to Spain as an idealist who wanted to volunteer for the International Brigades) describes standing on the border following his escape from Barcelona and saying to his wife that no matter which side wins, there will be fascism in Spain.
Bevin: There is at least a high degree of reasonable doubt surrounding the death of the 17-yearold Palestinian woman. (It wouldn’t be the first time that Hamas or IJ have killed Palestinians in error.)
Gee Dominic, thanks for that tidbit of information. I don’t think that anyone here was really aware of the fact that the dominant language in Iran is Farsi! However, the dominant language in the Middle East is Arabic, and I think that that’s what Scott was alluding to. BTW, almost everything uttered in Iran in Farsi is also translated into Arabic.
“…you have picked up … the slogans of both countries, rather than the historical and cultural contexts and differences ….”
Indeed, indeed, Mr. Critic, but what else is a decent, self-respecting (not to say “respectability-crazed”) ‘you’ to do on a purely ceremonial occasion?
Have a nice Silly Season, everybody.
JES,
Your are very clever trying to muddle things for US citizen who may not be aware of what really succeeded abroad.
The Spanish Civil War was before WWII and the forces opposing Franco were backed, again, by the Stalinist Internationale – complete with purges, mass arrests and murders.
Of course, the Spanish civil war was before WWII. But 1) it was clearly a fascist/totalitarian regime : Franco took the power from the democratically elected left by a coup. Then, his unjust regime lasted much much longer than WWII : it only ended with his death in 1975. So, since the Americans were already in EU : why didn’t they liberate the Spaniards and the Portuguese ? Why did they stop in France and Italy ? Wasn’t Franco first supported by and then supporting Hitler & Mussolini ?
Your thinking and understanding of time appear to be muddled. First there was no EU immediately after WWII.
So now you want to teach history to an European who lived through all the stages of the EU construction !! come on. EU was just a shortcut used for convenience. You are arguing for the pleasure of arguing here.
Second, you completely leave out the othe side of the equation – Stalin was behind the Internationale.
There were (at least and I’m caricaturing here) three different groups supporting the Popular Front in Spain : the socialist and reformists, the anarcho-syndicalist (probably the strongest force, who very critical of the communist party) and the communists. The Internationale wasn’t only Statlin; it was a large EU movements and a high number of other EU workers flooded in Spain in order to help them against Franco. Spare us your Cold war caricatures.
To tell the truth, I’d prefer the US with all its faults over Stalin (and I believe that so would the vast majority of Europeans).
dito : spare us your Cold War caricatural attitudes.
If you haven’t done so already, I’d highly recommend George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. At the end of the book, Orwell (who came to Spain as an idealist who wanted to volunteer for the International Brigades) describes standing on the border following his escape from Barcelona and saying to his wife that no matter which side wins, there will be fascism in Spain.
Concerning Orwell, I’ve read 1984.. and it is fascinating to apply it to the Bush administration way of lying and propaganda media. As for Orwell comment on Spain, it is unwarranted.. since they are liberate from Franco, they are just as democratic as any other country and with Zappatero I’d even say, they are more democratic than the US who reelected Bush for a second term..
>> Had the colonies failed in that struggle for freedom to govern themselves, the Declaration of Independence’s famous “unalienable” rights to equality, liberty, and life would have been rendered not self-evident.
Really? Is Canada that bad?
Christiane, irrespective of how Franco came to power or how evil he was (and my parents lost good friends fighting on the side of the Republicans in Spain), he did maintain strict neutrality during WWII. Would you have had the United States invade and “liberate” Spain under those circumstances? Perhaps they should have “liberated” Switzerland while they were at it?
There were indeed three groups making up the Popular Front in Spain: POUM (the Trotskyites), the Anarchists (who were traditionally strong in Catalonia, but not elsewhere), and the Communist-controlled International Brigades, which were the dominant force in all of Spain and were both armed and commanded directly out of Moscow. The Internationale was – and this is well documented – a Stalinist front. It appears that everyone except for you has finally come to accept this!
I think that my suggestion of you actually reading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is lost on you. While 1984 is fiction, Homage to Catalonia is non-fiction. Much of the imagery in 1984 was actually taken directly from Orwell’s experiences in Spain. Let me give you a hint: These were not limited to the Franco and the facists! The Stalinists accused the POUM, the smallest of the militias to which Orwell belonged, of being a fascist “Fifth Column” and carried out mass arrests and murders. Orwell, who had been seriously wounded several weeks before at the front, was in a Barcelona hospital recuperating, and that’s how he managed to escape.
Finally, apart from your muddling, yet again, the chronology, I might remind you that Jose Maria Aznar served as prime minister of Spain for eight years before Zapatero.
BTW Christiane, you might just want to have a look here to see what exactly post-WWII Communism was like in “EU”.
The resident of the glass house interjected:
“There is at least a high degree of reasonable doubt surrounding the death of the 17-yearold Palestinian woman. (It wouldn’t be the first time that Hamas or IJ have killed Palestinians in error.)”
But there is no doubt about who committed war crimes involving hundreds of armed Palestinian civilians in Gaza, eh Mr. apologist?
….That should have been UN-armed, not to mention other crimes against humanity.
LOL @ D. Mathews.
Look at what you wrote: ‘…hundreds of armed Palestinian civilians in Gaza….” Is that some kind of Freudian slip, eh Mr. Pallywood?
including THIS hemosphere!
Since the 1970s, the military dimension of Israel’s relations with Latin America-especially with Central America-has taken precedence over all other aspects. Given this development, the seven books under review offer significant information and analysis on the military component of Israeli foreign policy in Latin America. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, in The Israeli Connection: Who lsrael Arms and Why, entitles his chapter on Latin America “The Friendly Hemisphere.” According to this academic at the University of Haifa, Israel has not only won friends but made true believers out of many Latin Americans. Admirers of Israel have included Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, Guatemala’s General Romeo Lucas Garcia, El Salvador’s Roberto D’Aubuisson, General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, and the late Anastasio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua. Indeed, Israel is generally admired in Latin American military circles for its macho image of firmness, ruthlessness, and efficiency. Although Israel has friends in the civilian sector as well, the Latin American military establishment is where most of Israel’s friends are found and where Israel continues to cultivate support.
Just a gift to someone who dares not contest the damning indictment sitting in front of his face. De asini vmbra disceptare!
Oh yea? Well here’s a gift for you putz:
The report shows that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, killing three Israeli civilians, injuring scores and driving thousands from their homes. “Such unlawful attacks constitute war crimes and are unacceptable,” added Donatella Rovera.
you might just want to have a look here to see what exactly post-WWII Communism was like in “EU”.
Yup. Kind of like living under a Central American dictator of yore … and yours:
Since the 1970s, the military dimension of Israel’s relations with Latin America-especially with Central America-has taken precedence over all other aspects. Given this development, the seven books under review offer significant information and analysis on the military component of Israeli foreign policy in Latin America. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, in “The Israeli Connection: Who lsrael Arms and Why”, entitles his chapter on Latin America “The Friendly Hemisphere.” According to this academic at the University of Haifa, Israel has not only won friends but made true believers out of many Latin Americans. Admirers of Israel have included Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, Guatemala’s General Romeo Lucas Garcia, El Salvador’s Roberto D’Aubuisson, General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, and the late Anastasio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua. Indeed, Israel is generally admired in Latin American military circles for its macho image of firmness, ruthlessness, and efficiency. Although Israel has friends in the civilian sector as well, the Latin American military establishment is where most of Israel’s friends are found and where Israel continues to cultivate support.
Aude sapere!
Mr. D. Mathews, apart from your obsessive hatred of anything Israeli, do you think you could tell us how exactly the previous rant relates to the topic of this thread which is, I believe, the essay by Scott Harrop and R.K. Ramazani?
Right on cue as usual (I was wondering how long it would take you)! You were the one coaxing the conversion onwards on such topics as ‘communism’ and ‘Franco’, while trying your best to steer clear of anything that would taint Israel in the slightest. In the end, sliming your opponent is the only recourse for someone who finds himself boxed in a corner!
…Which brings me to the point that can best be summarized by that eternal question:
“Why do you look at the twig that’s in your brother’s eye, and pay no attention to the long piece of timber that’s in your own eye?”
Scott,
To return to your article, you were right, I didnt’ read it at first : I was so angered by the pseudo naive way you have to put Iran and the US at the same level, as two similar revolutionary countries, that I wrote my first comment right away.
I have now read your article, which contains nothing which could change my opinion on what you wrote on this blog. I’m still shocked by your comparison : Iran and the US can’t be put at the same level. When I think about it, what really angers me is that IMO there are two ways you can breach the Human Rights Laws (or the fundamental rights) :
1) You can deny the rights of the individuums : you imprison people without trial, you hire people depending on their race or depending on their social classes instead of second their merits.. you torture those who don’t agree with you, you censor the press and media, etc, but all that only concerns your own country.
2) You can deny these rights to another country as a whole, that is invading it, occupying it, or putting all other kinds of pressures on it in order to exploit its ressources or take more land and increase your own power. That was formerly the case of the colonial powers. The US now has taken that role up, but in a more insidious way : all the wars undertaken by the US are pretendiously done for “humanitarian reasons” in order to “liberate” the citizen of these other countries; when these reasons don’t exist, they are invented (see the lies which allowed the invasion of Irak).
Of course, neither way of breaching the fundamental rights is commendable, but IMO the second is worse, because it concerns a whole country and of course can’t be achieved without at the same time breaching the individual rights of the citizen living in that other country : level 2) can’t exist without level 1), as has been made clear in Iraq.
That’s why, IMO you can’t put Iran and the US in the same basket : Iran since a long time has not attacked another country first (they just defended themselves from Irak which was encouraged in this war by the US), while Bush has attacked two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) and Obama has almost added a third (Pakistan, or at least its so called tribal zones). So how dare you compare the two situations of Iran and Irak, not to speak of the fact that the US encouraged the coup against Mossadegh and then unflailingly supported the shah, as he was treating its citizen even worse than the actual mullahs ?
Up untill now, Obama as far as one can read his foreign policy is waging the same international policy as Bush (he has only put gloves on) : he is for instance planning another huge US ambassy in Pakistan only second to that of Iraq (see Tom Dispatch for more) : he is projecting the US power on Asia, continuing the work of the neocons. And even worse, with the unending sanctions imposed to Iran, the US is well on the way of treating Iran like Iraq : strangle it by sanctions and invade/change regime when they are exhausted.
Frankly, I find it difficult to swallow that well meaning people like you are not able to see how angering that kind of comparisons can be for the rest of the world. You are accusing yourself (well your country) of the smallest breaches, but you leave out the worse ones.
It is really a problem for me, that good people like you aren’t able to see how ethno/Americano centric their positions are, even when they are full of goodwill toward other countries, as is your case with Iran.
Both nations have “revolutionary” traditions
Let check the similarities here:
John Docker is a cultural theorist working at the Australian National University.
Dose any one see the Similarities here?
The US now has taken that role up, but in a more insidious way : all the wars undertaken by the US are pretendiously done for “humanitarian reasons” in order to “liberate” the citizen of these other countries….
And yet, Christiane, you would have had the US invade and “liberate” neutral Spain. Odd.
You were the one coaxing the conversion onwards on such topics as ‘communism’ and ‘Franco’, while trying your best to steer clear of anything that would taint Israel in the slightest.
Preposterous! What makes you think, D. Mathews, that I am as one-dimensional and obsessed as you?
Just for the record, and so as to put the correct terms to the appropriate meanings:
The Internationale is a song written by Eugene Pottier, a communard of the Paris Commune of 1871, which was the first time the working proletariat had taken state power anywhere in the world (and less than 30 years after such a thing was first conceived of by Frederick Engels, as being possible at all). The Paris Commune was drowned in blood but Pottier survived. The Internationale is still sung by communists all over the world as a kind of anthem. The name of Frantz Fanon’s book “Les Damnes de la Terre” is taken from the first line of Pottier’s original French version: “Debout, les damnes del la terre!”
The International Brigades were formed from volunteers of many countries to fight the fascists in Spain in the 1930s at a time when the governments of the “western democracies” had a policy of conniving with the fascists in general and excluding the Soviet Union, and of blockading the Spanish Republic in particular. One of the many things that can be said about the International Brigades is that because of them, no-one can ever pretend that the nature of fascism was not well known and widely known in the time of its beginning, in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Comintern, or Communist International (CI), or Third International was formed in 1919 two years after the Great Russian Revolution. Its main business in its congresses was to work out the strategy and tactics of internationalism, which is the topic that underlies JWN and which sometimes comes to the surface here. The early Congresses were minuted verbatim and those fascinating minutes are on the Internet. The last Congress of the Communist International was in 1935 when G Dimitrov was its General Secretary. Dimitrov was the person accused in the Reichstag Fire trial, who turned the tables on the prosecution. This last CI Congress adopted the Popular Front tactic of opposing fascism, thereby reversing earlier characterisations of the non-communist left as “social fascists”. The Comintern was disbanded in 1943, supposedly on the orders of Joseph Stalin, under whose leadership many CI cadres had perished in the Soviet Union, including at least three South African ones.
In many ways the Comintern laid down the theoretical and tactical framework for the liberation of the vast majority of the world’s population from colonialism and semi-colonialism, a process which accelerated after the defeat of the Nazi fascists in 1945, and which is now all but complete. It was under the direction of the Comintern that the Communist Party of South Africa became the first South African political party to demand black majority rule (in 1928).
Thank you Dominic for that correction. Yes, I should have dropped the “e” at the end of “International”, or used the abbreviation “Comintern”; But then you knew what I meant.
Just a few points about Spain and the Popular Front in particular. The Popular Front (both in Spain and elsewhere) was thoroughly permeated with agents of the Comintern who reported back to Moscow.
The International Brigades were armed by Moscow and commanded by officers either from the Red Army or those affiliated with the Comintern. It was an NKVD intrigue that initiated the street fighting and mass arrests in Barcelona that resulted in the liquidation of the POUM. To this day there are those who are convinced that the POUM were working as a fascist fifth-column because of the highly effective and disciplined propaganda of the NKVD and its organs in the Comintern. (Which was likely where Orwell took his idea for “newspeak” in 1984.)
I also find it interesting that you left out the part about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939, following which the Comintern and its affiliated unions essentially sided with the fascists. (There were even cases where the longshoremens’ unions in the US refused to load lend-lease supplies.) Of course, this ended promptly on June 21, 1941.
O.k., JES, then let me reply in kind and ask you personally what you call your brand of internationalism, if you have any?
Is it Peace-in-our-Timism? Chamberlainism? International Orwellism? Sans-fronteirism? Geldofism-Bonoism? They’ve-got-the-power-and-we-can-make-them-use-itism? Please say.
Otherwise, and to the list, let me point out that in the British Empire of half a century or so ago, which I remember quite well, there was very little of the internationalism that is affected today, for example by the G8 that is meeting in Italy right now, including Mr “save the world” Gordon Brown.
I am a communist and I know where my internationalism comes from. I know that the communist parties that we have, including the South African Communist Party of which I am a member, came out of the split in the Social Democrats whereby the majority of them supported their respective countries in the inter-imperialist world war of 1914-1918. Therefore the very genesis of the communist parties, not just in 1848 or 1871 but in 1914 and 1917 and 1919, was internationalism, and against war, and against colonialism. Our institutions including the Comintern and the Congress of the Peoples of the East have defined internationalism. We have since won all the arguments about internationalism, to such an extent that the G8 of today wants to steal our clothes, and people like JES have to try to pretend that our work was really their work, just like the (white, Orwellist) Democratic Alliance of South Africa now pretends to wear the clothes of our liberation movement.
Dominic, do you think that you could parse the following incoherent jibberish for me:
Otherwise, and to the list, let me point out that in the British Empire of half a century or so ago, which I remember quite well, there was very little of the internationalism that is affected today, for example by the G8 that is meeting in Italy right now, including Mr “save the world” Gordon Brown.
I don’t think that I have advocated any “-ism” here, at least not with the religious ferocity (talk about Catholicism!) that you have expressed toward your Communist “belief”.
I particularly got a kick out of your pointing out that George Orwell was “white”. As you did not reply to Vadim’s assertion that you are a “white European”, we can assume that you are every bit as white, and every bit as European as Orwell.
Dear JES, it is not all about you and it is not all addressed to you, personally. Is that clear enough?
It is the South African political party called the DA that is white, and relentlessly, monotonously Orwellist, and trying to hold itself out as more liberatory than the (mostly black) liberation movement, all at the same time.
It is commonplace to say that there is nobody to be found in SA who supported apartheid, just as there are hardly any people to be found internationally who are not nowadays claiming to be internationalists. But some of us paid our dues and some of us did not, JES, so some of us are phoneys, aren’t we?
Some of us have no history of our own and some of us who have no history like to ponce off other peoples’ history, isn’t that so, JES?
I hope it’s all clear for you now. It’s a pity you couldn’t come up with any basis of your own for internationalism, but not a surprise.