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Just what did “The Declaration” Declare?

Here in the United States, it’s July 4th, a day we commemorate with fireworks, cook-outs, concerts, and speeches. So what exactly is it that we celebrate?
Nominally, today marks the 231st anniversary of revolutionary America formally declaring its separation from Great Britain. The primary author of the famous document was, of course, Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson’s Monticello home, here in Charlottesville, has become a living educational memorial to Jefferson. I recently was honored to be a “Jefferson Fellow” at the adjoining Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, (ICJS) where scholars, in part, explore the ongoing legacy of Jefferson for our world today.
Despite the ready association of Jefferson with today’s date, do we understand what the core purpose of Jefferson’s Declaration was?
Easy, right? If so, and at the risk of turning this into NPR’s “wait, wait,… don’t tell me” quiz show, then let’s try this question: how did America’s famous Declaration begin? Was it:

a. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”
b. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…”
c. ” When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station….”
d. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.”
e. “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

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If you the reader are like the vast majority of Americans, you will be inclined to answer “b,” but sorry, that is the Declaration’s second paragraph, not the first.

Answer “e” is also incorrect; that’s the opening to the 1945 Vietnamese Declaration (among dozens of Declarations in world history that emulated America’s in one form or another.)
Answer “d” also is incorrect, as this is Article 1 from the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man.
With answer “a” of course being the preamble to the 1789 US Constitution, then you surely knew the answer to be “c.”

Lest we get too confident in our history IQ, how many of us can readily recall just what the 1776 American Declaration… well… “declared?”
Even if you had a solid American history education, don’t feel too bad if you’re a bit confused by the question. Assuming you went to an American school that still taught “civics” in some form, your lessons on “The Declaration” likely included much contemplation of the meaning, the “codes,” of Jefferson’s second paragraph. Just what fundamental “truths” did the new American nation “hold” to be “self-evident?” And what about all that seeming hypocrisy regarding all persons (“men”) being created equal, even as so many of them were then in tolerated bondage?
Until quite recently, very little in the vast scholarship on Jefferson and the Declaration addresses the “simple” question of just what was the Declaration’s purpose? The curious state of such learned discourse is neatly illustrated in a short 1999 text, edited by Joseph Ellis and entitled, “What Did the Declaration Declare?” This book provides splendid examples of the great scholarly debates over the last half of the 20th Century about how the Declaration was written, about the merits or exaggerations in the list of grievances against George III, and just which intellectual current influenced Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration’s second paragraph. Was it John Locke? Or was it the Scottish Enlightenment? Or was it some Saxon mythology that only Jefferson could fathom?
Whatever Jefferson’s intellectual parentage, Abraham Lincoln’s 1859 tribute to Jefferson’s “second paragraph” still nicely sidesteps such inquiry:

“All honor to Jefferson… who had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

Yet from Lincoln to the present, few scholars or pundits have provided much substantive comment about the Declaration’s first sentence, which in full reads:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Parenthetically, my own work focuses on just what Jefferson and his colleagues meant by a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” (I have much to publish on this rarely-considered clause, and yes, it has a rather compelling contemporary ring…. Imagine — American leaders once caring about world opinion.)
I am pleased though to acknowledge that the two-century-old intellectual logjam blocking inquiry into the Declaration’s first sentence has been nicely broken by Harvard’s David Armitage, an historian and “English School” international relations scholar.
In a brilliant 2002 William & Mary Quarterly article and in a slender new book, entitled “The Declaration of Independence: A Global History,” Armitage contends directly that the fundamental purpose of the American Declaration was to…
(drum roll…. turn the page…. whoosh, poof, boom, zing, crackle,sizzle…, bang!….)

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“Charlottesville Goes to War”…

Over the past two months, our Charlottesville TV and print media have given extensive coverage to the pending deployments of locally based Army Guard units to Iraq. As I (Scott) mentioned here recently, my own oldest son is a young officer in the Virginia Army Guard.
While my son lives and works nearby, his particular engineering unit is based in another part of Virginia, and it hasn’t yet been ticketed for a return visit to Iraq. It could happen on short notice, and younger officers are vulnerable to being re-assigned and deployed with units for which they haven’t trained.
By contrast, one of our Guard companies here in Charlottesville will soon make its first deployment to Iraq, after training in the Mississippi delta heat. (Much of this same unit served a year in “Gitmo,” Cuba in 2002.) Most of the reporting has focused on the understandable anxiety facing those to be deployed and their families being left behind. Heart-strings indeed.
Bryan McKenzie, our “upbeat” columnist/reporter for The Daily Progress has at least twice characterized the pending deployment as “Charlottesville Goes to War,” yesterday, and on May 16th.
This provocative characterization grates on several levels.
First, like everywhere else in America, few outside of the deployed and their families are really sacrificing for this war — unless you admit that high gas prices are indeed correlated directly with military operations in Iraq and the ongoing saber rattling with Iran. (Most war supporters strain to deny connections between the Iraq War and high energy prices – but that’s another post!)
Geographically, McKenzie has a point, when he quotes local troop booster Mary Ellen Wooten:

“We’ve had a lot of troops from Charlottesville already deployed but this is the first group that’s primarily from here.”

McKenzie also rightly remembers that,

“We’ve… lost a couple. Cpl. Adam Fargo, U.S. Army, of Greene County and Cpl. Bradley T. Arms, USMC Reserve, of Charlottesville immediately come to mind. With those exceptions, and some in the Shenandoah Valley, Charlottesville seems to have escaped the War on Terror unscathed.”

While McKenzie may think he’s above politics, equating the “war on terror” with the invasion & occupation of Iraq reflects a loaded political judgment — hard to sustain when laid out for examination.
McKenzie gets in a different political point while making a call to support the troops and their families:

“We haven’t had to question our stance of not supporting the war while giving lip service to supporting the troops. Now, whether we support the war or not, we have a vested interest. Our Guardsmen—about 40 of which are based in our own Monticello Guard Armory on Avon Street Extended—are going into Harm’s Way.”
Our neighbors, brothers, friends and co-workers will be going to war, doing their duty whether or not they approve of the politics behind it….
They leave us two options: We can go with them, backing them up and supporting them regardless of our political views or we can self-righteously ignore them and hang their morale out to die. The choice is ours.” (emphasis added)

Continue reading ““Charlottesville Goes to War”…”

Failed States Index & “Failing the Faithful”

The July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine features the 3rd installment of the annual “Failed States Index,” (FSI) a tool intended to identify the world’s “weakest links.” A project of “The Fund for Peace” and Foreign Policy (via its parent, the Carnegie Council for International “Peace”), this year’s top five “winners” are:

Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Chad, and Zimbabwe.

This year’s FSI report covers 177 states, considerably more than the first two studies. Africa is well “represented” among “top” failed states, as are those in the Middle East and West Asia. Among the latter:

Afghanisan #8,
Pakistan #12,
Uzbekistan #22,
Yemen #24,
Lebanon #28,
Egypt #36,
Turkmenistan # 43

Iran, compared to its neighbors, comes in “relatively” well, with an FSI rank at #57. Israel comes in at 67, though no explanatory notes are provided to explain if “Israel” includes the occupied territories or not. “Palestine” is not covered. Conveniently, the study only provides country notes for the first 60 states.
With considerable hesitation, I concede that such reports may be useful in trimming away ideological biases while equipping citizens and policymakers alike to discern what areas of the world may be suffering from, or sliding toward, critical instability. Not just dangers to themselves, states on the verge of implosion “threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away.” (Or so we say. But do we really believe it? That’s another subject.)
Yet this study’s utility, at least to me, slips when it starts with an “elastic” multi-functional definition of a “failed state.”

“A state that is failing has several attributes. One of the most common is the loss of physical control of its territory or a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Other attributes of state failure include the erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services, and the inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. The 12 indicators cover a wide range of elements of the risk of state failure, such as extensive corruption and criminal behavior, inability to collect taxes or otherwise draw on citizen support, large-scale involuntary dislocation of the population, sharp economic decline, group-based inequality, institutionalized persecution or discrimination, severe demographic pressures, brain drain, and environmental decay. States can fail at varying rates through explosion, implosion, erosion, or invasion over different time periods.”

To clarify a bit more, the “Failed States Index” is derived from an aggregation of 12 indicators of state performance:

1. Demographic pressures (e.g. too many people, compared to resources);
2. Refugees (desperate people on the move);
3. Group grievances (people hating each other);
4. Human Flight (brain drain);
5. Uneven development (too many poor);
6. Sudden economic collapse;
7. Deligitimization of the State;
8. Public Services Deterioration;
9. Rule of Law (lack thereof) and Human Rights Violations;
10. Security Confusion (states w/n states?);
11 Factionalism of elites;
12 External Penetration (foreign meddling)

One could get an honest “headache” deconstructing the definitions of each of these FSI indicators and numerous internal contradictions therein. I’ll spare readers, save for the worst.

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Kimberly Dozier: A Year Later

It has been just over a year since Kimberly Dozier, CBS News correspondent, was critically wounded in Iraq. JWN regulars may recall a tribute here, reflecting on her University of Virginia graduate studies and her extraordinary 3 year coverage of the Iraq war.
I am happy to pass along that CBS News aired a one hour program on May 29th, featuring Kimberly Dozier, with fellow UVA product Katie Couric. Title of the program is Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID, A Story of Bravery, Recovery, and Lives Forever Changed. CBSNews now provides transcripts and the full video at its website.
At least for me, much of this is difficult to watch. Yet characteristically Kim, brief accounts of her own painful story transition into longer reflections on the lives lost that day and the families left behind. There’s little overt “political analysis.”
In the list of related videos (and sub-sections) on the right of the link noted above, check the interview given to Harry Smith. Therein, Kimberly hints at getting back to “her” story; if not Baghdad, then surely the Middle East.
The candle is burning brightly for Kimberly Dozier’s recovery and return. Our best wishes stay with her.

Footnote: (as of 6/17/07)
As I watched the program and the support clips at the CBS web site, I couldn’t help but think of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. Today’s WaPo & LATimes both have cover stories regarding the Pentagon’s apparent “compulsion” (pun intended) to deny support for vets so suffering.
Back in 1996, I learned of the subject first hand via work for a year with Amb. Nathaniel Howell and trained PTSD professionals on a sensitive project to evaluate how Kuwaiti society was being rocked by unresolved traumas from the Iraqi invasion and occupation. I confess to having been a bit doubtful at the outset — until I personally witnessed horrendous manifestations of wounds of a different sort.
As the right-wingers so often say, war is hell. (particularly when they wish to dismiss concerns about JIB violations….) But apart from the physical carnage, the chaos of war wreaks its own “hell” on the minds and families of those who “return.”
Supporting the troops means more than just giving them more destructive arms and armour for “the mission.” It also means taking care of them, their whole persons, afterwards.
My mother’s eldest brother recently passed away. He was a kindly man; think Bing Crosby. Yet as far as I know, he never was able to talk in the least about his WWII service…. He had been an ambulance driver for over 3 years in North Africa & Europe. He never resolved the inward horror of what he saw. Rest in peace Uncle Bill.

Waterloo, Iranians & the Mennonite Dialog

On Memorial Day, American and Iranian diplomats finally managed to “talk” in Baghdad, Iraq — as we noted here with approval. The same day, by contrast, protesters forced the cancellation of public sessions of a conference on “spirituality” between Iranian Shia Muslim and Mennonite Christian scholars in Waterloo, Canada.
Since when is talking with Mennonites — that’s right, pacifistic Mennonites – such a perfidious affront that it needs to be forcibly stopped? Is this 2007 or 1527?
While I am still seeking documentation from both sides, perhaps this entry might encourage the protesting academics and conference participants to articulate their positions further, in the discussion below. (That’s an open invitation.)
Let me first try to recount the basic outlines of the dialog and the protests:
The dialog:
1. The conference in question was sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and by humble Mennonite Conrad Grebel University College. Conrad Grebel is affiliated with Canada’s University of Waterloo. While the conference convened on the UW campus, the larger University was not the sponsor.
2. The conference, entitled “Shi’ah Muslim–Mennonite Christian Dialogue III,” continued a series of exchanges between “North American” Mennonite scholars and Shia scholars from Qom, Iran. Papers from two previous conferences, one at Waterloo and one, in Qom, were published in the Conrad Grebel Review. Several Mennonites have studied in Qom, and several Shia have pursued theology Ph.D.’s in Toronto. Shorter-term student delegations have also been part of the mix, including with Mennonite Universities in the US.
3. The dialog has been hosted on the Iranian side for nearly a decade by the Imam Khomeini Education & Research Institute (IKERI). IKERI is reputed to be among the more conservative graduate seminaries in Iran, and its current director, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, is known as a spiritual adviser to Iran’s current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
4. The dialog itself may have been the fruit of the Mennonite’s “diaconal method” (from the Greek diakonia or service). In Iran, the Mennonites earned considerable good will for their sustained humanitarian responses to earthquake disasters since 1992. Such “good deeds” helped open doors to exchange of “good words.”
5. As a controversy emerged, Mennonite leaders tried to state clearly the conference purposes. According to Rich Cober Bauman, program director of MCC Ontario, the conference was

“an academic conversation between theologians and philosophers who may not always agree, but seek to better understand each other’s faith… We regard this conference as an effort to foster communication in a time when the refusal to demonize each other is sorely needed. We recognize that there are risks inherent in relating to groups some would label as our “enemies”. But our Christian faith calls us into these conversations which, rather than creating isolation, we believe have the potential to build real and lasting peace…”

Conrad Grebel President Henry Paetkau noted that from the Mennonite faith perspective, inter-faith dialog, particularly with a country that is portrayed in the west as the “enemy”, is a practical expression of the biblical command to be “agents of reconciliation”.
Jim Pankratz, Grebel’s academic dean, characterized the conference as “an important expression of open dialog and freedom of speech. Through such dialog we have learned to understand that all Iranians (like Canadians), and even all members of a single educational institution, do not speak with a single voice.”
The protests:
The protesters had a starkly different image of what the conference represented. I’ll try first to present accurately their concerns. (And I welcome additional material from any who think I misrepresent the complaints.)

Continue reading “Waterloo, Iranians & the Mennonite Dialog”

Bacevich: “I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose”

I know I (Scott) should say something about Andrew J. Bacevich’s heartbreaking WaPo essay, “I Lost My son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.”
A brave, grieving father. Our sympathies to him and his family.
This hits close for me – as I too am an academic type, opposed from the beginning to this misadventure. My oldest son is a “gung ho” Lieutenant in the Army National Guard, when he’s not an engineer-in-training for VDOT and a first-time father-soon-to-be.
I often wonder late at night, like right now, of all the ways I failed him, of how I didn’t better inoculate him from the siren songs of the recruiters and the neocons. When he earned his ROTC scholarship, 9/11 had just happened; Iraq was still on the neocon drawing board. My son is now living the dream of his late West Pointer grandfather, not mine. At least he still talks to me — well, usually. He still desperately wants to believe that his “duly elected leaders” wouldn’t be sending him on a fool’s errand, and that his father is the one with the screw loose.
I share Bacevich’s anger, his disgust at the pathetic non-responsiveness of our democracy — of the corrupting “money,” the rabidly fanatical Christian-zionists, and certain “Middle East allies” who’ve hijacked US foreign policy.
Morgenthau was wrong; no country automatically follows its NATIONAL INTEREST. It’s not written in the gene code.
I also share Bacevich’s indignation at those who blame the father for his own son’s death, for having given “aid and comfort to the enemy” with his criticisms of “our” side. Vile indeed.
For today, we have a family reunion on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near a special family spot at “hump-back rocks.” I try not to think of where we might be next year, or if…
May all the families currently separated be brought together soon. My son won’t like this, but my (selfish) idea of supporting our troops will be to bring them home – much sooner rather than later! I must do more.
Peace to all.

US-Iran Talks — and a partnership?

US-Iran watchers are holding their collective breath in hopes that the talks between America and Iran bear fruit.
I’m guardedly impressed that the talks are happening. President Bush has belatedly adopted what he had previously rejected – a core recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton commission to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
Is the switch borne of “realism” or “desperation?” And on whose part? Does it matter? It at least seems the insubordinate Cheney-Abrams-neocon wing of the Administration has been leashed – for now. Condi Rice also seems to have abandoned her previous nonsense about not wanting to talk to Iran, lest “diplomacy” might “legitimize” the Iranian system.
Similar observation for the Iranian side: It’s perhaps as difficult, if not more, for Iran to talk to the US, given that so much of the Revolution’s fury and subsequent dynamics have been driven by suspicions of American intentions and actions. The ghosts of 1953 still loom large. Repeatedly, for the past 20 years, Iranian figures who floated ideas to talk to America had their ears pinned back, beginning (it is long forgotten) when Iran’s current Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenehi) once advocated such talks when he was President.
That Iran’s political “weather had changed” dramatically was confirmed when former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati gave a long and extraordinarily candid interview ten days ago on Iran’s state TV channel. Now the foreign policy advisor to Leader Khamenehi, Velayati addressed concerns that America was both accusing Iran of causing trouble in Iraq and yet asking for Iran’s help in resolving Iraq’s troubles. Velayati also warned his compatriots of the “mirage” of seeing in the talks the solution to all of Iran’s problems, even as he also chided those Iranian “neocons” who saw dark conspiracies afoot — it’s not that “complicated.”
Bottom line: Velayati confirmed that Iran would participate in talks with America, provided they take “place between two counties in equal positions, without any preconditions, claims, rudeness or negative propaganda.”
US-Iran tensions of course have been running high from multiple sources, including nuclear questions, accusations of Iran supporting all manner of contagion in Iraq, the continued mysterious detentions of five Iranian “diplomats” by the US in Iraq (over Iraqi objections) and horrendous arrests of Iranian-American scholars in Iran.
Even more ominously, we have two US aircraft carrier battle groups again circling their rudders in the cramped Persian Gulf, Iran’s front door, a hair-trigger situation that even a curious editorial in the Kabul Times (friendly to America) characterized as “greatly alarming.”
Last Tuesday, ABC News ran a story claiming that President Bush had signed off on a CIA “black ops” order to destabilize Iran. I now wonder if this report was leaked by those wishing to sabotage the talks.
Unfazed, Iran is still coming to the table.
On Saturday, by contrast, the Boston Globe ran a scoop reporting that the US State Department had disbanded , a special unit that had been set up to orchestrate aggressive action against Iran and Syria – e.g. “regime change.” (Hat tip to Christiane in a thread below for catching this intriguing story for us.)
Yet despite these and other tensions, I share in the restrained optimism about the prospects for these talks. Both sides are well represented by multi-lingual diplomats, with rare experience with low-key contacts with the other side. America’s Ryan Crocker has already received considerable praise. Iran’s team includes its current Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and two key Iran observers of Iraqi developments, Reza Amiri Moghaddam and Hossein Amir Abdolhayan.
So what’s to talk about?
I’ve already touched on a long list of tensions and problems needing discussion, even if confined just to Iraq. Yet I offer now an original essay by R.K. Ramazani that focuses on one one area where there should indeed be profound US-Iran common interest and cooperation: al-Qaeda.
I had a hand in pulling the quotes together for this essay, including several that to our knowledge have not appeared elsewhere in the Western media. America’s concerns about al-Qaeda should be obvious, even as many critics scorn Bush’s recent Coast Guard speech wherein he focused on al-Qaeda in Iraq as a key reason for us to stay in Iraq.
Lesser known in the west are the many reasons why Iran too has great reasons for bitterly opposing al-Qaeda.

“Abu Musab Zarqawi, the late al-Qaida operative responsible for the decapitation of Americans and other captives in Iraq, launched a merciless crusade against the Shia. Branding them as a “lurking snake,” a “malicious scorpion,” Zarqawi considered the Shia as an “insurmountable obstacle” to al-Qaeda’s global plans….
Zarqawi declared “total war” on the Shia and Iranians on Sept. 14, 2005. His minions catalyzed open sectarian Shia-Sunni warfare by destroying the Shia shrine at Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006. Since then, millions of Iraqis – of all sects – have been killed, exiled or driven from their homes….

Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 in al-Qaeda and reputed chief strategist, has similarly taken aim at Shias and Iran:

Al-Zawahiri’s May 5th (2007) tape included an intensified al-Qaeda’s verbal attack on the Shia, Bush and Iran, in anticipation of U.S.-Iran talks. Apart from incendiary insults aimed at Shia belief and practice, al-Zawahiri chided Iran for having given up its slogan “America, the Great Satan” [for] the slogan “”America, the Closest Partner.“

Talk about an insult (!) — yet one with more than a grain of truth in it, from al-Qaeda’s perspective.
Unreported in the west, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied with a full-bore blast aimed at al-Zawahiri:

“Why do you, who want to kill Americans, kill innocent people and place bombs in the [Iraqi] market place?… On behalf of all the women and children in Asia, Europe and America, who have been victims of al-Qaida terrorists, I wish for you and your terrorist group hellfire, and would gladly sacrifice my life to annihilate you.”

Strange thing for an alleged closet ally of Al-Qaeda to say, eh?
Anyway, if I say so myself, do read the whole essay here.
And indeed, let’s hope, as the essay concludes, that “cooler heads will prevail.”
Fitting that today is Memorial Day in America. May that be a sobering reminder of the stakes.

Judith Miller sighting – @ the Guardian?

There ought to be a dictionary entry for Judith Miller — as in 1.) “journalist” of dubious reputation, 2.) front-page fiction writer; 3.) war fodder. Related google “search terms” could be: aluminum tubes, cakewalk, “un-named sources,” al-Qaeda linked, Chalabi, and “Michael R. Gordon.” Unkind thesaurus entries might be: shill, Benador, troll, and embed.
Yet never mind the recent timid documentaries on how the war to invade Iraq was “sold” to the American public, there’s been no shortage of Judith Miller clones in the media, doing their part to “sell a war” on Iran.
The latest sighting of Judy Miller wannabees appears, shockingly, in today’s Guardian – a paper alleged to be far to “the left” of the US mainstream media. The recent Guardian story hyping Iran’s alleged role in “taking over” Basra was bad enough. (as flagged here on the jwn sidebar) Simply being Shia doesn’t mean taking orders from Iran.
Ask Ayatollah Khomeini. When Iran pursued withdrawing invaders back into Iraq in 1982, Khomeini implored Iraqi Shia to rise up and unite with their would-be liberators. Didn’t happen then; not happening now..
In today’s Guardian, chaos theory reigns in a breathless front-page article entitled, Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq.”
Written by no less than one of the Guardian editors, Simon Tisdall, this isn’t another shallow and dubious story of Iranian components alleged to be in roadside mines (e.g., “IED’s”) or about Iran supporting this or that Shia militia in Iraq.
Nope, it’s Miller Time.

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McCain v. Sa’di

I once admired Senator John McCain. We even appeared together 16 years ago on a national radio call-in show, just after I returned from my first trip to Iran. I complimented him then for his “independence” and for then having one of the better observers of the Arab world on his staff (Tony Cordesman). One of my best students then was a niece of the Senator. During the last decade, it was Senator McCain, despite his own harrowing ordeal as a POW in North Vietnam, who helped normalize ties with Vietnam, even without “regime change.”
Alas, I don’t recognize the McCain of late, especially this past month amid his “Straight Talk” campaign to be President. His “April Fool’s Day” Alice-in-Wonderland tour of Iraq was bad enough. His comments last week at a South Carolina VFW rally hit an even lower “note.” Challenged with an uber-hawk question about “when are we going to send an air message to Iran,” McCain started by singing the version of the famous Beach Boys tune, “Barbara Ann” with a few bars of “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb…” (Iran.)
The video-clip of McCain’s performance has been played far and wide, and is now enshrined at YouTube.
One wonders if McCain was familiar with last year’s sardonic anti-war video spoof by Adam Kontras, found, naturally, at letsbombiran.com.
More likely, McCain remembers, as I do, the 1980 “propaganda parody” version of “bomb Iran” by “Vince Vance and the Valiants” amid the diplomatic hostage crisis. I found an “mp3” version here. Note the pronunciation then of “I-ran.” Their record label, a sign of the times then was, “Towel Records,” as in “Towel-heads.”
Alas, McCain’s handlers may figure that most Americans are still hostage to those same black and white images of Iran from 1980. In the following clip McCain laughs off a question about the “insensitivity” of his bomb joke with the reply, “Insensitive to what, the Iranians?”
One suspects McCain has watched 300 too much. Or maybe he was trapped by a leading question, cracked a nervous poor-taste joke, and now can’t figure out how to take it back without offending his shrinking base. That would be a charitable interpretation.
Regarding McCain’s quip for critics to “get a life,” Ali Moayedian’s rejoinder will “strike a chord” (if you will) with many:

“Mr. McCain, I will get a life. I do have a life. But what do you have to tell to all the dead? How can you look into the eyes of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children and sing your happy bombing tune? Can you tell them to get a life? I wouldn’t be surprised if you can. I always wonder if people like you have a soul?”

And on the matter of being “insensitive” to Iranians, Moayedian, who writes from California (where hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Americans vote), poignantly asks what Iranians of all stripes will be wondering,

“Mr. McCain, I know it’s too much to expect you to be sensitive to Iranians. After all they must be less of a human. You don’t care about Americans. Why should you care about Iranians?”

Ironically, on the day McCain’s “bomb Iran” clip began circulating, Iranians around the world were commemorating Sa’di day, in honor of the great Persian poet.
Writing seven centuries before Nelson Mandela spoke of “we are humans together or nothing at all,” Sa’di may be best known in the west for his poetic lines on the oneness of humanity:
The sons of men are members in a body whole related.
For a single essence are they and all created.
When Fortune persecutes with pain one member solely, surely
The other members of the body cannot stand securely.
O you who from another’s trouble turn aside your view
It is not fitting they bestow the name of “Man” on you.
Not bad for a writer in the 13th Century – anywhere
Sa’di’s works have been translated into English since the 18th Century, and several recent works on Sa’di are available. I gather too that leading World Literature texts in American high schools now include passages of Sa’di wisdom and wit.
McCain too should be familiar with the “oneness of humankind” poem, as it has graced the walls of the United Nations since its founding. The UN recently put on display a priceless carpet, donated by Iran, with Sa’idi’s original words woven into it in Gold.
Even the current Iranian Mission to the UN features a modern, gender neutral rendering of the same passage on its web home page:
All human beings are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs cannot at rest remain.
Sounds more “human” to me than, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”
A final irony here: The original “Barbara Ann” song was not written or first performed by the Beach Boys. Rather the song was a 1961 “doo-wop” hit by The Regents. Fred Fassert, who wrote the ditty in honor of his little sister, and Chuck Fassert who sang it, were of Iranian descent….

When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)

Matters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been “captured,” supposedly on their way to the Taliban? It sounds suspiciously like the tired old formula; when matters go really bad somewhere in the Middle East, change the subject and blame Iran.
Michael R. Gordon today is competing yet again to be chief salesman for such ominous news. Media bloggers have taken to deeming him the resident “ghost of Judith Miller” at the New York Times, the journalist most willing to “take out Cheney’s trash.”
Lately, Gordon has been quite active in reviving support for getting tougher on Iran.
Last week, I commented here on the Pentagon’s odd claim that Iran was now not only supporting Iraqi Shia insurgents, but Sunni fighters as well. On February 10th, it was Michael R. Gordon who started the latest round of Iran-as-the-source-of-trouble-in-Iraq” with a front-page “scoop” that breathlessly cited un-named US sources contending that Iran was providing deadly munitions that were killing Americans. Gordon’s follow-up report generously allowed his sources to defend their claims amid the “controversy,” which even a NYTimes editorial criticized. (Amazingly, that editorial neglected to mention that it was their own reporter – Gordon – who catalyzed the controversy).
Like Judy Miller, Gordon has long specialized in providing red meat for neoconservative circles.
Last November, it was Michael R. Gordon reporting that “Iran-backed” Hizbullah was training Iraqi Shia fighters. And throughout the fall, Gordon filed multiple “reports” citing “experts” and “analysts” cautioning against quick withdrawal from Iraq, then condemning the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (particularly the idea to talk to Iraq’s neighbors), and then advocating a “surge” of more troops into Iraq.
Back in 2002, it was Michael R. Gordon who wrote regularly with Judith Miller about Iraqi WMD capabilities, most infamously about the aluminum tubes presumed for Iraq’s nuclear program. The obvious intent of such articles was to drum up support for invading Iraq sooner rather than later.
The New York Times flagellated itself last year for such bad reporting, and specifically cited the Miller-Gordon “tubes” story as one of the worst examples. Yet Michael R. Gordon remains the Times’ lead “military” correspondent.
In a contentious interview last year with Amy Goodman, Gordon claimed that he was merely a recorder of the best intelligence and analysis available (pre-Iraq invasion) and that later “dissenters” had not contacted him.
That’s a curious defense. Shouldn’t the reporters be the ones casting about for different views?
Gordon may have thought himself funny when he told Goodman: “I’m actually not Judy Miller.” !
Really?
Today, the NYTimes designates none other than Michael R. Gordon to tell us that Iran is supporting the Taliban (sic) in Afghanistan. That’s right, Iran is now accused of sending arms to the Taliban, Iran’s mortal arch-enemy.

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