Never try to do such a foolish thing. It could never work. It just makes things worse. War is a chainsaw. Reconstituting social structures is akin to brain surgery.
So here’s a question: In what major city were the following photos taken? (These photos were sent to me by an American friend who once lived in this city).
Snowscape of the mystery city.
Major ski resort ten minutes from the mystery city.
Vali Asr Blvd.
A worker on Election Day.
Casting votes on Election Day.
Here’s some more photos of this city [1]–Tehran. You see, it’s not all sand and desert.
I’m sure that many people will be surprised at how beautiful Tehran is. After all, these photos don’t show bombs going off or general chaos (which the Western media tends to depict [2] about the Middle East). When is the last time the Western corporate media talked up the beauty of the Middle East, where it wasn’t in an exotic travel section? When was the last time you read that most people in Iran are not actively trying to “destroy America”?
Why would we spend so much energy trying to convince ourselves that “they” are different than us? Is it, perhaps, that we are repulsed at destroying people en masse when they are too much like us?
Do they have major problems in Iran? Absolutely. Do they have dangerous sword-rattling political leaders? Absolutely. Does America have those too? It’s becoming clearer every day.
Are there millions of peace-loving residents in Iran? According to my friend, Absolutely. What they want are very much the same sorts of things we want. The existence of millions of freedom-seeking people in Iran was common knowledge prior to 9/11. Contrary to popular hysterical belief in America, 9/11 did not change everything.
It’s time for President Bush to take many deep breaths, admit that he’s over his head and to start listening to evidence-based people at the State Department (if any of them remain). It’s time to can the flaming rhetoric [3] (leaders of both countries need to stop this) and it’s time for Mr. Bush to quit trying to provoke a war with Iran. [4]
Given the vast overlap of human needs and hopes among the citizens (if not the leaders) of Iran and the U.S., the failure to thoroughly explore cooperative co-existence demonstrates the abject lack of moral imagination.
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