Iran: Now
There is no coincidence. There will soon be an election in Iran. You have an issue of Newsweek devoted almst entirely to Iran, "Everything You Think You Know About Iran Is Wrong." You have this corresponding with an effort by CNN to show behind the scenes stories of life in Iran. And you have an American President using language like "the Islamic Republic of Iran," and "Peace Be Upon Them."
There is no coincidence. Not from afar.
These things were foretold to via the unpredictible, whirling torrents of experience. Even far removed from the front lines in the Iran/U.S. cold war--I have experienced nonetheless something....
It is from this that I take not only pause, but also more importantly--I learn.
I was born one year before Black Friday, two years before the shah abandoned Iran and Khomeini began to lead, and three years before the 61 hostages were taken from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. I have seen my entire lifetime filled with hate and mistrust and fear. One wonders how a man my age in Iran might also have seen this lifetime as well.
I watched TV documentaries during the mid to late eighties which predicted a WWIII with Iran. I let 1980s conservative rhetoric shape and inform, and color the palette--which painted an imaginary Iran inside my head. I had never met an Iranian. I have never been to any Islamic country, let alone Iran.
The hinge was swung first on September 11th, 2001.
I became changed. The door swung shut. I let my rules drop on the floor, let my best wishes be thrown away, and openly admit became a hater of all things Islamic.
But now, in the years since, most notably after 2007, something in me wondered if everything I had thought (in the world) was wrong; that perhaps a man could live and thrive until he discovers he is being used by those he enables.
I find myself questioning. Questioning.
I slowly began to learn and think again, for myself. Nosce Te Ipsum. Bizarre life is. In some sort of strange catharsis, a person deeply moved and forever wounded by 9/11 to his core--has now come to find both nostalgia and Fernweh in the empty absence of a once palpable, ongoing "United We Stand" culture, lost after the failures of the last 8 years and the recognition of an unjustified war. I actually find myself enamored and longing for more and more islamic culture, and a more human understanding and reckoning of what happened from both points of view. Perhaps this sounds crazy, but it is true nonetheless.
The questions become all aligned in the same way; they all point to this--it is harder to defend a way that makes no real sense, and is more and more obviously based on poor intelligence.
I often wonder, how--to the ordinary muslim in Iran--the imaginary United States of America in his head has been slowly painted. How the very real USA has stacked up next door in Iraq. How he would imagine me, and what I feel towards him, and his country.
So, what then?
By gum, I think I understand myself. It is now--that I wish, as I have wished, to purge my soul of the passions formerly felt and expressed in deference to 9/11. How many times I have wondered how the german population felt after the camps of the dead were made public; if they realized their grave error in judgement despite their best intentions and former national pride. I can't imagine. Like so many well meant patriotic bleeding hearts, I thought I was being a good American. I was wrong.
Whether we know it or not, that speech the other day was a hinge also.
I am nobody. I am just another American white male over 30 who is unemployed. But If I think it is important in my own life to understand my Iranian counterpart, and beyond that, his culture, his religion, his life--then there truly is hope for once for our two countries to respectively share in a new age of detante.
The time to engage Iran is now. Now. Now.
If you're a nobody, we certainly need more nobodies. But I have to deny your premise. You're a somebody--somebody I plan to read whenever I get a chance. Which is going the long way around to say thank you for this. Share your thoughts whenever you have the time. They're good for us.
June 9, 2009 9:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Joe:
1) I have seen your work and you are not a nobody; rather, you are a talented artist and writer with a gift for social commentary whether you say it visually or in words.
So please re-examine the equation of unemployed =nobody. That is one of the distorted invitations to self-denigrate in our culture that we have accepted, consciously or unconsciously, since the Neocon/Noobecons ran roughshod over Everyman. Interesting level of insecurity they demonstrate, imo, that having such unregulated power and making off with the money isn't enough for them; rather, apparently they cannot consider themselves to be truly up unless everyone else is pejoratively characterized as down and diminished.
2) There are too many of us who, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, found ourselves engaging in a flag-waving display of simplistic if sincere patriotism that recalled that of our parents' WWII generation -- which was certainly an irony for those of us who are Boomers, as we had rejected that unquestioning allegiance long before, during the Vietnam era and throughout our adult lives, until 9/11.
BushCo. used and abused that support, and so perhaps one small thing we can thank them for is that, through their perversity, we were able to recall ourselves from that kind of unilateral political zealotry.
Your point is so well-taken. Instead of waving an American flag (literally or metaphorically) or chanting "USA, USA," let us all consider our counterparts in the Middle East, and around the world. Then, because flags are colorful and festive when they are not misused for exclusionary purposes, let's have a new tradition -- let's run the United Nations flag up the pole first, followed by our country of origin, our state, and whatever.
You're an artist, Joe: design us a global flag if the UN flag doesn't convey, and it many not, a passion and commitment to inclusion.
June 9, 2009 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks.
It seems that all administrations feel some need to avoid sudden course changes. This is probably healthy and less upsetting to other countries. (GOP has lately been less cautious.) Obama is not in position to jettison the foreign-policy establishment of old hands. Had Bush listened more to the old hands we would have been less ambitious in Iraq.
But Obama can induce a general trend toward less doctrinaire talk, more realistic talk, fewer empty threats, and more cohesion between allies for effective pressure on troublesome states like North Korea.
June 9, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
If we wish Iran to change, perhaps we need to change.
If we want their rhetoric to be openminded, perhaps ours should be open-minded, despite what we have been taught.
If we want Iran to be our friend, perhaps we need to put out our hand.
"Be the change you wish to see."
What, I wonder, would happen if just half of everyone who voted for Obama sent letters of goodwill, became pen-pals, and online buddies of the people in Iran?
June 14, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink