- 12 July 2010
-
- 5 Comments
-
-
-
- Nuclear file, Sanctions, US-Iran War
Sanctions Are the New Appeasement
12 July 2010 Posted By Patrick Disney
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwHBdNwm2fo”]
Citizens United — famous for winning the Supreme Court case that ruled corporations have first amendment rights — has used the massive influx of cash that came with their notoriety to put together this ad. It’s a lot of the usual “Obama is Chamberlain; Iran is Hitler” message that has been peddled by dozens of fearmongers since the Bush Administration and before. But the spot was framed in an interesting light in the press release accompanying the ad, in which Citizens United Presiden David Bossie says:
From the first days of his presidential campaign through today, President Obama has displayed a dangerous naiveté when it comes to the threat that Iran poses to our allies in the Middle East and to the United States itself. History demonstrates that sanctions are not a cure-all for regimes bent on destroying other peaceful nations. The President must step up to this challenge before Iran has the opportunity to develop nuclear weapons. (emphasis added)
“Dangerous naiveté” is not a new criticism of Obama’s Iran policy. But if you look closely, this is not a criticism of Obama’s engagement strategy. What Citizens United calls Obama’s naiveté seems to be his support for sanctions! Sanctions aren’t enough, so the President must “step up” and “stop Iran now.”
This echoes the message in a Washington Post op-ed last Friday by former Virginia Senator Charles Robb and retired General Chuck Wald titled “Sanctions alone won’t work on Iran.” They argue that diplomacy and sanctions must be combined with credible threats of military force (what the two call “kinetic action”) if the US is to compel Iran to give up its nuclear program.
It’s been less than two weeks since the President signed new sanctions into law, [and the new law has not even come into force yet] but the groundwork is already being laid for the next escalation.
Now, I do not believe Barack Obama is necessarily leading the country down a path to war with Iran. But that does not mean there aren’t powerful forces at work in Washington trying to shape a narrative that will make an attack more acceptable. It would be wholly unsurprising if, the day after an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, more media attention is given to how it will have been justified than to the potential catastrophe it could mean for the US and the region at large.
5 Responses to “Sanctions Are the New Appeasement”
Ah yes, another corollary to Godwin’s law.
I never read the AARP Bulletin, but happened across this very interesting article:
http://tinyurl.com/25yaxxx
I was struck as to how this very powerful, personal, human, peaceful piece made it into a mainstream publication. It seemed to penetrate an apparent news embargo on anything that might humanize the Iranian people, or undercut the warmongers’ march to yet another immoral butcher of wrong-skinned people.
I have a profound fondness for Iran, as I lived there from 1959-1961, when my father worked on the Karaj dam. I may have been too young to understand then, but my visual memory retains strong. It was a jarring, yet wondrous experience to be dropped into a village where: camels and donkeys shared the roadway with cars and motorcycles, criminals were publicly hanged from airport lamp posts, people flogged themselves in the streets during Ramadan, etc.
But, we were not tourists or detached from the population as were many American, French, German, Canadian employees of the contractor (Morrison- Knudsen) or engineering (Harza) companies. My parents found an Iranian tutor to instruct me in Farsi, who became a family friend and joined us on vacations to the Caspian Sea. I walked freely and alone throughout the hills behind our encampment, as well as through the streets crosstown to another American compound where many folks from the University of Utah agriculture project lived.
Our “Karaj Dam” swim team competed with others from the US Embassy, Point Four Program, Department of Agriculture and other US agencies involved in “modernization” programs. We had no occasion to interact with the military, but I assume that they were well represented. Of course, Karaj was the location of the prison where Mosaddegh was isolated after his US-backed overthrow.
I posted a film that describes the hydro-electric project that took our blue-collar family to Iran:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkk5h-v3Prg
Anyway, the people were warm and friendly and like people everywhere else. If you connected with them personally, they were great, except when they were not – again, just like people everywhere else.
Now, the warmongers want us to forget the close ties our countries once had, and pretend that Iran is not full of people just like us. Their politicians, as do ours, pursue their agendas with ruthless manipulation. I hope that the respective sets of corrupt operators do not succeed with their schemes.
well written – very enjoyable- and couldn’t agree more. We cannot assume that the Iranian people are like their politicians. And yes, it was a wondrous experience.
My father was field engineer on the Karadj project and I was there during the same time period.
We must have met, but I do not remember the name.
My family was there from 1956 to 1958. My father, jogn Benoit, worked for Harza. We lived in two of the camps, one just inside a mountain gate and one down by the river.