Feminist blogs and Hillary Clinton

I know I'll never find the perfect band, but I think Yo La Tengo is as close as I'll get.



Yo La Tengo - Gentle Hour

Lately something's been bothering me, and I've had serious trouble finding it elaborated much more eloquently and thoughtfully than I could do myself (a nice break from my normal routine of having what I think is a decent thought and then finding it elaborated eloquently and thoughtfully in a million different places), so I've taken it upon myself to attempt to elaborate it in my sort of brutish, Godzilla-raging-through-Tokyo kind of way. Not the best way to approach these issues, I know, but since the very few people who actually read this know my heart, I'm not worried.

I'll get right down to it: In many of the feminist blogs I check regularly, lately I've noticed a wave of totally uncritical and, in my humble opinion, kind of misplaced gushing over Hillary Clinton, be it for her artful handling of overwhelming sexism in public political discourse, her record of advocacy for the rights of women and girls, or her seemingly effortless sense of cool:

Now, I believe all three of those absolutely deserve praise (especially the last one - as a fellow source of effortless cool, I can relate), but I don't think that even the sum of these justifies turning a blind eye to any one of the very problematic aspects of Hillary Clinton's career, especially considering the implications they have for women and girls, who are the prime focus of the bloggers in question. I'll come back to this in a second.

Part of what brought this to my attention was the fact that I found unconditional praise for Clinton in the most unexpected places. In an uncharacteristically obsequious article written a few months ago by probably my favorite feminist blogger since I started caring about this stuff, Sady Doyle offers a glowing, deferential review of Hillary Clinton's legacy:

"But, without Hillary, where do women stand? Which other figure can reflect women’s ambitions, and their fears about the price of ambition, in such a profound and iconic way? There are many women in the political arena, but few as powerful and as historically resonant as Clinton."

Ironic hipster praise via funny memes posted on a tumblr is cheesy, harmless fun, but the total absence of Sady Doyle's usual refusal to give progressive figures a pass is troubling. I totally loved it when she took Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann to task for their entirely ill-advised, thoughtless dismissal of Julian Assange's rape accusers. It was courageous of her to face the wrath of progressives blindly defending Moore and Olbermann, not to mention the inevitable hoards of internet trolls, so I was really in awe of her bravery throughout the ordeal. She and other feminist bloggers have proven before that simply sporting the progressive label is no exemption from their sharp, thoughtful criticism. So in the twilight of her career in one of our nation's highest offices - a time generally noted for reflection on the good, the bad, and the ugly of a politician's legacy - has Hillary Clinton really had no part in any activity worthy of criticism up to now?

Well, let's get one of the biggest ones out of the way first: Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war resolution, defended the vote for years, and has participated as the chief diplomat in an administration that, although having facilitated U.S. military withdrawal from the region, continues to sell warplanes and other tools of violence to the Iraqi government and maintain a massive super-embassy in its capital. The U.S. invasion of Iraq turned a dictatorship in which a modicum of security existed (if you were willing to keep your nose out of politics; I'm not saying Saddam was good, just in case anyone wants to throw that in my face) into a dystopian warzone in which militias armed and trained by various countries fight each other in the streets, all in the shadow of an unstoppable, $600 billion per year war/rape/torture machine. As if the total lack of law and order wasn't enough, in an interview with Guernica Magazine in 2007, Iraqi feminist Yanar Mohammed noted that the constitution put in place by the new U.S.-backed government totally threw out the secular aspects of the old laws and incorporated a highly Iranian-influenced constitution:

"There are other articles, articles 39 and 41, which would refer family law to religion. [Note: Previously, “personal status law” gave women favorable treatment on divorce, custody, inheritance, etc., in Iraqi civil courts. The new constitution would allow women to choose Shiite, Sunni and other systems of religious jurisprudence instead of civil law.] So if a woman wants to marry or divorce, it’s in deference to Islamic Sharia. If she is Christian, to Christian laws. Or you could also go to previous personal status law. In this way, the tribal lifestyle is being reborn. A woman would be forced by all of her tribe to follow whatever system they tell her. The constitution has put women in a position where no one will protect them from religious cliques. If a woman is the third or the fourth wife and she has no rights inside her home and, on top of that, there is domestic abuse in her house, she is doomed. Under Islamic Sharia law a woman must accept beatings from her husband. Under Islamic Sharia, she must not revolt because she is the third or fourth wife."

Additionally, even a superficial glance at the web pages of Iraqi women's organizations reveals a grim picture of life for women in Iraq after the U.S. invasion - just check out the titles of the articles at The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq's (OWFI) website - see especially 15 and 16. The Iraq War has been an unimaginably horrifying ordeal for Iraqi women, and Clinton had a complicit role in it from the get-go, yet I can't find this fact mentioned in any post about her on any of the blogs I read.

Here's something more recent, and something in which she was more directly involved: the U.S. halted military aid to Egypt temporarily last year due to a new law requiring the Egyptian military to take steps toward increasing basic democratic freedoms. Clinton, tasked with assessing the measure of democratic reforms and thus approving or not approving the resumption of military aid, carried out her duty thusly:

"Mrs. Clinton did not certify that Egypt had met the democratic standards that Congress set. Instead, she waived that requirement."

Nice; you mean the same ruling military council responsible for the beating, imprisonment, and rape of women activists? The same ruling military council that subjects female detainees to humiliating, dehumanizing strip searches and virginity tests in a broad attempt to marginalize them and prevent them from participating in the Egyptian political process? These people are deserving of our military aid?

Should I go on? How about Bradley Manning, the transgender soldier and whistleblower who helped expose many of the atrocities resulting from wars for which Hillary voted and and supported in addition to illegal acts by Clinton herself, having now spent almost two years suffering inhumane conditions in nightmarish indefinite detention while awaiting trial? As the unjust treatment of Manning continues, Clinton makes speeches extolling the virtues of open government and in support of LGBT rights.

I could literally go on for days with examples like these. Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Latin America are all topics that warrant their own entire posts, but I'm finding myself rather worn out.

At this point, you might surmise that the discussions on these blogs are largely about women overcoming incredible institutional misogyny and patriarchy in our political system and national discourse and therefore do not make an issue of Clinton's politics or the broad status quo she has worked to uphold. Dude, you might say, the role of these bloggers is more of a media watchdog, pointing out sexism and unfair double standards; they are not political or human rights bloggers and thus do not touch on the nuance of these issues.

These are all fair points. However, I would point out that many of these feminist bloggers as well as a great deal more I have yet to discover have argued before that since women are often directly and disproportionately affected by them, issues of war, disaster, occupation, famine and health issues are also women's rights issues and thus cannot be separated from these discussions. If they indeed are women's rights issues and belong in these discussions (an idea with which I'm in absolute agreement), why then are they mysteriously absent from discussions about Hillary Clinton? That's really the amazing thing to me: some of my favorite feminist blogs actually touch on these very topics, yet completely omit mention of Hillary Clinton's prominent role in them when she comes up later on the same blogs.

I realize how very few women are involved at the highest levels in our political system, and how grossly unjust that is, but I don't think this means that the few we have should just be blindly extolled  while their failures - really big ones, in this case - are simply ignored, especially when those failures are also pressing issues of women's rights. Hillary Clinton might be every glowing thing these bloggers say she is, but she is also a politician participating at the highest level in internet censorship, the rapid expansion of the national security state, the suppression of democracy at home and abroad, and the propagation of brutal imperialist violence. Her meaningful successes deserve mention, but any discussion about her must include these very grave failures.

Various things

I promised myself I would get out of the house this fine (but possibly unreasonably hot - I'll get back to you after I've gone outside) Sunday, so I hope writing these few thoughts doesn't take twelve hours. You laugh (or maybe you don't), but I'm so scatterbrained and unfocused lately it's freaking me out.

Update: It's now Monday and I'm publishing. There you have it.



Teenage Fanclub - Ain't That Enough

A nice, sunny tune for y'all. I like Teenage Fanclub because they seem like down-to-earth, self-deprecating blokes. Anyway, I wanted to comment on something that has drifted across my radar a few times over the past several days. Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy has an article in Foreign Policy that seems to have pissed off just about everybody. It's summarized over and over again and you can pretty much get the gist of her article by reading the first few paragraphs, so I won't do it again here. Foreign Policy published a bunch of responses to the article here, and I went in search of some other thoughtful ones. Interestingly enough, less attention was given to the really, really problematic images that accompanied the article than to Eltahawy's apparently broad-handed, sensationalist approach to the issue of why the state of women's rights in many Middle Eastern countries is so poor (Eltahawy probably had nothing to do with the images and since she's a really divisive character, people's first impulse was probably to go after the stuff she herself was responsible for).

If you're interested, you can read three interesting responses here, here, and here.

I agree with pretty much all the critique of Eltahawy's article, but you know what? I don't really like that term "native informer," and it's one of the central points of that last response. The term is sort of colonial-y and seems like something you'd hear in one of those old Disney movies they don't sell or talk about anymore. It also seems to have the same function as the label "anti-American" or one of those other terms people can just throw out there without considering the meat of someone's argument. I was poking around trying to see if I could make sense of it when I stumbled across this short blog post, which sums it up oh so nicely:

"I get that it’s frustrating to watch an Arab woman get up on a soapbox and tell racists and Islamophobes exactly what they want to hear, but calling someone a ‘native informant’, even when it’s wielded by Arabs against Arabs, is just another convenient way to dismiss people of color without actually addressing the content of their arguments...‘Native informant’ invokes someone’s non-white status in order to discredit them, which does nothing to subvert the racist power structures Tahawy’s argument speaks to."

Yessss, nailed it. Although Eltahawy likely hates everything they stand for, I can totally see this article speaking to drooling lackeys of establishment power dreaming of the next orgy of invasion and war. If you take away the fancy Foreign Policy trappings, it almost looks like a statement on one of those right-wing anti-Islam sites. I understand the concept behind the term "native informer" and its role in post-colonialist discourse, but the way it's used, as the author of the above points out, to discredit and silence people of color is bad news bears.

Speaking of "anti-American," it was around this time last year that Americans were hooting and hollering and generally making joyful noises over the fact that our President had executed the quick, dirty, due process-free death of Osama bin Laden, subsequently dumping him in the ocean (?) and selectively revealing little bits about the operation and intelligence over the following year to boost his credentials for the coming election. Upon opining on a friend's Facebook post that perhaps over a decade of war, suffering, military expansion, civilian deaths, and economic disaster to get one man responsible for a devastating terrorist attack on our soil might not actually be "justice" in the traditional sense of the word, my arguments were ignored and I was summarily labeled a "troll," "anti-American," and had my personal information and history searched, displayed, and mocked. Not trying to equate my experience to the above, but I think that is one function that those two terms share and it's pretty destructive to meaningful discourse.

Lastly, a story out of Texas: Y'all may recall that those wily Texans were attempting to make sure that even fewer women than before have access to basic health care services by taking away federal funding from Planned Parenthood clinics there. They so crazy! In response, the federal office of Health and Human Services (HHS) threatened to withdraw funding for the entire program, which outraged Republicans and led to accusations that the real war on women was from the left (as a side note, I don't think it's from the left or right - it's from the top down. The discourse on this needs to change). Anyway, a federal judge today ruled that restricting Women's Health Program funds from Planned Parenthood simply because some of their clinics provide abortions is unconstitutional. The real gold here, which will likely be glossed over in many stories, is that the Medicaid vouchers provided to women by this program can't be used for abortions at all because it's federal money. Really, it's almost too dumb to explain. Needless to say, Texas lawmakers are pissed, and are going to take action! How, you might ask? By doing the same thing HHS threatened to do originally (emphasis mine):

"Unfortunately, there’s a good possibility that this victory is only temporary–officials in Texas have stated several times that if they are forced to include Planned Parenthood (which provides birth control, breast cancer screenings, pap smears, cervical cancer tests, STI exams, routine anual exams, and other basic health care for women), they will likely can the whole program, leaving as many as 130,000 women without any access to medical care."

What.

-------

I'm putting this last bit here more as another way of remembering that this exists, but here is a forum post in which I, without realizing it, reveal some very personal and meaningful stuff to a bunch of random prospective Mideast Studies grad students. It was a nice, embarrassing, public moment of self-discovery.

Romney to earth: Please be my friend.

Guided by Voices - Tractor Rape Chain

I'm generally loath to comment on GOP politics (or US party politics in general) due to its wholly loathsome and boring nature, but I noticed what I thought was kind of a funny pattern among polls regarding support for Mitt Romney.

Romney seems to have trouble garnering support from the following:

Latinos.

Evangelicals.

African-Americans.

Independents.

Women.

Men.

and even the last outgoing GOP candidate.

This raises other questions: Who'd have thought that in trying to please everyone, you'd end up pleasing no one? Isn't this a lesson most of us learn in high school? Do even Mormons support him (hint: nah)? So who does support him? Ah, that's right - big oil! Right on time; it just wouldn't have been a post about GOP politics without you.

Amazingly, despite his fondness for drone killings and the expansion of the terror/torture/secrecy regime, Obama seems to have enough knee-jerk support in establishment liberal and progressive circles to carry the day, and since Romney seems to turn everyone else off, I'd say this contest is already over. I supposed I should be stoked that we're going to end up with the lesser of two evils, but you know what? I'm not.

Hillary Clinton is fed up with the military spending

Listening to Hillary Clinton's interview with NPR the other day was an exercise in suppressing my gag reflex. The golden quotes came so fast that even with my unreal 101 WPM typing speed (it's all I have; let me have it), I couldn't type them fast enough. Take this one, for starters:

"We tried to get international support and legitimacy for the Arab League peace plan to have some leverage, but unfortunately Russia and China vetoed it."

What a bummer that a couple of world powers can veto an otherwise effective U.N. resolution and throw a wrench into your plans. You know who else hates vetoes? These guys:

Palestinian children: These rocks used to be our school.

So yeah, vetoes suck, especially ones that help make atrocities possible for 40 years. I guess you can't always get what you want, Madam Secretary.

After that, listen to her lament all the crazy military spending:

"...you have one of the most highly-militarized, best-defended countries on earth because of course they spend an enormous amount of money with their Iranian and Russian friends so equipping themselves..."

Unless the line immediately following that one isn't "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" you have to assume she wasn't joking and the irony was lost on her. Is it fine for us to spend 600% more on our military and support similar regimes for any reason other than that we're the ones doing it?

I'm tired and I don't think this last quote even needs further comment:

"It's important that the United States, which supports the aspirations of all people everywhere, also stand up for the values and principles that make democracy workable over the long term."

If I were her and heard myself saying such things, I'd want to resign at the end of Obama's current term too. You almost have to respect her for it. The story can be read and heard here.

In other sort of amusing news, Leila Hatami, star of Oscar-winning Iranian film A Separation, made The Vancouver Sun's Academy Awards 2012 Worst-Dressed list. I couldn't find it in the actual piece (I saw it in the Google result), but there's a Mary and Joseph reference somewhere in there:

It's a bit tacky to pick on someone for wearing this ensemble when their other choice is to not wear it and face arrest and indefinite detention upon returning home. We take a lot of things for granted. In any case, expecting a team covering the Oscars to be privy to the finer points of Iranian constitutional law concerning public dress is probably sort of a tall order, so whatever. It is what it is.

Questions for "Shahs of Sunset"

I'm amazed that at the time of my last post in September, there were still weekly GOP debates. I feel like I can't even recall a time when I could turn on NPR in the morning and not hear three or four stories about Rick Santorum's father. Why these old white men are allowed to commandeer the national discussion about civil rights and women's health is absolutely beyond me. If I can stomach it, I'll try and dig into their Iran war drum-beating next week as well.

Speaking of Iran, or something maybe vaguely related to it, Ryan Seacrest's latest gift to the culture is set to make its big debut on March 11th. It's called "Shahs of Sunset," and it follows the lives of six wealthy Iranian-Americans living in Beverly Hills, the irony of the similarities between their lavish lifestyles and the excesses of the real shah, an element of that regime that inspired much hatred among the masses prior to the Islamic Revolution, likely lost on them. Before I say more, feast your eyes on this spicy sneak preview:




Orientalism for Dummies, Chapter One. Michael Bay trailer music: check. Steady cam shot of woman in hijab browsing in book store: check. Image of a mash of squiggly lines with dots and slash marks, possibly some primitive form of written communication: check. Old Iranian man sitting in dusty carpet shop - check. Safavid women sporting unibrows and long water pipes - check.

My first thought upon seeing the video in its entirety is that the greatest minds producing the most elaborate, sophisticated anti-US propaganda in Iran couldn't come close to creating such effective magic, but I won't go too far in that direction. In film, television, and other fun forms of pop culture, Iranians have often been portrayed as either radical Shi'ite embassy-grabbers and flag-burners or rich, Mercedes-driving landlords. Unfortunately, expecting a Ryan Seacrest production to stand valiantly against the tide of unchallenged ethnic stereotyping in media is probably a bit optimistic. In any case, the first episode hasn't aired yet, so as much as I'm dying to, I can't make too many judgments right now. I have, however, decided to subject myself to the first episode - I'm still scoping out a good sports bar - and plan to try and answer to myself what I can of the following questions afterwards:

1. To what degree will the show discuss Iranian history and how it relates to Iranian immigration to the U.S.? Will they merely gloss over it in a distorted, embellished kind of way, as they did in this trailer?

Once many academics and intellectuals saw that the emerging political system after the revolution was just as intolerant of political dissent as the shah's regime was, they packed up and left. Some left because their land, investments, and stake in various industries were being seized by the new government. Some left because they had been somehow directly involved in the shah's autocratic, oppressive government and now feared for their own lives. Many different circumstances caused people to pack up and leave and I don't want to downplay or make light of this particular group of people's reasons for having left their homeland, but my guess is that regardless of this family's reason(s), the show's angle will be that they were political or religious refugees who feared for their lives and so came to seek a new life in the cultural and commercial utopia of Beverly Hills(?). That's the most emotionally compelling angle, after all.

2. How much will the show distinguish between Iranians in Iran and the caricatures of Iranian-Americans being portrayed on this show? Will there be a well-intentioned but perhaps misguided attempt to create sympathy for Iranians living with "crippling sanctions" and the constant threat of attack and annihilation (their words, not mine) by US and Israeli leaders? Since this kind of thing doesn't sell, my guess is no. Fatemeh Fakhraie in a great piece at Racialicious surmises that the show may try and do just the opposite: The narrative might draw these Americanized Iranian-Americans as "good" Iranians, in contrast with the "bad" ones we see on the nightly news, and thus stress the differences between them frequently. Could the show become a vehicle for drumming up support for war against Iran?

3. How will the show incorporate the characters' Jewish identity? I'm only assuming they're Jewish because I spotted a kippah at some point during the preview and there are quite a lot of Iranian Jews living in Beverly Hills, but it will be interesting to see to what extent the show makes this a part of their story.

4. How will the show present Reza Farahan, the openly gay character? Let's keep in mind that these characters are almost certainly acting under the direction of producers, so how Farahan presents himself will likely be influenced in some way by people behind the cameras.

Whatever you read or think, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone optimistic about the effects this show will have on the image of Iranian-Americans in the popular imagination. Among the other problems of portraying a minority group as consisting solely of wealthy landowners, actual struggling or poor members of the community can be ignored as a result, and every community has them. I spent the first year of my job driving around the San Fernando Valley, visiting Iranian families of four or five sharing one- and two-bedroom apartments, receiving public assistance in addition to help from family members, all the while asking me the address of the nearest Goodwill. A coworker of mine mentioned to me yesterday that at her old job, they had a hard time getting grants to help elderly Iranian residents of Los Angeles living on welfare in rent-controlled apartments because grantors assumed that Iranians were all wealthy and just milking the system for all it was worth.

I don't want to get all tied up in foreign policy here, but it does occur to me that if the opinions of the masses mattered to elected officials in this country, the images presented in a show like this could have implications for the future and any potential conflict(s) ahead of us. What better time for Ryan Seacrest's contribution to the bloated cultural landfill of reality television than when an absolutely gorgeous, provocative Iranian film is poised to grab international attention at the Academy Awards this weekend, something many see as the tiniest of silver linings in the ever-darkening cloud of Iran-US relations? This show might certainly provide a distraction from the images of religious lunatics in news reports (the Iranian ones, not the ones debating weeknights on CNN), but it likely won't do anything to improve the image of Iranian-Americans over here or create any sympathy for Iranians who might be the victim of a U.S.-Israeli attack.

Although they're hardly the victim here, the American public in general also has cause to take offense: Whether or not it reflects anything about our real nature and national character, it seems to assume the worst about us when television producers believe that the only way the American public can handle exposure to an ethnic minority is via packaged and repackaged versions of crude stereotypes. Personally, I'm looking forward to the show that speaks to my own cultural heritage: "Knife Thugs of South Boston."

A few pieces of pretty bad news

Last night, I rode my bike around Glendale and listened to this song about a million times:

In between killing myself over how to study for the math portion of the GRE, trying to keep up with the ridiculousness of weekly GOP debates, and not losing my head at work, I've noticed that news is just getting more and more depressing. For your reading displeasure:

It's so frustrating when people meddle in our invasions. The Pakistan-based Haqqani network has been accused by Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, of carrying out the September 19 attack on the U.S. Embassy and NATO bases in Kabul. To make matters worse, U.S. officials accuse Pakistan's military and ISI of at best being too soft on the Haqqani network and at worse collaborating with it. Following imperial superpower standard operating procedure, unilateral military action has been put "on the table" (gotta love that table!). Unilateral military action is already a reality in Pakistan (ask the family members of innocent victims of drone strikes), but many are beginning to worry (or hope, depending on how much of a bastard you are) that troops on the ground may be the next step. Pakistani media sources are understandably freaking out, but those opinions, as always, don't seem to be of much import here. Can we now admit it was a bad idea to arm those guys with nukes and help them avoid signing the NPT, or will that come when all we are is radioactive dust in the wind?

Moving slightly west, although not so far west that our morals are compromised by illicit satellite programs depicting love triangles and wrestling competitions, some super bad news regarding Iran made only slight ripples here: A prominent Chinese scholar opined to Haaretz last week that he believes Chinese officials think that Iran is in fact pursuing nuclear weapons (the Haaretz article notes that China buys oil from Iran but refuses to help it build nuclear reactors or even sell it equipment for its nuclear program), that this is a bad thing, that the Chinese will for the near and probably distant future be in need of Iranian oil, and therefore would not mind so much if Israel struck Iran's nuclear reactors. Wait, what?

Chinese foreign policy is usually pragmatic to the extreme, but this really doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but if people didn't harass and threaten Iran with bombings, what excuse would they have to even build a bomb, let alone use one? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's notorious comments about Israel are either mistranslated by Western media or later contradicted by more powerful or influential Iranian voices and conveniently not reported here, and Iran hasn't invaded another country in over a hundred years. An Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would almost certainly lead to a regional war, so I don't understand how that option is better than a benign Iran that may or may not have built a nuclear weapon. Also, it's becoming more and more difficult for even the U.S. to ignore the hypocrisy of allowing Israel, Pakistan, and India to acquire nuclear weapons outside of the NPT while it insists Iran, a signatory to the NPT, should stop their nuclear program altogether.

Iranian officials talk big - often comically so - and yes, they have been known to Photoshop pictures of rockets, but it is widely accepted that they could make life very difficult for the U.S. and its allies throughout the region, actions to which the U.S. would almost certainly overreact, and we know how that would end, if it ever did. My country has been directly involved in war and violence in some form almost consistently since I was born, and well before that. I wonder if I'll ever live to see the end of it.

Iran Misinformation Season

In the midst of trying my luck again with graduate schools, I'm trying to find a little time to practice some writing by making another handful of these entries. Here goes nothing!

U.S. officials and presidential hopefuls have been opening their mouths about Iran recently, an event which usually causes me significant distress and even brings on occasional bouts of quiet weeping in my cubicle. I realize that no influential decision-maker can know enough about every topic to always make the most informed decisions, but Iran is one of the few areas that I know just enough about to know when people are talking straight of their asses, and it's just so blatantly obvious with some of the latest stories I'm reading. Take this golden quote from presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, uttered without even cracking a smile (I didn't actually see the bastard say it, but I have a sinking feeling he did in fact maintain a straight face) at the Fox News debate a few weeks ago:

"Iran is a country that has been at war with us since 1979. Iran is a country that has killed more American men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis and the Afghans have. The Iranians are the existential threat to the state of Israel."

This is wrong, wrong, wrong, and one of the oldest and laziest canards regarding Iran. In fact, the reverse is true: Among the least cynical and malevolent ways in which the U.S. has been torturing Iran are the economic sanctions, the presumption behind which is that life for ordinary people will eventually become so unbearable that they will overthrow their government, supposedly having either ignored or forgotten that the foreign powers had a direct hand in their decades of misery all along. Additionally, the meddling by foreign powers gives the government more excuses to crack down on social and political freedoms, making a bad situation worse. We openly supported Saddam in his war of aggression with Iran in the 80s, we've supported internal and international terrorist organizations, we've invaded and indefinitely occupied the two countries on either side of them, we've loaded the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas with nuclear subs and warships (Google "Diego Garcia") and we're backing them into a corner and violating the UN charter with threats of military action over the nuclear program issue while we let regimes of essentially the same stripe stock up on who-knows-what completely unchecked.

I suppose Santorum gets a point for getting the year of the revolution correct and presumably spelling his name correctly at the beginning of the debate, but forgetting the history of sanctions and threats of invasion after the revolution, as well as the decades of rule by the shah before that is a pretty big oversight and a classic example of our tendency toward highly selective memory. Santorum's concern for Israel is also unnecessary, unfounded and goes against the opinion of the Israeli Defense Minister.

Santorum's comment was in response to a statement by Ron Paul in which he stressed the need for the U.S. to withdraw from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also made a simple observation, but nonetheless one which hadn't occurred to me: The Soviet Union may have been a much greater threat to the U.S. and certainly had nuclear weapons, yet we never attacked them. The unilateral, imperialist arrogance that has dominated our foreign policy and discourse for a decade or so now has become so normalized that nobody blinks when Santorum and others like him express indignation that another country would "interfere" with U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, as Jon Stewart and others have pointed out, a voice of reason on this issue is getting next to no airtime:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
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Since substantive discussion of issues does not fit into the media narrative of the presidential hopefuls as the cast of the latest reality TV show, suggestions of actual policy changes will go unreported until the next election (and who am I kidding, after it as well), with the public none the wiser. The comments made by Santorum, as well as more sinister forms of drum-beating for military intervention, will continue to be posited as regular, acceptable discourse and given credibility for the next 14 or so months, the thought of which thrills me to no end.

President Ahmadinejad is due to speak at the U.N. in New York again fairly soon, something which always brings with it a torrent of misinformation, media deception/laziness, and manipulative propaganda from our elected (or would-be elected) officials and news media personalities. A colorful cast of characters has been pushing for the Mujahedin-e Khalq to be taken off of the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a story which I will try to update myself on and summarize later this week.