Iran: Epic Fail? No Such Luck
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Jun 19, 2009 in Commentary • 5 commentsAs I write this column, it’s too early to tell whether or not the Iranian masses are truly in the process of putting together a revolution. If so, good on them … but don’t expect too much. To all appearances, they’re not rising up against the state as such, or even against the “Islamic” character of this particular state, but merely against the worst excesses of the regime.
By way of analogy to Russia, it looks a lot more like 1905 than 1917, and the outcome is likely to be similar as well: A few reforms, with the lion’s share of those reforms snatched back in short order and the real reckoning postponed for another day. That said, it’s always exciting to see the people taking to the streets, inspiring to watch as they face down truncheons, tear gas and even bullets, as they grasp toward whatever they’ve understood, for the moment, to represent freedom.
It’s also interesting to watch the reactions of politicians elsewhere. Incipient revolution, regardless of its ideological content or where it takes place, gives politicians the willies. It keeps them up nights, or else causes them to bolt awake with the irresistible urge to make sure the world outside their windows still believes it needs them.
Thus, even in a situation seemingly tailor-made to address the alleged complaints of the US government against the government of Iran, President Barack Obama finds himself unwilling to do much more than damn the people of Iran with faint praise.*
From the perspective of a man in Obama’s line of work, the worst of all possible outcomes is the “failed state” — a state where the political class experiences “loss of physical control of its territory or a monopoly on the legitimate [sic] use of force.” Such a situation is always pregnant with possibility: The possibility that the dying state will be replaced, even temporarily and provisionally, by something other than a new state.
Six days a week and twice on Sunday, a Barack Obama will support any state — liberal democracy, communist dictatorship, Islamist theocracy, doesn’t matter — if the plausible alternative is no state. After all, if one country can manage itself without overhead in the form of his counterparts, people are bound to notice, and next thing you know he might find himself looking for real work instead of running a successful franchise of the Big Con.
Have you ever wondered why the United Nations and the United States have spent billions of dollars, over nearly 20 years, attempting to impose a state on Somalia? It certainly hasn’t been “for the people” — they’ve managed just fine (better than other populations in the region, as a matter of fact) between periodic armed, US/UN-financed invasions of new self-proclaimed rulers. Nor is the suppression of piracy a plausible excuse, the market for said piracy being largely a function of the sanctions and chaos that come with attempts to force a state on the Somalis in the first place.
Somalia requires a government, in the opinion of would-be governors, because the alternative is simply unthinkable.
Ditto Iran. While the “leaders” of other states might be willing to accommodate, might even wish for or be willing to tentatively support, a more “liberal” regime in Iran, they’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs if they foresee any risk at all that Iranians might take their lives into their own hands and dispense with the state altogether, even if only for a day.
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* Yes, some Republicans have talked up the Iran situation, but I suggest that this is a special case of the rule, not an exception to it. The Republicans in question are affiliated with the GOP’s deranged War Party / “neoconservative” faction. Their rhetoric doesn’t signal an anti-state orientation; it signals their desire to feed Iran into the maw of the American state, or rather, the ruling class behind that state — the military-industrial (read: corporate welfare) complex, in the expectation that a new, more pliant, Iranian state will emerge from the far end of that complex’s alimentary canal. Just like Iraq and Afghanistan, only this time it will work, see?
Somalia can’t feed itself. There are arguments for revoking the power of the state – but Somalia is not a good example of them.
I agree with your analysis of Iran. Unless the leaders of this uprising come to the point of wanting the whole regime gone, the revolt is only “freedom kindergarten.” When I see stories of Revolutionary Guardsmen being beaten or their bodies left for dead at their HQ, I will believe real change will come to Iran.
You are also correct about the neocons. They are so far out of power, however, all they can do is color commentary. Elections matter.
Do you think that maybe if the roving bands of armed warlords stopped imposing their own special kind of tyranny on villages and farms that maybe the Somalis could do a better job in agriculture?
Wait, who says that Somalis can’t feed themselves? They never had any trouble with feeding themselves when I was over there.
Roving bands of armed warlords? Do you have any idea what a warlord is? “A military commander exercising civil power in a region, whether in nominal allegiance to the national government or in defiance of it.” The president of the USA is commander in chief of the military and he exercises civil power. He is thus a warlord. QED. So are various members of the British royal family.
Somalis do not have warlords, and certainly no roving bands thereof. Somali clan elders appoint a war leader in time of crisis who leads their militia. You might look up the use of the concept “militia” in your f#cking constitution.
I don’t know who you heathens are to defame the Somali people. And I certainly don’t agree with arguments made by others that their traditional form of government has anything to do with anarchy. But I will say that you seem entirely ignorant of Somali clan customary law, basic ideas like militia, and definitions of simple words like warlord.
There’s no doubt that your government in the USA together with the UN, the EU, the African Union, and the Inter-Governmental Agency on Development have tried many times since 1991 to impose a central government on Somalia. I believe their motivation is to force the Somalis to pay for the international debt obligations of the former dictator. Because, after all, the vicious bankers on your planet lent him money so he could buy guns and ammo with which to slaughter about 30,000 civilians in Berbera in 1988. He also borrowed money to maintain prisons and torture his own people to death.
I’m sure you guys who have responded here are full of good things to say about the kindly banker in your neighborhood who works for an internationalist cartel in restraint of trade. No doubt, you want the Somalis to pay back the debts of the dictator, with interest. Which may take roughly forever, since foreign interventions keep Somalis in perpetual poverty.
What I will say is that the concept that the Somalis advocate is very simple. They don’t owe that money because they never consented to those borrowings. They also did not consent to the government they overthrew.
Of course you rat bastard Americans are going to have to think about the issue of your own national debt when the internationalist socialist banking scum come around to collect. Depending on which debts you count, the amount to be paid back is roughly twice or thrice the annual income of the average American, on a per capita basis.
Now, it isn’t my debt. I didn’t borrow any of it. An oligarchy pretending to have the consent of some of the governed borrowed it, and as far as I’m concerned the politicians and bureau-rats can all sell themselves into slavery to pay it back, or have their homes repossessed, or whatever it is they’ve pledged. I never agreed to any of it. It is not my debt.
But the war that your governments brought to the Somalis is coming to America. You don’t have to like it. I certainly don’t. Are you ready for it?
Regardless, until the protestors start killing members of the Basij and putting their heads on pikes – or else turning out in such force that the Basij simply run away in shame – nothing will happen to overturn the Iranian regime. Of course, if you consider the Basij to be a religious, rather than a state, organ than maybe the sham of a civil government is what needs to end. Technically, the Supreme Leader and the Basij are religious elements rather than State elements, unless you accept that religious elements and their vigilantes are different aspects of the same tyranny (much the way the KKK were a shadow government in the South until their power was broken by aggressive enforcement of voting and civil rights laws).
I saw last night that Mousavi and his forces are pressuring the Basiji by asking their families to make them behave and come over to their side.
If Mousavi can defang the thugs of the current regime, he may have something there. He may be riding a tiger, although I am not sure if he is ready for the full implications of what he is doing. Regardless, he will still develop nukes. If he is seen as reasonable, he may be able to get away with it. If he keeps making noises about anihilating the Zionist state, the Zionist state will likely turn his ass into radioactive dust.