The Folly of a Lunatic State

For what seems like the ten-thousandth time, the sovereign nation of Israel has threatened the Islamic Republic of Iran with military action. Israel over the past few years has made repeated threats of attack against Iran for reasons it states as Iran's covert program to construct an arsenal of nuclear warheads. The llatest round of sabre-rattling has stirred up new fears of a widespread conflict that could engulf the Middle East. Israel as recently as last month conducted major war games in the Mediterranean to seemingly send a strong signal to Iran about any rash moves.

Firstly, the thought of an Iran-Israel war at this current moment in time for the region is unthinkable. The consequences would be nothing short of catastrophic, with the very real possibility of nuclear action, United States or Russian involvement and thousands of civilian casualties all not out of the realm of possibility.

From an examination of the current news cycle, the weight and culpability of such a doomsday scenario is almost entirely on Iran. Iran's president, the ever-prominent Mahmoud Ahmadinjead, has had his quotes and opinions on Israel repeated and analyzed ad nauseum. Flickering pictures of marching, emotionless Iranian troops have been blasted relentlessly at unsuspecting television and internet users for years now.

But in the finest traditions of polemics, let's take a look at the situation in a different way.

How many wars, invasions, attacks on foreign and occupied territories, border skirmishes, political assassinations and condemnations from the UN has Israel initiated over the last twenty years? Quite a few. Iran? Including the nuclear issue of the past few years, comparatively little. Which nation deserves the reputation as the lunatic state?

Since the ugly mess of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, which cost the lives of over a million people, Iran has been at peace with its neighbours. Israel meanwhile, for reasons far too labyrinthine, convoluted and numerous to list, has been virtually at a state of war with, at the least, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Territories. This does not count the attack on Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981, its strike against alleged Syrian nuclear facilities last year, nor its constant threats against Iran. Israel continues to insist on a capital city that is not recognized by the United Nations. It continues to occupy foreign territory claimed in wars fought decades ago such as the Shebaa Farms and the Golaan Heights.

And somehow, thanks to our media conglomerates and their first-rate news services, the debate over this latest round of tensions has been framed in precisely the opposite fashion of what the facts state. Iran, not Israel, is the upstart, the rogue state, the barely predictable firebrand nation with its finger on the trigger. Iran is the defiant, isolated nation thirsty for blood and contemptuous for the West. And if there is war, it will have been Iran forcing Israel's hand to attack it.

Everything being hurled at the public from the top-down media has been based on this fundamentally false premise. Iran and its president have stated numerous times that they have no intention of building offensive or defense nuclear weapons. They have allowed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit their nuclear sites many times. And frankly, nothing in Iran's history gives any reason to not take them at their word.

On the other hand, Israel has never allowed an inspector at its nuclear sites at Dimona. It has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has never confirmed nor denied it has nuclear weapons, though most everyone in the intelligence community and in positions of strategic influence throughout the world acts on the running premise that it does. And finally, unlike every nation that does possess a nuclear arsenal, it has never come right out and stated that its nukes are for defensive purposes only, precisely because they refuse to even admit they have these weapons. This is a thought that should make us all shudder.

The unused word throughout this article has been 'double standard.'

I won't mince words any further. What we have here is a Jewish state with historic ties to the world's only superpower and one of the world's best-funded, best-organized lobbyist operations portrayed as an ally under threat while an Islamic nation with no record of initiating war, two decades of peace with its neighbors and strong bilateral and multilateral ties is made out to be the enemy. One is our ally and one is our enemy and an effort is being made to portray the aggressor as victim. They say, black is white, up is down.

The real tragedy is that Iran finds itself in the unfortunate role of being the latest great evil to threaten the constantly at threat West. Terrorists. Muslims. Immigrants. Communists. Soviets. Fascism. Suffragettes. Blacks. Aboriginal heathens. The list goes on.

When oh when I ask, will this chain of false threats be broken? Does it take a black President with Kenyan and Muslim heritage to ensure that our media and political leaders will stop vilifying 'the other,' regardless of their choice of faith, political beliefs or spiritual beliefs?

=//Turnquest

MoDo Sunday

Have I expressed my undying eternal admiration of the Times' own Irish-Catholic post-feminist rebel Maureen Dowd? Here's a taste of this foxy columnist's incomparable work:

Excerepted from
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/opinion/06dowd.html

An Ideal Husband

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: July 6, 2008

This weekend, we celebrate our great American pastime: messy celebrity divorces.

There’s the Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook fireworks on Long Island and the Madonna/Guy Ritchie/A-Rod Roman candle in New York.

So how do you avoid a relationship where you end up saying, “The man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was” — as Brinkley did in court when talking about her husband’s $3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit? (Not to mention the 18-year-old mistress/assistant.)

Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.

“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” the twinkly eyed, white-haired priest says. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”

For 40 years, he has been giving a lecture — “Whom Not to Marry” — to high school seniors, mostly girls because they’re more interested.

“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love, because then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”

I asked him to summarize his talk:

“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since, as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes, your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them in the race to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment.

“Does he use money responsibly? Is he stingy? Most marriages that founder do so because of money — she’s thrifty, he’s on his 10th credit card.

“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.

“Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he consults his mother. (I’ve known cases where the mother accompanies the couple on their honeymoon!)

“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.

“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive. That world-class misogynist, Paul of Tarsus, got it right when he said, ‘In all your dealings with one another, speak the truth to one another in love that you may grow up.’

“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.

“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. Kay made a monstrous mistake marrying Michael Corleone! Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home? Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.

“Imagine a religious fundamentalist married to an agnostic. One would have to pray that the fundamentalist doesn’t open the Bible and hit the page in which Abraham is willing to obey God and slit his son’s throat.

“Finally: Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?

“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.”

=//Turnquest