[lbo-talk] Islamofascism Awareness Week

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Tue Oct 23 13:30:29 PDT 2007


On 10/23/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 23, 2007, at 3:49 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > The violence and crimes committed by the U.S., yes even against Iran,
> > are so much greater than the crimes of Iran that to talk about them in
> > the same breath is like talking about the crimes of the slave against
> > his slave wife, while evenhandedly condemning the crimes of the
> > slave-owner.
>
> Yeah. Best not merely not to talk about them, but to deny their very
> existence! Let's aspire to one-dimensionality so as not to confuse -
> whom? The masses? The Iranians? Ourselves?
> _

It is not only to deny there existence. It is to not realize our responsibility for them. If with every breadth we condemn the wrongs committed by the current (Mossadeq) Iranian regime we don't also say that we overthrew a regime that might have prevented those crimes, that we put in place a regime (the Shah), far worse than the current Iranian regime, a regime we supported with weapons and technology of torture as well as a nuclear weapons program, and then we supported a war that killed a million Iranians (Saddam's war against Iran), if this is not our emphasis, and if we don't also recognize the fact that everything we condemn Iran for we have fostered and are fostering ourselves, among our "allies", If we don't speak of this with more force than we speak of Iran's crimes, then yes, I think, we are being hypocritical.

People might feel good by saying "Oh, I hate the way Iran treats its people," but in the meantime the leading and most hardcore fundamentalist Islamic regime (Saudi Arabia) is the U.S.'s leading "friend" in the region.

But you know all of this and probably even agree with some of it. Where we probably disagree is that condemning Iran should be on the agenda of any U.S. intellectual. Yes, I think that objectively those who put Iran's crimes on the agenda are just adding to the war fever. What ever crimes are being committed in Iran we helped to create them and only by stopping the U.S. from furthering its ends in the world can we help stop them.

Jerry



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