On Sep 13, 2007, at 8:11 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>> You'll like how Ervand Abrahamian says that Ahmadinejad has a lot in
>> common with Cheney. What we call neocons in the U.S. are "principled
>> conservatives" or "principalists" in Iran, says he.
>
> If there is one thing that Cheney and Ahmadinejad have in common, it's
> that they both know what they want, which we can't say about leftists.
> Other than that, their social bases are not the same, and neither are
> their goals. If they were, there would be no conflict.
Gosh, better tell Abrahamian! Maybe he's been busy writing a book and hasn't been keeping up.
It's amazing, reading and talking to people like Ervand Abrahamian and Hamid Dabashi. While they strongly reject the caricatures of Iran that circulate in the West, they have no problem with criticizing the regime (a word Abrahamian uses, by the way - better brief him on why it's bad) as petit bourgeois and repressive. Abrahamian says that most of the Iranian elite would like to make peace with the U.S. and court foreign investment - which is rather at odds with your view of Iran as on some kind of anti-imperialist mission. He also says that the bazaar remains the dominant economic base of the Iranian regime; unlike you, he doesn't feel an urge to prove that Iran is more socialist than Venezuela. Your stuff on Iran would be a lot more credible, and interesting, if you were as straightforward as they are, instead of pure apologetics.
Doug