Better Perspective Needed Here

Yes, the Revolutionary Guards serve as the ideological police of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and yes, they employ brutal methods. But I have to question your timing and motives for endorsing the Bush Administration drive to declare them a terrorist organization. This comes right on the heals of the ongoing, all-out Neocon campaign to go to war against Iran. Fox News is already in “Jihad” mode against Iran.

Declaring a repressive state institution a “terrorist organization” is quite a leap in semantics. Historians don’t usually describe the Gestapo, the KGB, even the SAVAK as "terrorist" organizations in the sense that the term is used today, whereby ”terrorist” in the current media lexicon refers to al Qaeda-type organizations that are underground criminal actors taking on archetypal dimensions of evil incarnate.

This imagery reflects the peculiar logic of the Bush Administration, which regularly engages in clandestine violence against Iran and whose rhetoric is always self-serving in the interests of brutal and genocidal American Imperialism. Surely you must realize that this is a propaganda broadside designed to justify an attack on Iran? Or are you in favor of that too? Are you hoping that a mythical, benign American super-hero will sweep into Iran and smart-bomb all the bad guys, thus ushering in an era of pure democracy and secular freedoms? Almost every American Iranian I correspond with is utterly opposed to American intervention in Iran, stating that this would be a deadly disaster of immense dimensions. What is your position?

I also have to dispute your brief history of the Guard. Characterizing them as worse than SAVAK is a rather subjective call. I am sure many victims of SAVAK would dispute that. When the Guard became involved in the internal power struggle that took place after Khomeini came to power, it was not a simple cliché that the Guard crushed “the peaceful opposition”. There was real civil warfare going on, with mass bombings and assassinations coming from Communists (and others), who are no strangers to violence either. This was spear-headed by the quasi-Marxist MEK, which is even today still blowing up Iranians, with American support. That Khomeini cracked down hard in the first years of the revolution is not surprising, given the chaotic and violent situation. Furthermore, Khomeini left Iran with a theocratic/democratic republic, not a monarchical dictatorship, with Iran currently enjoying at least some measure of democracy. Or do you dispute that there is any electoral process in place in Iran today?

Finally, the Guard is certainly not merely an Islamic police force, but mainly a powerful branch of the Iranian armed forces, if not the most powerful branch. They suffered terrible losses in the war against American-armed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran and will certainly be on the front lines against any American invasion in the near future. Of course, if this occurs, Bush will invoke his own propaganda rhetoric to claim that he is again battling international terrorism while he lays waste to yet another country. But Bush would really only be projecting his and the Neocon movement's dark side onto yet another victim.

by Mac McKinney (48 articles, 78 quicklinks, 180 diaries, 1134 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 9:03:41 AM
 

Angels of Terror

It is common that when someone writes any thing against Iranian government, the Iranian government brands him as an agent of CIA or MI6 or Mosad. However, it is astonishing to put people like me in the same family as Neocons.

To answer your observations properly I have to go into too much detail and this is not the time for that. However I will try to answer a few points:

1) I do agree with you that the Bush administration is itching to attack Iran .But ,they can not and will not do such a thing .Bush does not have the political capital to impose even hard sanctions on Iran let alone invading Iran.
2) I do not wish for President Bush to turn Iran to another Iraq . The regime change in Iran needs to be done by Iranians and Iranians alone.
3) The organization of the "revolutionary guards is a terrorist organization" not because Bush says so. But because the Guard is terrorizing the people of Iran. They have imposed the most oppressive regime in the world on Iranian people. You can get into semantics of what "terrorism" means. But if you live in Tehran for a month and taste the brutal methods of the guards' oppression, you would agree with me that the guard by terrorising Iranians is ruling the country.
4) When Khomeini was in Paris he promised that the future government of Iran would be a secular one and that the clergy will have only a supervisory rule .however when he got back to Tehran by using an obscure quotation from a Moslem saint of a 1000 years ago he came up with the idea of Islamic republic of Iran. Whose existence is an insult to humanity?
5) During the first few months there were some peaceful demonstrations in Tehran against him .He was systematicly closing the liberal news papers and he responded to any objection  with  violence. I was in one of those demonstrations and saw how they gunned down unarmed civilians. One of those bullets missed me and hit a young man who was standing next to me; right in the head .I will never forget seeing pieces of his brain on the asphalt of the street.
6) On the issue of elections in Iran. I should admit that they are fantastic forms of forgery. If there was free Election in Iran, the Iranian government would not last a day. During each election cycle more than a 1000 people apply to run for president, however they only permit a handful of people like Ahmadinegad to stay on the ballot. Poor People of Tehran have to line up and vote .You should know that our birth certificates, which are the main ID card in Iran, has spaces in it dedicated to voting .if you do not vote, your birth certificate will not be stamped. If your birth certificate is not stamped you will be considered unfriendly to the government, so you will not get a job, your kids cannot go to university and so on.....

by Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D. (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 11:44:47 AM
 

Ah! Some Dialogue

I am glad you have replied. Some writers don't, or may just start attacking me and evading any answers. I am glad you are distancing yourself from the Bush Cabal. Still, my point about semantics cannot be ignored, however you categorize the Guard in Iran. By openly agreeing with Bush's designation of the Guard as a terrorist organization, you are playing into the hands of NeoCon propagandists. Many regimes on this planet are repressive, many murderous and many would fit your description of terrorizing their citizenry. But the White House will actually do business with them if it is to their geopolitical interest to do so, while reserving the appellation "terrorist" as a guided propaganda missile with which to engineer an attack. This is clearly what is going on now.

I haven't been to Iran myself, but I have talked to people who have been, Iranian or otherwise, and I have to tell you that your description of Iran now is rather draconian in comparison to what I have heard, including your description of whatever democratic institutions there are as mere shams.

So who is right, or are we in a Rashoman situation where reality is in the eye of the beholder. I don't know if you are familiar with CASMII, the Campaign Against Military Intervention in Iran (http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/ ), but they are largely expatriate Iranians, American, British or otherwise, who devote a lot of time to disputing the often horrific propaganda about Iran. Yet I don't think any of them will argue that there is not repression in Iran. They also realize that the White House actually seeks to increase repression through its covert propaganda, psyops and military campaigns, forcing the government to batten down the hatches, so to speak.

I am inserting an article one Phil Wilyato just wrote about his recent experiences in Iran. I personally met him before he left and I know that he was going into Iran with eyes wide open, aware that his group could easily be given the Potempkin Village tour: 

by Mac McKinney (48 articles, 78 quicklinks, 180 diaries, 1134 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 1:23:24 PM
 

Government legitimacy

Since the invasion of Iraq, there is a legitimate fear in the U.S. that Bush is going to use an excuse and invade Iran. Although this is a real fear it simply not going to happen. Unfortunately, some people out of their hater of Bush end up siding with Iranian government .Although this is understandable, it is not fair to people of Iran who are living under the dictatorial rule of the Ayatollahs. Iran does not have a free democratic system.

Countries that do not have free democratic elections, do so, only because they know that they will loose in such election.Iranian government is not the legitimate government of Iranian people. When we started the Iranian revolution we wanted to finish Iranian monarchy and replace it with elective democracy. However, At this point because of Khomeini’s lies we have the only theocracy in the world. The political and military rights of the Shah have been replaced by Political and military rights of the Ayatollah Khamenehei.

The only difference between these two is that shah was only interested in his self rule. Khamenehei is interested in everything you do, from what you think to what you wear. Women are continusly arrested in Tehran for showing a little bit of their hair. Religious minorities are systematically chased out of Iran. Ahmadinegad claims that there was no holocaust and wants to make the bomb to drop it on Israel. Iran does not have any borders with Israel and does have enough enemies.

Why start a war with someone you do not have any borders with. Ayatollah Shahroody (the chief of Iranian judiciary) said publicly that Iranian prisons are worth than “Abu Ghoreib” of Iraq. Regardless of what Bush and others say about Iran we did not revolt against the shah to replace him with a medieval cleric.

by Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D. (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 2:19:35 PM
 

Good Timely Article

After the quick and through fall of Saddam Husein, the Iranian governement and the Revolutionary guards were scared out of their wits; time and again Iran wanted to talk to the Bush Administration; Bush in his arrogant stupidity brushed them aside. The resulting debacle in Irag has given boastfulness to the Iranian guards who could not stand two months against the US forces no more than Iraq did. Since the middle of WW II, he who rules the air rules the immediate war.

The defeat of Iran is not the problem for the US. What would you do and what would you have after the Iranian military was totally eliminated? We would end up with the same mess we have in Iraq. The best hope is that the Iranian people will grow so tired of the abuse of women, the torture of citizens, the Seventh Century rule of a Twenty-first Century nation they will say enough and set up some type of representative government with universal sufferage and equal rights for women and minorites.

This is a very good article and very timely. It is balanced in attacking both the Shah regime and the Radical Islamist rule. One fears that the radical Sunnis and the radical Shiites are gradually pushing the middle of the road Shiites and Sunnis into an all out civil war. The fighting and killing will not stop with US withdrawal. The Sunnis and the Iranian Shiites are in a fight to the death where winner will probably take nothing for there will be nothing left to take. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt have a lot to lose and will not be watching bystanders.

by pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 969 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 12:12:43 PM
 

To refer back to Gen. Patton

The problem Bush has with the Iranian guard is not that they are S.O.B.s but that they are not our S.O.B.s. They exist because of the chain of events leading back to the US/Brit coup against Mosaddeq, who wanted the oil, and the motives and modis operandi of the US have not changed. It is poor policy to attempt to rid your cave of rats by filling it with snakes.

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 2:13:23 PM
 

Corruption

You are quiet right, however these S.O.Bs are making life miserable for every one in Iran. Besides being brutal, they are so corrupt. They have their hand in everything even import export of everyday goods. 

by Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D. (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 2:27:18 PM
 

The question then

is what is the best way to get rid of the gangsters (much the same question as in the US, and other countries).

I don't know of any easy answers. The people virtually always vastly outnumber the gangsters, but getting the people to act together is difficult, and trying is risky for individuals. It's difficult even to get everyone to understand the true situation -- and many of them are beneficiaries of the corruption and gangsters. Yet, it is the people themselves who ultimately take the responsibility for it -- to bring it about and then to maintain an just government and society. I know of no nation who will invest anything is the freedom of another without expecting something back for it, and that usually means imposing their own will on the people, or taking the country's resources. For that, nations will destroy the democratic systems of others, imposing so-called 'democracy' even while fighting the will of the people.

People world-wide need to think about power (and it's alter-ego greed), and not just how to gain it, but to tame and distribute it among the people. It is proper to have power over oneself, but not over others. That's the core issue humanity needs to address.

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 3:32:33 PM
 

That's the trillion dollar question

How do we get rid of the gangsters-- in the whitehouse, in every nation, in corporate boardrooms?  Answer that quesion and we'll linally see progress.

 I like your line in your eariler comment. Reminds me of that Bruce Willis fil-- 

"You're an asshole, but you're our kind of asshole."

by Rob Kall (867 articles, 3998 quicklinks, 344 diaries, 1839 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 5:01:46 PM
 

Rhetoric Getting Exaggerated

Now you are slipping into excessive statements in your comments. Iran is the worst this and the worst that, the only theocracy in the world, etc, etc. What would you call Saudi Arabia, where they are still chopping off hands for petty theft? Furthermore, we don't have much democracy even in this country anymore, only plutocracy, the rule of the rich, at the expense of the great majority of Americans, who are manipulated to the point of absurdity every which way during every election cycle.

You are also not looking at the larger picture here. Things have actually been going backwards in Iran since the Bush Administration came to power and soon began ratcheting up regime change. Then the decidedly conservative politician, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took power as a somewhat pale mirror of our cowboy gunslinger, although I haven't seen him running around in combat flight suits yet. Social progress in Iran has since taken a hit, but things were evolving toward greater secularism and more freedoms up to that point. So the system is capable of change. We were seeing it happen.

How much has the threat of an American attack, how much has the Bush Crusade against Islam empowered Shiite Fundamentalism in Iran and elsewhere. I would say a lot. And I would say that the Fundamentalism will not quiet down until the United States backs off its Imperial adventure in the Middle East. Look how all social progress in Iraq has now been destroyed after the American invasion. This is what war does.

by Mac McKinney (48 articles, 78 quicklinks, 180 diaries, 1134 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 4:22:21 PM
 

hanging from a crane

[ crane] I had a class mate in the U.S who went to Iran after revolution. He was arrested and hanged from a crane similar to this one. His body stayed up in the air for three days.His crime was that he believed in socialism. No activity except talking and writing about it. He was not guilty of any violence. Is this rhetoric.  

by Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D. (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 5:38:28 PM
 

Cruelty Everywhere

I can tell you about a black man who was tied to truck and dragged to his death in Texas not too many months ago. His crime, being black. But that wasn't the government of course. But what about all the Blacks and Latinos that get busted, beat up (or worse) and thrown into solitary daily by local cracker deputies and cops. The LA Police Dept abuses alone, sometimes fatal, could fill a library. Intolerance and cruelty are everywhere, not just in Iran. But there are better people than that in both Iran and America. We have to reach out to them.

by Mac McKinney (48 articles, 78 quicklinks, 180 diaries, 1134 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 6:03:44 PM
 

Who Are The Iranian Revolutionary Guards

 Quote;

In 1953, when Nixon was the U.S vice president, he ordered a military coup against the popular prime minister of Iran, Dr. Mosadegh, and caused the killing and imprisonment of all democratic forces in the country. Later, when he became the president, he gave the Shah free hand to do whatever he wanted.

Unquote;

Therein lies the basis for Iran's problems to this very day. I'm very surprised, that the author has failed to recognise, that a DEMOCRATICALY ELECTED GOVERNMENT, elected by the majority of the Iranian people was deposed with the complicity of the U.S. and a brutal, murderous dictator installed instead.

Weirder still, it would appear the author did not seem to have a problem with these actions, nor with the brutal forces unleashed by this U.S. assisted Dictator upon the Iranian people, namely himself.

Despite his credentials, it would appear he is unable to work out that such actions throughout history, have in most cases, always resulted in a brutal outcome from the people in responce, to then stand up a complain of such an outcome is a bit hypocitical, IMHO.

The author also seems to miss the point entirely, Iran has not to my knowledge,(during my lifetime) invaded or interfered with another countries national responsabilities, nor are they responsabile for the deaths/destruction/murder/displacement/hunger/homelessness of millions of people, as the U.S. actions have caused during my lifetime.

Despite his claims regards the Guards, neither are they responsabile either.

Considering the author has derived a living from American sources for some considerble time, I question his loyalties and objectives in this matter.

From where I sit, he should make up his mind, he's either an American citizen and therefore supports the actions of his adopted country, or he's an Iranian citizen and support the best for his country of birth, BUT you cannot sit on the fence and claim to want the best of BOTH, especially when the interests of America are NOT the best interests of the Iranian people.

I also note, the author seems to pretend the U.S. complicity in the war Iraq/Iran against his birth country as if it didn't happen. He seems to ignore totaly, the role played by the U.S. in supporting Saddam during that period when hundreds and thousands of his fellow countryment were slaughtered simply to weaken the country for the U.S. actions later to further undermine them.

Similarly, he also appears to ignore the actions sanctioned by the Administration to wage clandestine war inside Iran right this very minute.

A clandestine war that will result in the deaths and misplacement of his very own people as a direct result.

Seriously, I ask, what sort of person would support such actions against his very own people ?

I guess that says it all.

by Eddy Schmid (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 207 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 10:20:51 PM
 

Practice of Psychology with out knowing a patient

It is quiet interesting to read such analysis regarding my character by people who know nothing about me. I hated the Shah; I fought against him when fighting against him was equivalent of death, I am very lucky to survive those days. I lost many dear friends in those fights. I worked inside and outside of Iran against the Shah. If it was not because of people like me His son would be in power now. However that was 27 years ago, things have changed. Shah has been replaced by a medieval cleric. And Nixon is replaced by Putin. One worse than the other. I do not have any problem being an Iranian American. President Clinton did his best to resolve the conflict between two countries. I think that there are still strong pro democracy forces in both countries to turn things around. I have high hopes for the next election of the U.S. the interests of the two countries are not mutually exclusive. And as far as the people of other countries are concerned it would be much better if they let us handle this problem on our own. Introjection of Australia to the Middle East did not benefit any body.

by Abbas Sadeghian, Ph.D. (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments) on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 12:45:08 AM
 

We Can Hope for the Best and Envision It

It is interesting that both Iran and America are going retrograde in terms of social evolution at the same time. An astrologer would likely say duhh, look at their planets! But however you want to explain this phenomenon of increased religious Fundamentalism and diminishment of liberties, both countries may also come out of this reactionary step backwards at the same time and indeed develop more natural ties. Actively envisioning that may help.

by Mac McKinney (48 articles, 78 quicklinks, 180 diaries, 1134 comments) on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 1:33:33 AM
 

Itchyvet

Do you ever note anything against Iran and their radical government? Good night, the Shah has been gone over twenty-five years! I just hear you at the start of the next century when people are still enslaved in Iran, "Now, folks don't blame these innocent radical Islamist because it goes all the way back to the Shah."

Give me a break. Iran is a hell hole to live in and you know it.

by pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 969 comments) on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 11:47:53 PM
 

Iran

has major problems, especially in civil rights, but it's hardly a hell-hole. The people I've heard who have visited their (such as members of the Friends) didn't think it was a hell-hole. As countries go, it's not the best and not the worst.

For those of us with memories 25 years is not that long a time, and both in Iran and in the US the echoes from that time are still strong. When you say '"Now, folks don't blame these innocent radical Islamist because it goes all the way back to the Shah."' you are just mocking, and being ridiculous trying to obscure the reality. Have you no sense of history and it's effects? Do you think that the US war with Vietnam has no effect on current policies? Do you think the election of Reagan and the Iran Contra affair has no effect on the present? Really -- let's try to discuss this with at least a little bit of intelligence.

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 997 comments) on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 2:58:22 AM