Joe Klein is right. I’m trying to think of the right analogy to use that would explain the United States relationship with Iran’s reformers. It’s kind of like a father who, through the mistreatment of his children, is court-ordered to have nothing to do with them. And then that father sees that his children are in need of help but is prohibited from offering a helping hand.
Friends and acquaintances, seeing the situation, encourage the father to take some action, but the father knows he is powerless to get involved.
The reason I choose this analogy is not because the Iranian reformers are children and Americans are some paternalistic figures that loom over them. But, that is how so many Americans look at the world, that the analogy makes sense. John McCain has such an ingrained neo-colonialist mindset, that you have to talk to him in terms he can understand. He’s the father who beat his children and forfeited the right even to treat them well in the future.
America can quietly root for the reformers from a distance, while ruing their prior mistakes that make it impossible to be trusted to help.
With Iran, our credibility is shot.
Terrible analogy.
Try something more like Bonnie and Clyde, seeing that too many banks are being robbed and wishing they could help, but they’re on the lam and would be quite rightly dragged to the hangin’ tree if they tried.
the analogy is for McCain’s benefit. And people like McCain.
Except McCain wouldn’t see any mistreatment or other fault. He’d see a need for even more tough love.
It was a perfect analogy. Loved it.
How about the drunken frat boy who ran through several co-eds with roofies now finds himself on the sex offender registry, and even though a sorority house is on fire he can’t come within 500 yards of it.
that works, too.
Yes!
Remind me again, why isn’t the frat-rat in jail?
Well done.
The CIA won’t release the documents.
thanks BooMan for that link
I’m still getting over my gag reflex at reading “Joe Klein is right”, considering how many years he spent being mostly wrong. But this time he’s dead on, and it’s one of the clearest and truest things I’ve read in the msm in a long while.
Anyone else tired of this shit?
How’s the pipeline coming?
Oh, yeah! Forty Years ago.
Yeah, I’m tired of this shit, damned tired. In Nam it was Agent Orange and napalm and now it is white phosphorous. And, who suffers the most but the kids? And who will end up losing the whole shebang but the insensitive, amoral, stupid, ugly Americans. And, Bush & co wondered why people hate us so. It’s cuz we are moral reprobates, hypocrites to the max and a clear and constant danger to anyone who disagrees with us or has some precious resource that we need to fuel this dangerous addiction we have to consume products.
I think future generations, if there are any, may regard us as the ultimate terrorist nation; one toxic to the well being of the planet itself. I think, perhaps, Armageddon will bear the stamp, “Made in America.”
Terribly terribly tired.
I happened to be in a bookstore yesterday. Not really to buy anything, because I’m already reading at least a half-dozen books. I happened on Dexter Filkins’ “The Forever War,” and having just finished Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side,” I wasn’t sure I was ready for another harrowing journey.
Well, the upshot is that I couldn’t put the Filkins book down, and ended up taking it home. It is horrifying and riveting, beautifully written and compelling. And I feel such deep sorrow for the Afghan people, especially the women and children. I found myself reexamining my opposition to our presence in Afghanistan. Not out of any fear of terrorism or the drug trade or because I harbor any imperialist or colonialist tendencies, but because I feel such a sense of obligation to these people who have suffered so much. And then I heard about the sentences to be carried out in Somalia, and then I thought about all the places in the world where landmines kill and cripple people every day, and then I thought about all the companies that manufacture landmines and that they employ people who assemble these destructive devices in order to earn money to feed and clothe and shelter their families.
So yes, yes, I’m terribly terribly tired.
Absolutely. And what about the disclaimer “some people might find disturbing?” Who in hell wouldn’t find that story and photos disturbing? Someone who should be sequestered from society.
esquimaux,
I think you’ll find that Joe Klein has been telling the truth about a lot of things for the past year. Unlike most of the pundits, he finally got pissed off and started telling it lke it is.
thanks, I know people have talked about his shift back toward reality for a while, but I still haven’t made a habit of reading Joe.
This is so sickening. And so typical. Burn ’em half to death, and then fix ’em up a little and pretend you’re there to help them. We’ve seen that in Iraq a million times over.
Sorry – that was supposed to be a reply to BooMan’s link.
Paragraph 3 should have been paragraph 1, with some minor modifications.
our credibility is shot pretty much world wide, especially in the ME.
thanks to the neoCON misadventures of the past 8 years and decades of fucking around where we shouldn’t.
eventually you have to pay the piper, and the debts have just started to come due.
The neocons, et al. put a giant spotlight on what the U.S. has been doing in the world for, as you said, decades, making it very difficult for people to pretend they just didn’t know. That just might turn out to be the upside to the last eight catastrophic years. It might be the silver lining around that huge, dark cloud.
McCaniac Response
So… you’re saying this is all the trial-lawyers fault. Damn gubmint restraining orders violating my rights and treating me like a criminal just cuz i broke some laws… presnit said I could anyway so it wuzn’t wrrong.
damned socialist trial lawyers… I oughta sue em….
/McCainiac response