Good relations with Iran?

From Thomas Friedman's  op-ed article in this morning's New York Times, with luck Iran is safe from being Bombed and the chance that we will see a world at peace in my lifetime is increased.

Modest congratulations are due those of you who opposed Bombing Iran initially.

A free and prosperous Iran, though still a theocracy theocracy might look something like this:

. . . instead of something like this:

Israel and the Horrible Saudis are the likely spoilers.  

Israel’s leaders -- some American Jews consider them Fascists and many more believe the leaders have betrayed Israel’s founding hope of a free, democratic state --- are unreasonably afraid of death.  

Death comes to us all, some sooner than they would like, but an irrational fear of death leads to irrational and brutal actions; courageously facing the certainty of death leads to gentleness and openness.  

Israeli leaders are nothing if not irrational and brutal: irrational because they have enough atomic Bombs to make them safe from any nation on the face of the earth; brutal because of the march of new settlements into Palestinian territory and the mistreatment of Palestinians.

 Remind you of anything, you Border Citizens?

The H. Saudis are a danger because they wish with all their might for a return to the splendid Abbasid Caliphate during the Arab Golden Age (750 - 1250 a.c.e.), when the acquisition of knowledge was the highest value . . .

 . . . and they are captured by Wahhabism, a religion so reactionary and intolerant of women and others who do not conform that they have won no converts outside the Pashtun, in spite of decades of expensive propaganda. 

There are not many pictures.  Pictures are not often permitted.

See Wikipedia, LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia; Human Rights Watch,  Saudi Arabia 2013 

Although Wahhabism wins no converts, the H. Saudis have so much free money that they are dangerous:  consider their efforts to turn Syria into a Salafi state.

Wahhabism is sometimes conflated with the Salafi movement; and some Salafi regard the term as derogatory:  no matter: they both espouse an intolerant interpretation of Sharia that only experts can tell apart.  It is as if a majority of the voting Citizens in the U.S. believed hat the Old Testament, with its cruel injunctions must be applied literally.   Indeed, the Old Testament may be even more draconian than Sharia:  Consider an Arkansas Republican politician, quoted in the Daily Kos 

"a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given  in Deut 21:18-21” -- Arkansas Republican Charlie Fuqua.

Deuteronomy, an Old Testament book held to be The Holy Word of God by Christians, recommends stoning rebellious children to death.  The text is here, and is worth reading, ye who are certain of our moral superiority.

Salafi fall in love --

and Sunni Muslims mourn their dead.

Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1:  Shylock:

. . . .  I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, asa Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Morsi's fall, engineered by Saudis, now Israel's fault?

One of the reasons blogging the Middle East is hard today:

Last Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's prime minister,

accused Israel of being behind the ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. . . .

This is curious and confusing, because

 Saudi Arabia's backing for the recent Egyptian coup, which its head of intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, had worked so tirelessly to achieve, was instantaneous. When Adli Mansour, the former head of Egypt's supreme court, was sworn in as interim president, King Abdullah sent him a message praising the Egyptian army for having saved the country from a dark tunnel.

The Saudi monarch followed this up last Friday with a speech whose bluntness was atypical of the man. "Let the entire world know," he proclaimed "that the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stood and still stand today with our brothers in Egypt against terrorism, extremism and sedition, and against whomever is trying to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs."  The Guardian.

And the Saudis are giving the Egyptian military dictators billions of dollars to support the coup.

Why would Prime Minister Erdoğan say such a thing?

The answer may lie in Syria: Turkey has a burning desire to see President Bashar al-Assad gone, and Erdoğan's disappointment with both the Obama's and Putin's apparent joint decision not to bomb Syria over "chemical" weapons is widely known.

A UN brokered settlement of the weapons issue backed by the U.S. and Russia might lead to a brokered resolution of the ciil war, which might not turn out to be in Turkey's interest.

Supporting the Saudi now might be in Erdoğan's interest.  The Saudi are prime contributors to the Salafi rebels in Syria. MUSLIM WORLD - FRANCE 24,  How Saudi petrodollars fuel rise of Salafism .

  See, e.g. Reuters' Saudi edges Qatar to control Syrian rebel support. And see The Guardian,  Syria's rebels fear foreign jihadis in their midst; The Economist, Jihadis in Syria A Salafi shindig.

Kerry mimics Cheney; hoping to kill Syrians for an empty premise.

Not even President Obama can control the urge to kill, given the massive army at his disposal; as large as all the other armies of all the other countries combined.

The voting population of the United States don't want their country to bomb Syria.

A majority of both houses of Congress, so far, seem not disposed to vote the president the authority to bomb Syria.

The president and his advisors will not say that the vote of Congress is irrelevant to the decision whether to make war on another Country, using as a justification that other  presidents have ignored the clear mandate of the U. S. Constitution.  Sloppy, dangerous reasoning, unworthy of Obama.

Peer Wikipedia:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording:

[The Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

We have not been attacked or threatened by Syria.

The justifications for the proposed Syrian killings have boiled down, in recent days, to a moral judgment that Assad's alleged  use of sarin gas is so abhorrent that no civilized nation can allow it to go unchallenged; therefore the U.S. alone in the world, must kill Syrians to teach Syrians not to kill Syrians with sarin gas; and, incidentally, killing Syrians is thought by Kerry to discourage Iran from building an Atomic Bomb, which it says it doesn't want.

Death and injury by sarin gas is a relatively easy death.  See CDC | Facts About Sarin, which John Kerry can easily access anytime he wishes to stop sounding like Dick Cheney at his maddest.

Sarin injury and death is easier than any napalm exposure, which is a chemical agent used with zest by the U.S. in Vietnam.

Sarin death is to be preferred to death by flame thrower, a device which disperses a burning chemical over enemies and others and cannot be put out.   Babies are not exempt from being burned to death.  The U..S. and all other civilized nations burn folks to death with this chemical weapon, much worse than death by sarin gas.

Sarin injury is more easily cured that exposure to the chemical gas, Agent Orange, which the U.S. poured on U..S. soldiers and Vietnamese people indiscriminately in Vietnam.

White phosphorus, used by the U.S. in the Fallujah campaign,  burns whatever it touches that, like flesh, contains moisture,  and cannot be extinguished.

Sarin death is worse than than death by another chemical weapon, the chemical Bomb., if you are directly under the bomb when it explodes,  for you, the Universe and everything in it winks out of existence in an instant, and there is nothing left to hurt or regret or morn, except for friends and relatives.

The pride of the u.S. military: the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB)

  If, however, you are what many call in their best Orwellian style, "collaterals" -- by which they mean persons presumed to harbor no ill will toward the the bombing nation-- death by sarin may be preferable to being burnt to a crisp, blasted to smithereens, bones shattered, sinews twisted 'til they stretch and break; you may become blind and deaf; one may loose a foot or leg or arm and become a beggar in his country.  One may go mad; indeed, many may be expected o go mad.  Injury and death to those in the near vicinity of a chemical explosion is the worst of modern warfare, excepting atomics .

A few of the tens of thousands of images on the web:

Kerry, if he has an ounce of decency, will be speaking out sternly against such injuries and deaths.

Instead, he is using his considerable skill to promote just such injuries and deaths.

I don't want to hear any more bout how awful sarin gas is.  All war is horrid.  Focus on relatively mile sarin gas makes me angry.

I wish Kerry ill in his effort, though otherwise Kerry seems to have been an efficient Secretary of State.


What I would like for Kerry to do is offer to submit all his information  for and against Assad's use of sarin to a natural arbiter, asking Russia to do the same.  Russia claims that it is insurgents who use sarin.   Perhaps everybody does or did.  If all countries share honestly in presenting information, some solution will become apparent.

The president deserves high praise for submitting the question of War to the Congress.  I hope Congress will honor him for doing so, even as it rejects his War request.

P.s. We, all seven billion of us, without regard for economic theory, belief or unbelief,  can be awful without chemical aides.  No theory, philosophy, creed, or custom restrains us so far in all our recorded history.

"Hatred begets hatred."

"Hatred never ceases by hatred,

but by love alone is healed;

this is a great and eternal law."

Chant repeated by Buddhists in the Cambodian Killing  Fields

Will we learn something useful before our awesome power to destroy does so much damage to our seven bullion lives that the damage cannot be repaired?  Hope so.  Got my fingers crossed.

Bomb Syria Today! Blast 'em to smithereens!!

Mr. President, forget that inept House of Representatives.  Bomb Syria today!  

Bombing is ever so much more humane than gas!   

Who wouldn't prefer to stick his head in a gas oven than to be shot to death, twisted all ends up 'til sinews give way, burnt to crisp, blinded or footless for life?  Blast me to smithereens any day!

Better yet, stop your meddling and leave us to our own destinies.

 "Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. . . ." 


 I wish you well, O Syria!