Iran Freedom Concert

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Well said--I agree with you.

I'm also a bit puzzled how not making an explicit case for war can--merely with the help of that magical-formula word, "context"--be equated with making a case for war.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

The concert organizers say they are not taking a position on a war with Iran, and the response is that regardless of what they say, they really are taking a position because somebody else is beating war drums. This is a series of claims begging for an explanation. More precisely, it's a non-sequitur begging to be retracted.

If I say I'm not taking a position on something, how does someone else's taking a position on that thing imply that I am taking a position on it? How can someone else's linguistic act determine the content of mine? That's not a rhetorical question.

Since the Administration is not actually taking the position that the US ought to go to war with Iran, the claim makes even less sense on second thought than it did at face value: What's being said here is that the concert organizers take no position on intervention. Despite the fact that the administration has taken no explicit position either, Kia thinks we can somehow magically draw the inference that both the organizers and administration have in fact taken such a position. Anyone want to spell out how that inference works?

By this logic, why not say that Kia has "contextually" pledged allegiance to Iran, denied the historicity of the Holocaust, and threatened to nuclearize Israel? I realize she hasn't explicitly endorsed any of that. But if non-endorsement can so easily be brushed aside, let's be consistent in our dismissals. I'd be curious to see how ardently Kia would be willing to endorse the "forget explicit statements" principle in that "context".

I realize that Orwellian doublespeak may be necessary to defend a totalitarian dictatorship, but that doesn't change its semantic status: bloody confused. Maybe it's time to stop play Orwellian games with language and speak a bit more plainly.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Would someone be willing to clarify the meaning, in plain English, of the following sentence from Mana Kia's open letter?

People are NOT executed for their religion – Bahais are not allowed to practice their religion, but their case is different from other minorities and if you conflate all of them, then you are glossing over the precarious nature of their position in Iran.

Barry DeCicco - 3/23/2006

Hmm. My attempt to post here yesterday was refused, with a mesage 'you are not allowed to post here'. Must have been a glitch.

Barry DeCicco - 3/23/2006

Test post

Robert KC Johnson - 3/20/2006

Sorry--I meant with (4) to say that there was far greater degree of (correct) international doubt for the US claims in Iraq in 2002 than for Iran in 2006, not the reverse.

Indeed the Bush adm. is saying some (though not all) of the same things about Iran in 2006 than it was abt. Iraq in 2002. But the issue here is the Kia post that the concert highlighting Iranian human rights abuses is somehow illegitimate because Iran is an opponent of the Bush adm.

By this logic, in 1956, Americans should have remained silent as Soviet troops invaded Hungary; or in 1968, Americans should have averted their eyes as the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. Kia's approach seems to be a mirror image of Bush's. In Bush's world, the goal is to highlight human rights abuses of regimes he doesn't like but stay silent about USA allies; for Kia, she seems to believe Americans should stay silent about US critics. It's unclear exactly what she wants done about human rights abuses by US allies.

Barry DeCicco - 3/20/2006

An historical correction - European countries had a lot of doubt about WMD's in Iraq, by the time that the war started in 2003. That would be because there was a large set of UN inspections in that time, which established that, if there was a nuclear program in Iraq, it was hidden away to an extent previously unknown to be possible.


As to your parallels, there is one huge, overwhelming parallel - the US government (spender of 50% of the world's military spending) is making the same propaganda prep that they were making during the summer of 2002.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/19/2006

I don't expect that people will not notice the parallels. But it also seems reasonable to point out the pretty clear differences: (1) there doesn't seem much doubt that the Iranians are going for WMDs, since their government's actions have been in the open, so unlike 2002 we're not relying on US intelligence claims; (2) there doesn't seem to be much doubt that the human rights situation in Iran has become much more repressive in the last year-plus, unlike the situation in Iraq, where the situation was essentially static (bad) in the years before the invasion; (3) the administration made broad (false) hints in 2002 that Iraq had some connection to Al Qaeda or even to 9/11, hints I haven't seen even from adm. spokesmen in recent weeks; (4) there's a far greater degree of international doubt (ie France and Germany) about Iran in 2006 than there was about Iraq in 2002.

In short, the differences between Iran 2006 and Iraq in the runup to war far outweigh whatever "eerie parallels" exist between 2002 and now.

Alan Allport - 3/19/2006

I think I get the idea, Barry. No-one else in the world has agency, much less responsibility; all are the passive victims of the Great Satan.

Robert Hughes summed this line of argument up pretty definitively in The Culture of Complaint in '91: "'Though of course we don't go along with everything the government of Iran says or does, we have to recognize that their culture is indeed theirs, not ours, and that the objective circumstances of racism in these Eurocentric United States would make a protest seem like a caving-in to the values of the Republicans, who have used the often-regrettable excesses of Islamic fundamentalism, which must be seen within a global context of Western aggression against Third World peoples, as a pretext for ...' but one gets the drift."

Barry DeCicco - 3/19/2006

No. The administration put Iran in the 'Axis of Evil, and announced that the government was to be overthrown, back when that government was cooperating with the USA. In terms of human rights, the GOP has never really given a bent penny. As to nuclear proliferation, the policy seems to be to encourage it more than anything else (Israel, India, Pakistan).

Barry DeCicco - 3/19/2006

Robert, it's also naive to expect that people won't notivce the US government statements about Iran, the eerie parallels between 2006 and 2002, and draw the obvious conclusions.
ue. H

Barry DeCicco - 3/19/2006

Ralph, that's part of it. The other part, that I've laid out, is that there are good reasons for distrusting the honesty of Andrew Sullivan.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/19/2006

The concert organizers set up a FAQ section on their website, and are quite persuasive
http://iranfreedomconcert.com/faq.html

Kia, however, remains unconvinced, largely on the following grounds: "I am well aware of abuses against minorities, and yet, as an Iranian woman from a minority family, who likes to party (since you've included that in some assumptions about student group priorities) I don't feel like you are showing solidarity toward my counterparts in Iran."

Since she seems to think that she alone can speak for Iranian students, it's unlikely the concert organizers could have done anything to satisfy her.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/18/2006

I'd agree that Sudan and North Korea are worse human rights violators than Iran; Burma and Zimbabwe might very well be; and Belarus is no prize. (Colombia? The fallout of drugs and organized crime certainly makes it violent, but an elected, constitutional government can't be fairly compared to Iran.) There have, however, been strong protests against Sudan on lots of college campuses, usually organized around calls for divestment from Sudan. As for North Korea, the outside world has essentially no contact with the regime, nor vice versa.

The fact that there are two governments that are worse human rights abusers than Iran, though, doesn't seem to me to mean that there can't be public protests about Iran.

As to the question of why now, that seems straightforward. Iran is a country that seemed to be moving toward a more moderate path, only to have, within the last 12 months, the regime crack down on political, religious, and media dissenters, orchestrate the election of a president who has publicly called for a neighboring state to be wiped off the face of the earth and has denied to Holocaust, and is, in full public view, seeking to develop nuclear weapons. There's obviously very little anyone in the West can do to stop such behavior. But it's naive to expect that people won't notice it, and therefore pay attention to Iran.

Ralph E. Luker - 3/18/2006

Barry, I hope you don't mind if I read this as meaning that you rarely agree with Andrew Sullivan.

Alan Allport - 3/18/2006

We just find this surge of actiivities against the government of Iran far too unlikely to be just a coincidence.

You don't think that the behavior of the government of Iran might have something to do with it too?

Barry DeCicco - 3/18/2006

Iran would not be one of the worst violators in the world; Sudan would fall far, far worse. A number of former soviet republics are nasty places. N. Korea is worse; Burma might compare (who knows what's going on in there). Several places in Africa could compare (Zimbabwe, the Congo), most of which us Americans are sadly ignorant of.

Iraq is far worse, mainly due to US actions, frightening as that may be. Notice that nobody is defending the current situation there as 'better than Saddam'?

In Central and South America, Columbia is a nasty place. Venezuela is not as bad as Iran, only because the US-backed coup attempt failed.
Guatemala is probably not as bad as Iran, but that's because the government had completed a 100k mass murder - largely with US support.

So why Iran now?

As for nuclear weapons, many countries have those, most developed 'illegally'. Saddam clearly did not, which, of course, made him vulnerable.
We just saw Bush help the Indian nuclear 'power' program - with my support.

In the end, it comes down to oil, and securing the Middle East.

Barry DeCicco - 3/18/2006

Sorry; I totally misread your post, Irfan. My latest post in the 'context' thread disusses this.

Short version: after the Iraq war, which was preceeded by an administration-orchestrated propaganda campaign, centered in 'non-governmental' agencies, heavily supported by exiles, a lot of Americans are not in a trusting mood. Nothing personal; we just find this surge of actiivities against the government of Iran far too unlikely to be just a coincidence.

Barry DeCicco - 3/18/2006

Irfan, perhaps that, in what is a more Orwellian situation than we've had in the USA for many years, we assume double-speak. As for the administration not explicitly supporting a war - yes, it's not **explicitly** supporting a war. Yes. The propanda organs of the GOP are gearing up for it, just as they did in 2002.

All so very deniable.

It's a h*ll of a situation, but if you wish to complain, please address your comlaints to those who've supported the adminstration.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/18/2006

All of this might well be true--and it is a much more persuasive critique of the adm's Iran policy than Kia offers.

But Kia is specifically critiquing the concert, and in a contradictory way. She says that she wants the organizers to recognize UN principles--yet a fundamental UN principle is that all people are entitled to basic human rights. Yes, there are many nations that don't fulfill the UN 1948 resolution on this matter, but Iran certainly would be one of the worst violators in the world. She says she's no "fan" of the Iranian regime, yet her comments about its treatment of other religions and of gays seems to go out of their way to place the very best possible interpretation on the facts.

She could have argued: "Iran persecutes its citizens of other religions, has a horrific record with gays, and seems intent on developing a nuclear weapon in violation of the NPT. But to be effective, protest groups need to focus their efforts on one issue and one issue alone, and right now stopping the war in Iraq is pre-eminent." I think that would be a pretty effective argument against the concert. Instead, she undermines her case by making statements about Iran's human rights policies that are very hard to defend.

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

Well, Oscar, the baseline established for the past few years is unfair; many patriotic Americans have been libeled and slanders by their lessers.

Given that, what are we to do? One start is to establish, and re-establish, that a call for a war has a high theshold to cross, to be legitimate. And that those whose timing is, shall I say, a bit too coincidental bear that suspicion.

It might not be fair, but as I said above...

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

That's a really good point. War *will* involve lots of death and destruction. Occasionally, wars go predictably, but, as somebody who shall go nameless once said, 'initiating a war is like entering a large darkened room. One never knows what one will encounter".
[this quote is from memory, and bound to be inexact]

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

I have to apologize, Robert; my writing was poor, and I made personal points when uncalled for and unnecessary.

I would like to say that, first, using Andrew Sullivan is dealing with a very shady character, as I pointed out. Second, in terms of context, I understand where the people opposing these anti-Iran (gov't) actions are coming from. They, and I don't believe for one second that these actions are coincidences. The administration is beating the war drums against Iran[1], many right-wing warmongers[2] have decided that the potential war in Iran is more attractive than explaining away failures in Iraq, and the exiles, of course, are trying to ride that wave, boosting it as they can.[3]

Sincerely,
Barry

[1] I'm not saying that the administration *will* attack Iran; just that they're politically opening the option, and seeing what use they can make of a it, just like in 2002. If they feel that a war would be in their political interest, the prep work will have been done. If not, maybe it brings them one more election.

[2] Warmongers as a literal term - these people, some from vocation and some from avocation, want to create war.

[3] Including, IIRC, from the NY Times, installing the son of the Shah back into power, for 'democracy'!

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

Um, Ralph, please re-read my post, with your reading comprehension turned *on*. My points were that:

(1) Leftists *had* criticized the government of Iran, so Sullivan was lying.

2) Castigating somebody for not denouncing one's pet peeves, even when they have not done so, is unreliable. It's presuming to order others to dance to one's own tune, while refusing to dance to theirs.

3) Andrew Sullivan is a serial, habitual, career and professional liar. Times when Sullivan tells the truth are exceptional.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/17/2006

Sorry to say that I was merely commenting on the article. I do tend to comment from time to time.

To avoid Sullivan, here's Human Rights Watch (hardly an anti-leftist group) on Iran's policy toward gays:

"Men and women suspected of homosexual conduct in Iran face the threat of execution,” said Scott Long, director of Human Rights Watch’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program. “We have documented brutal floggings imposed by courts as punishment, and torture and ill-treatment, including sexual abuse, in police custody.”

"Article 111 of the Code of Islamic Punishments, Iran’s criminal code, states that lavat – sexual intercourse between men – “is punishable by death.” Under Articles 121-122 of the Penal Code, Tafkhiz – non-penetrative “foreplay” between men – is punishable by 100 lashes for each partner and by death on the fourth conviction. Article 123 of the Penal Code further provides that, “If two men who are not related by blood lie naked under the same cover without any necessity,” each one will receive 99 lashes. Articles 127 to 134 stipulate that the punishment for sexual intercourse between women is 100 lashes; if the offence is repeated three times, the punishment is execution."

I raised this point only to point out the oddness of Kia's contention that those who don't support gay marriage in the US ought not to have the ability to speak out against Iran's policies.

Oscar Chamberlain - 3/17/2006

It seems to me that any event that underscores problems in Iran could be used to support intervention. That's a reality of modern propaganda and debate.

To condemn such an event solely for that reason strikes me as imposing an unsolvable double bind--or Catch 22--on those people who would protest Iranian oppression. That does not preclude suggesting other and perhaps better form of opposition, but if a critic has neither proof that such an event is made to support intervention nor an alternative to such an event . . ..

Well, that's awfully unfair.

Ralph E. Luker - 3/17/2006

Mr. DeCicco, Get off your quantification high horse. I ran google searches for KC Johnson and for Barry DeCicco on Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Congo. You won't be surprised that I found KC beating you hands down -- many times over -- on all three fronts. Meaningless, of course, but no less meaningless than your quantifications.

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

" Andrew Sullivan, among others, has been quite eloquent in condemning the silence of the American left about the Iranian government's treatment of gays"

Andrew Sullivan is quite eloquent in condemning the 'silence' of the American left, for any topic under the sun. Now, unless there actually has been 100% avoidance of criticism of the Iranian government about oppression of gays, 'silence', in Sullivan's dictionary, means 'not as much as I demand, when I demand it, in preference over other things which could be said'.

Interjection - I just ran a search on Google for the words 'iran' 'gay' on the site of The Nation. Result - 277 hits. 123 hits from Advocate magazine; 161 from Mother Jones; 302 from The American Prospect.

At this point, can I say that Sullivan is clearly lying?

And, since sauce for the Sullivan is sauce for the Johnson (no pun intended), how many columns have you devoted to Dafur? Zimbabwe? the Congo? Do you *support* the actions of these governments?


Sullivan has been a quite dishonest person about many subjects for as long as he's been in print. Back in TNR, he took pride for printing an excerpt from the Bell Curve, as non-fiction.

He recently put out a column where he blamed his Bush worship on 9/11.
DeLong smacked him down:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/03/yes_andrew_sull.html

Immediately after 9/11, Sullivan called East and West coast people traitors, with his 'fifth column' remark.

He wrote an article for the NYT, 'End of the Plague' (title from memory), where he considered AIDS to be no longer a major problem, due to the new drugs. This not only ignored the actual effectiveness of the drugs, but also everybody in the world without access to $10,000/year of pharmaceuticals.


There is one, and only one subject I've read him on where he's exhibited any honesty whatsoever, and that would be torture.

Barry DeCicco - 3/17/2006

It's a very reasonable assumption, when such an affair is started up now, when the administration is beating the war drums.

Richard Newell - 3/17/2006

I had trouble with the same sentence. I think 'them' refers to all minorities (minority religious groups?), including the Baha'i faithful.

It could also be a restatement of the official government position of the theocratic fascist state of Iran. That government holds that the Baha'i faithful are not only apostates (as opposed to Christians and Jews) but are counter-revolutionaries, and are therefore defined in policy not by their religious beliefs but by the politics that are invented for them. For instance, the ruling gang has gone to great lengths to produce a false history of the Baha'i faithful, linking them to the Pahlavi regime.

And it is this capacity for invention which induces a certain amount of skepticism about Mana Kia's views on the teenage gays executed in Iran, ostensibly for rape. There seems to be quite some dispute about the facts. But on any reading of the facts, Iran is bound by the UN Convention on Rights of the Child (Iran is a signatory, the US is not), which bans executing minors.

There are all kinds of contexts to this concert, and to Kia's response. Either can be seen as dishonestly supporting opposing views on the nature of the Iranian regime, and different policies -- if one so chooses. The charge is a double-edged sword. Is it enough for Kia to claim not to be a "fan" of the present regime? What are the constructive means preferred by Kia? Seems remarkably silent on that point. Draw your own conclusions.

Alan Allport - 3/16/2006

It already has a context.

The concert folk have addressed that: "The coalition is non-partisan and does not take a stance on policy issues like foreign intervention."

Ms. Kia evidently thinks this statement to be in bad faith; until the organizers demonstrate that they hold Awful George in sufficient contempt, all their protestations of belief in democracy must be regarded as a sham. At least, that is what her petulant ultimatum appears to suggest.

Jonathan Dresner - 3/16/2006

It already has a context. The question really is whether they understand that and if they are willing to recontextualize the statement.

I'm not offering an opinion here, just a clarification.

Alan Allport - 3/16/2006

According to the organization's website, our message is simple: civil rights must be respected by any Iranian government, and freedom must become a reality for all Iranians.

It is not immediately clear to me why its organizers must bend over backwards 'contextualizing' such a simple and self-evident statement of truth to the satisfaction of Ms. Kay.

Robert KC Johnson - 3/16/2006

I don't support a US military intervention against Iran, in no small part because I can't see how such a US move would accomplish anything. But the Open Letter, doesn't, it seems to me, further the anti-intervention case.

There are some sections of her essay that are hard to fathom. Andrew Sullivan, among others, has been quite eloquent in condemning the silence of the American left about the Iranian government's treatment of gays, which has included at least two occasions of public hangings. "The discrimination and repression in Iran are highly deplorable, but I wonder, does the Christian Fellowship and the Harvard Republicans [two of the conference's sponsors, which is an ideologically diverse left-ro-right coalition] support full anti-discrimination of homosexuals in this country?" It's insulting to imply that only those who support gay marriage have the right to speak out against a penal system that has produced the public hangings of gay people.

Kia then argues that the concert, "assigned meaning by its context, is itself an explicit endorsement of war on Iran. UNLESS, you condemn the use of violence and endorse the utter exhaustion of all peaceful means of negotiation." These, of course, are not mutually incompatable sentiments. The "utter exhaustion of all peaceful means of negotiation" could, if these means fail, end in a UN Security Council authorization to use force. The 1991 liberation of Kuwait comes to mind here. Kia argues that her demand is simply calling on the concert sponsors to uphold "principle enshrined in the UN Charter." But, of course, the Charter also lays out occasions in which the use of violence is authorized.

I was also struck by the inconsistency in line of attack: she condemns the concert organizers both for not being broad enough in their focus (why aren't they also condemning Burma, or Egypt, or Zimbabwe) and for being overly broad (don't they understand the need to consider "vehemently reject[ing] any and all US based activism on the ground that it a) can be appropriated by a jingoistic US government delivering “democracy” from the barrel of hundreds of thousands of guns and bombs.")

Kia concludes by warning the organizers or dire consequences "if you choose to completely ignore me." But as she seems to have made up her mind about both the concert and about US policy toward Iran, I'd say the organizers would do best by simply steering clear of her.