Good fences make better neighbors?

The New Neo Posted on by

So, was Frost right? Do good fences make good–or at least, improved–neighbors? We may get a chance to find out.

Here’s a very interesting perspective from today’s NY Times, on the effect of a possible US/Mexico fence on Mexican policy itself:

“To build, or not to build, a border of walls? The debate in the United States has started some Mexicans thinking it is not such a bad idea….

The old blame game ”” in which Mexico attributed illegal migration to the voracious American demand for labor and accused lawmakers of xenophobia ”” has given way to a far more soul-searching discussion, at least in quarters where policies are made and influenced, about how little Mexico has done to try to keep its people home.

For too long, Mexico has boasted about immigrants leaving, calling them national heroes, instead of describing them as actors in a national tragedy,” said Jorge Santibé¡é±ez, president of the College of the Northern Border. “And it has boasted about the growth in remittances” ”” the money immigrants send home ”” “as an indicator of success, when it is really an indicator of failure.”

Indeed, Mr. Fox ”” who five years ago challenged the United States to follow Europe’s example and open the borders and then barely protested when President Bush announced plans to deploy troops ”” personifies Mexico’s evolving, often contradictory attitudes on illegal immigration.

Gabriel Guerra, a political analyst, said the presidential election in July and the negotiations over immigration reform in Washington have put Mr. Fox on unsteady political terrain…

Analysts said it was unlikely that Mr. Fox would ever speak publicly in favor of a wall. But in recent communications to Washington, his government, as well as leaders of all Mexican political parties, have hinted about building walls of their own.

Last March, in a document published in three of America’s largest daily newspapers, including The New York Times, the Mexican government, along with leaders of the political establishment and business community, explained its position on immigration reform.

In that document, the Fox government said that if the United States committed itself to establishing legal channels for the flow of immigrant workers, Mexico would take new steps to keep its people from leaving illegally.

So perhaps this sort of deal was an intended consequence of the proposal to build a wall. At any rate, it’s an interesting one. Of course, it’s not really about the wall itself so much as it’s about the combination of the wall and the amnesty proposal.

But since the wall is such a good metaphor, I’ll let Frost have the last word:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Thoughts on American Idol: what makes a singer great?

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t kept up with American Idol much this season, which is just fine with me. But every now and then I do take a look.

Last night was the final, as the populists among you no doubt are aware. I was out, so I taped it and fast-forwarded through, looking for something, anything, of interest–since I wasn’t the least bit interested in the results, telegraphed long before they were announced.

For some, this thing of interest might have been Prince, who made an appearance, looking sleek and slinky. Not me; not my era, I guess. For others it could have been Al Jarreau, who sounded smooth and soulful. But for me it was the surprise of seeing and hearing an old, old favorite from my youth, Dionne Warwick.

Dionne was looking good, although there may have been some facial plastic surgery in evidence; at any rate, she was never known for her looks. What she was known for was her voice and her intense and light-as-air, make-it-look-easy, effortless musicality.

Yes, the voice wasn’t exactly the same, but what is? It retained enough of her absolutely unique and utterly and instantly identifiable deft touch to be pure pleasure to listen to.

Many of the American Idol contestants can sing, but one of the things I think they almost always lack is the individuality that is the mark of every great singer. Hear Judy Garland or Frank Sinatra or whoever it is you like–Dionne Warwick–and after only one second you know who it is you’re listening to. The sound is as one-of-a-kind as a fingerprint.

A wonderful voice is a wonderful voice, and a great singer has to have one. But to be truly great, the voice has to have some timbre, some quirk, some quality that spells uniqueness. Ms. Warwick had it, and she still has it.

Linkage and roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Since I’m not really a “linker” type blogger (I like to think of myself as a “thinker”), I don’t usually write a post that is just a series of recommendations.

But every now and then I make an exception (hey, it’s my blog, right? So I can do whatever I want). This is one of those times.

So here, without further long-winded ado, are some links for you (hmmm; was that a poem?). You may notice that their themes are somewhat linked, as well:

1) Ace nails it on the left’s requirement for absolute selfless purity in our humanitarian military interventions.

2) Scott Kirwin at Dean’s World gives a roundup of the ways in which media coverage has misrepresented and/or spun the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , to the possible detriment of our efforts there.

3) The Anchoress expands on the general theme of media misrepresentations, with a lengthy list.

4)Austin Bay makes a proposal that I heartily second: the formation of the Astonishing News Network.

5) And a must-read from the always deeply thoughtful Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, on how 9/11 upped the ante in our political disagreements. His post is a good companion piece to my recent ruminations about the intensity–and anger–of political debate today (or maybe mine’s really more of a companion piece to his).

Why this war is so hated : Part II

The New Neo Posted on by

In Part I I tried to advance some arguments as to why the Iraq war is so hated. Here are a few more. Neither that post nor this one is meant to be exhaustive.

One of the main justifications for the war was that Iraq had violated the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire and the UN inspections. But the war was also widely–and rightly–seen as an attempt to begin to change the face of the Middle East. For that reason, the fear exists that this war will just be the first in a long series of wars in the region, a sort of “where will it all end?” apprehension. This apprehension is also, I believe, behind some of the otherwise almost incomprehensible defense of Iran’s leadership by segments of the antiwar contingent.

To many liberals and those on the left who never accepted that Saddam’s violations of the ceasefire and inspections were a large part of what led to the US decision to go to war (“it’s all for oil, it’s racism, it’s imperialism”), the decision to go to war with Iraq seemed purely arbitrary. Therefore the fear was that nothing would stop this administration from attacking country after country in that region.

Perhaps that’s even part of what’s behind the seemingly inexplicable need of some on the left to have the whole enterprise fail. Think about it: if it succeeds, then what’s to stop those evil crazed neocons from doing it again and again in the region? Because of course, we all know that neocons have no sense of nuance, no knowledge of the differences between countries, nor of why a possible solution for one is not necessarily the right approach to another.

Another aspect of this war that is hard to accept–not just the Iraq war, but the larger “war on terrorism” or “war on Islamic jihadism” or whatever term one wishes to use for it–is that it does most definitely have religious overtones, although those religious overtones are actually those of the enemy. Our own religious battles in the West are for the most part of the “cold” variety, although our history is one of lengthy “hot” wars of a religious nature. But to a great degree we’ve put all of that behind us.

Now it rears its ugly head in a way that seems positively medieval. But the fact is that we are fighting an enemy with a medieval/religious mindset and access to modern weapons, and one who is trying to gain access to the most modern of weapons–nuclear ones–even as we speak. It’s a lethal combination, and very hard to believe and accept, especially if one is accustomed to thinking in PC terms. And, strangely enough, when all this became clearer on 9/11, we happened to have had a President in office who takes his own religion, Christianity, usually seriously, and is unashamed to state that fact.

This whole business of a war that is at least partly religious in nature (if only because the enemy wills it to be so) is assuredly not what most of us expected for the beginning of the 21st century. I remember, when I first started reading blogs, coming across the site of an Australian blogger (now defunct; wish I could remember his name!) who wrote a funny piece on that very subject. The gist of it was that the whole thing can be explained by a mixup in time: the numbers of the years got reversed, and instead of it being 2001 it was actually the year 1200.

Sometimes it feels that way; the sense of dislocation can be profound. Hard to accept the fact of an enemy with a medieval mindset wedded with modern technology. Much better, and far more reassuring, to think that those who are aware of the threat and who want to do something different about it are nuts. Because who would want to recognize that we’re in a long struggle against an unusually implacable and rage-filled enemy?

Anger: still in style

The New Neo Posted on by

I almost didn’t write Part II of “Why this war is so hated.” The reason is that Part I, yesterday, was actually an attempt on my part to imagine some of the best and most reasonable arguments that could be mounted by those against the war. I was, as Dean Esmay points out, actually trying to be kind. And yet the comments section of that thread degenerated at some point (I didn’t chart when, but I think it was some time in the wee hours of the morning) into the childish name-calling that is so common, counterproductive, and worthless.

I’ve noticed over and over that the tone of arguments on the left, on blogs and also in my personal experience out there in the world, often has this element of rage and name-calling. In fact, sometimes the rage is so ubiquitous that it just seems part of the package.

Of course, in the usual tiresome disclaimer, I must say that name-calling as political argument is not limited to those on the left. Of course not! But I also must say that it’s my observation that it is far more prevalent there. And sometimes it also seems that such insults are the mainstay of argument on the left today, their meat and potatoes.

Alexandra of All Things Beautiful has been the recipient of a spate of name-calling recently, and writes about it here. If you’re unfamiliar with Alexandra’s blog, I want to mention that one of her trademarks is the creative use of art and photography to illustrate her points. The post in question is no exception; love that photo/painting (which is it?)!

Another point to ponder, in this case a historical one: on a certain day in the late 60s I was at a large university campus of the typical liberal sort. As I idly looked around me, I suddenly noticed that most everyone there was wearing some form of uniform. And I don’t mean the uniform known as blue jeans; I mean variations on military garb. Army surplus-type olive-drab jackets, fatigues, camouflage, navy pea coats–it was almost as though we’d all enlisted, because there was hardly a person in the crowd who was not in uniform, except the few stray tangential professors.

It struck me as odd, and then it struck me as even odder. If one had polled the group, the aggregate antiwar sentiment would have been almost unanimous. In fact, the aggregate anti-military sentiment in general would have been enormous, as well. So, why the embrace of the garb of the hated ones?

I thought (and still think) it went well with the macho posturings of the rhetoric, the need to look tough and sound tough. I myself never felt that need, although in the interests of full disclosure I will report that I did have my own olive-drab jacket to match the others (in retrospect, not a flattering color for us olive-skinned Mediterranean-type brunettes). So some of it may simply have been the usual slave-to-fashion routine, with no greater meaning than that–especially prevalent, of course, among the young.

I also remember attending an SDS meeting at that same university. For my twenty years of life up till that point I’d been a liberal (and was to remain so for even more years than that), but I was flirting with Leftist thought at the time–trying it on for size, as it were. And what I saw there made it clear to me that it was not a good fit for me. The level of mindless rage was immediately apparent. The speeches seemed nothing but name-calling and obscenities, with a few prepositions and conjunctions and verbs thrown in to aid the flow. It was assumed that everyone was on the same page and no argument or reasoning was necessary. The type of language used reflected the jettisoning of the conventions of rational discourse on the part of speakers who fancied themselves revolutionaries.

Flash forward some forty years, and no doubt many of those speakers would be ashamed to see a videotape of that SDS meeting, if such a thing existed. But no doubt many of them would remain proud.

At the time, of course, those speakers thought they were on the cusp of something wonderful, trailblazers for the brave new world that they would create and that would eliminate war and inequality and rage–except, of course, for their own anger, on which they thrived. The fact that these things had been tried before and found rather difficult to implement, to say the least, was lost on most of them, since history wasn’t their bag. Their anger had the energy of hope to it, a belief that they were going to change the world and that their vehemence was part and parcel of that positive and youthful energy.

Now, of course, the Left is considerably more tired, and more than a bit more disillusioned. And some of it is older, a self-righteous remnant of those very same contemporaries of mine who were at those SDS meetings so long ago. But the anger remains, perhaps even stronger than before.

Why this war is so hated

The New Neo Posted on by

The war in Iraq is especially hated.

Of course, all wars are hated by most thoughtful people, since they involve bloodshed and suffering. And havoc.

It’s not for nothing that Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar: “Cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war.” The word “havoc” has two meanings: widespread destruction, and disorder or chaos. Any war unleashes the possibility of either or both; they are part and parcel of the enterprise.

But I’m not talking primarily of that sort of generalized hatred of war, the type that’s shared by both sides and applies to all wars. No, there seems to be something special about the war in Iraq and its aftermath, the reconstruction, which seems to have aroused a level of ire unprecedented in my lifetime (a lifetime that’s included quite a few wars, including another exceptionally controversial one, Vietnam).

So I’ve been wondering about the origins of the extremity and intensity of the hatred. After all, it’s not as though this is a war with especially high casualties on either side, at least as wars go; that first element of the definition of havoc–widespread destruction–has not occurred, not even in Iraq.

And it’s not as though Saddam Hussein, whose regime was the original target of the war, is anybody’s hero outside of Iraq–and even in Iraq his supporters were/are limited, although previously powerful and presently out for blood. So no, even most of those who hate this war find it difficult to get worked up into a lather of sympathy for Saddam, and they often remember to begin war critiques with the disclaimer: “Of course, Saddam was bad, but…”.

Nor is there a draft. So in this country–and in all the other coalition members, as far as I know–no one’s life is on the line who hasn’t volunteered for that solemn responsibility. In Vietnam, in contrast, there’s no question that the draft gave enormous fuel to the protest fire. Self-interest being what it is, and human beings being what they are, that’s understandable.

So, what’s going on here? I’ve come up with a numbers of theories. The first, of course, is the enormous enmity people feel for Bush personally (I’ve written on the subject here, and Dr. Sanity has written a great deal more extensively about it here.) This hatred–and “hatred” is almost not a strong enough word for it–predated the war, of course, so the war has not caused it. Hatred for Bush is no small part of the hatred of the war itself; the two work in a sort of synergy. But by itself it doesn’t appear to account for the degree to which this war is hated.

Nor do I think hatred of this war stems mainly from the failure to find WMDs, although that likewise contributes. Once again, the hatred of this war predated that failure, so it can’t be caused by it.

So, what’s going on? I think there truly is something qualitatively different about this war that contributes greatly. Perhaps many things.

The war in Iraq was characterized with a certain audacity in its genesis. The reasons behind it, although they were explained, were complex and multiple. Some of them seemed merely “technical”–violations of UN resolutions and the ceasefire of the Gulf War, and failure to cooperate with inspectors, are unusual (perhaps unprecedented?) reasons to attack a nation. Even though the war was described as defensive–including defensive of the UN’s authority, which somehow seems ironic–it is very hard for most people to see it as defensive. This is partly because the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a third-world nation that might give them to terrorists is a relatively new one, difficult to credit and to wrap the mind around (and the failure to find WMDs in Iraq feeds into this difficulty).

But it is especially hard for many to credit the “self-defense” or “defense of the neighbors of Iraq” argument for the war because the US is a strong and powerful nation, especially militarily, and Iraq, although strong for a third-world country (as compared to, for example, Haiti), was no match for it. So the notion of bullying comes into play in many people’s minds as an almost kneejerk reaction to the disparity, without a focus on the fact that Saddam was actually the quintessential bully.

But Saddam’s bullying–and “bullying” is way too weak a word for it; better to call it “tyrannical systematic mass murder and the installation of a totalitarian fear state”–was simply not on the radar screen of most people in the West. Out of sight, out of mind, for the most part. I’m not being especially critical of this; it’s something we all do in order to go about our lives without the constant awareness of all the suffering on earth about which we can do nothing. But the consequence of this tuning out of the hardship of others it that it makes it easy for many people to forget that earlier carnage, and to argue their case as though the suffering just began, sprung full-blown from the head of Bush and only as a consequence of “his” war.

This war and its aftermath also have also been unusually long, at least by modern standards. No, the war’s not even remotely up there with Vietnam in that regard. But compared to the Gulf War, for example, it’s extremely long and complex. That’s mostly because it involves a reconstruction, always a long and difficult project. In fact, if just the original invasion and battles with Saddam’s official armies are considered, the war was remarkably, almost freakishly, short. But we are all correct to consider those skirmishes just the beginning; the real war is the reconstruction.

That fact, combined with modern-day impatience, leads to some of the rage. We’ve lost sight of how difficult such a thing is; we want immediate solutions and clean and simple endings. And of course those things would be wonderful. But they are unrealisitic. And many believe that the Bush administration expected those things as well; witness the focus on Ken Adelman’s “cakewalk” remark (I discussed that remark and its meaning and context here).

But even though Bush actually made many prewar comments on how difficult the tasks of this war would be does not change the fact that the actual reconstruction has been more difficult than most people (including, I believe, most in the administration) expected. I discuss these issues here, and I urge you, if interested, to read what I’ve said, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Underlying all of this, I believe, is the fact that in some ways this war is sui generis. The invasion of a smaller, weaker country by a larger, stronger one is a familiar sight in history, of course. But previously (absent a provoking attack on the stronger by the weaker) the reason for the attack tends to have been that the larger nation was up to no good. That is, that the invasion was motivated by an exploitative impulse to plunder.

Ancient history is full of such examples, and it’s also much of the modern story of imperialism. So that’s the template: exploitation. The fact that one of the motives for this war–although certainly not the sole factor–was the liberation of the Iraqi people is a statement greeted with derision by so many partly because it isn’t something with which we’ve previously had a great deal of experience. Therefore it’s something we have reason to be cynical about.

But it is nevertheless the truth, in my opinion–part of the reason this war was fought was said liberation. But in this case the critics are at least partly correct, in that the motive for wanting to liberate the Iraqi people has not been solely altruistic. There’s something in it for us, of course.

That’s one of the reasons the dread neocons were in favor of this war: the liberation of the Iraqi people was felt to have been in our own interests. As such, however, it would be a win-win situation: the people’s liberation would also have been in their own interests, as well as ours. And some of the anger of war opponents stems from a difficulty in seeing that self-interest and altruistic impulses are not necessarily in conflict, but sometimes (as in this case, if all goes well) can go hand in hand.

That leaves us with another question: has all gone well? Of course, the jury is out on that so far. And the answer also depends on one’s definition of “gone well,” which, in turn, depends on what one is comparing Iraq’s present state to–Switzerland? Or prewar Saddam’s Iraq? Or, especially, to what would have happened had Saddam stayed in power?

The answer also depends on how patient one is. I think the Iraqi people have demonstrated more patience than many in the West have. Of course, the “insurgents” have quite a bit of patience, too. The patience of Iraqis on both sides is understandable, because they’ve been through a lot more than most Westerners have, and have a lot more to lose. But, paradoxically, whether or not the patience of the freedom- and peace-loving elements of the Iraqi people will be rewarded depends in part on our having patience. And we in the modern West are not known for our patience.

[I may opine some more on this tomorrow; I’ve got enough material for a Part II. We’ll see).

That lone Jewish Iranian representative: the history of religious minorities in Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

My original post about the (now pretty much debunked) report of an Islamic dress code law for minorities quoted that report as stating that the clothing designations were to apply to Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in Iran.

That got me wondering about the histories of those three minorities in Persia, now Iran. So I started by looking up the history of Jews in Persia, and discovered this article, which sheds quite a bit of light on the history of all those minority groups, including their recent representation in Iran’s legislature. I have no reason to doubt the information in it, but it’s best to issue a caveat that all the following information is based on that one article from something called the “Iran Chamber Society,” which (at least according to its own self-description) appears to be a non-affiliated and nonpolitical group dedicated to learning about Iranian/Persian history and culture.

I’m sure books have been written on the subject, and this is only a short article, but the gist of the history is that yes indeed, these three communities have ancient and deep roots in Persia. They had all experienced an unusual amount of religious freedom for the times until the Moslem conquest of Persia in the seventh century. At that point, all members of polytheistic and pagan religions were given the choice to convert or die, but Jews and Christians, as “people of the book,” were given second-class citizen dhimmi status under reigning sharia law (made to pay poll taxes, prohibited from friendship and intermarriage with Moslems, etc.). Zoroastrians were later included in this category, interestingly enough.

Putting the whole thing in context, if one compares dhimmi status to the previous pre-Moslem-conquest religious freedom in the area, it was indeed a restriction. But if one compares it to the status of Jews in Europe at the time, for example, for the most part dhimmi status seems like an advance. Application of the more stringent discriminations varied over time according to the whim and personalities of the various rulers of Persia.

There were massacres or these minority groups as well–also not unheard of in Europe, to say the least. But more recently, especially by the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, the secularization movement swept through Persia/Iran and owed some of its success to the activities of members of these minority groups. In 1907 their efforts bore fruit–except for the Bahais, who were still excluded–citizenship there was now based on nationality and not religion, and the Majlis (the legislature) was secularized and no longer solely Islamic.

Here’s the part that relates, interestingly enough, directly to the story that began this whole quest for me. You may recall that one of the people denying the rumor was the sole Jewish representative to the Iranian legislature. Many–including myself–were wondering about this man: how did he get elected? Who was he?

It turns out that the 1907 law establishing the national Majlis ordered that there be representatives of each religious minority: one for each major religion. In fact, the way it worked was that Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians could participate by voting in the election of their respective single representatives, but not in the selection of any other members of the legislature. It was a strictly segregated vote for a very limited representation (Jews were to vote only for the single Jew, Christians for the single Christian, and Zoroastrians for the single Zoroastrian), but it was a slight advance over what had gone before.

When the Shah came to power he furthered religious tolerance in the country and even ignored the ban on non-Shiite Moslems in government. During his regime there were not only some non-Moslems in government; even some members of the previously most reviled group, the Bahais, served. This all ended with the 1979 Islamic revolution, which restored the rule of sharia law.

At present, the old 1907 rule is in force, allowing one representative each from the Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian populations of Iran. The article is mum on the topic of how they are elected; my best guess would be that the old way is followed on that, as well, and that each minority group votes only for its one representative and no others.

So that is apparently the story of how Maurice Motammed came to be the lone Jewish representative in Iran’s Islamic parliament.

Update: the dress code rumor

The New Neo Posted on by

Via Dr. Zin of Regime Change Iran, here’s an update on the Iranian dress code story, from the Canadian newspaper that originally published it.

The gist of the most recent information seems to be this:

Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran ”” including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament ”” and they denied any such measure was in place.

Mr. Kermanian said the subject of “what to do with religious minorities” came up during debates leading up to the passing of the dress code law.

“It is possible that some ideas might have been thrown around,” he said. “But to the best of my knowledge the final version of the law does not demand any identifying marks by the religious minority groups.”

Ali Reza Nourizadeh, an Iranian commentator on political affairs in London, suggested that the requirements for badges or insignia for religious minorities was part of a “secondary motion” introduced in parliament, addressing the changes specific to the attire of people of various religious backgrounds.

Mr. Nourizadeh said that motion was very minor and was far from being passed into law.

That account could not be confirmed.

So far, the whole thing seems to be on the order of a rumor that was allowed to pass muster and be published in Toronto’s National Post, as well as to be given voice by Amir Taheri. I have a small wish (or maybe it’s not so small): that newspapers, both on the left and the right and in the middle, do more fact and source checking before they publish the news that we all rely on.

Roger Simon has further thoughts on the matter.

[ADDENDUM: Taheri, one of the original disseminators of the rumor, has put out a further statement.]

Revolutionaries and regret: Eleni

The New Neo Posted on by

In my post on the unfortunate tendency of revolutions to devour their own, Elmondohummus made the following comment:

Such movements, such revolutions, tend not to be the wonderfully exciting, meaningful, free places that participants imagine, but coldhearted, calculating monoliths of purpose unimagined by the individual participants caught up in the heady romance of the moment…But to be openly abused, jailed, even executed… Such a betrayal… yet, time and time again, you read of people in Ghotbzadeh’s shoes, true believers chewed up and spit out by the momentum of the movement, a mere commodity to be used to the movement’s own ends.

Most revolutions do tend to turn on their own in time—and often not all that much time. But there’s a further aspect of it I want to discuss here, and that is this: when revolutions change into something unforeseen by their original—sometimes starry-eyed, idealistic, and naive—proponents, those early advocates often turn into opponents of the very revolution they launched. Their efforts to undo what they’ve unleashed are usually futile. That is apparently what may have happened to the sardonic Ghotbzadeh, who did not have the last laugh, after all.

Back in 1983 I read Eleni, Nicholas Gage’s testament to his mother’s life and a depiction of her execution by Communists during the Greek Civil War in the 40s. It’s an extraordinary book for many reasons, and its power is difficult to describe. It’s long and complex, with so many characters that, halfway through, I wished I’d kept a chart with all the names and familial relations graphed, because every now and then I got lost in the maze. But, even though at the time I was the exhausted mother of a young child, it was so compelling that I exhausted myself still further by staying up night after night until I’d finished it.

It’s one of those books where you know the ending right at the beginning–Gage comes right out with it in the introductory chapter. But that doesn’t diminish the story any more than knowing the plot of a Shakespearean play takes away from the experience of seeing it again. Gage’s mother Eleni is a true heroine, a woman of epic courage and love (as well as great intelligence, despite her lack of formal education). I submit that the book cannot be read by any feeling person without its pages becoming wet with tears.

But in the days after I read Eleni, I realized on reflection that Gage tells another story in addition to his gripping personal story. He attempts to describe the Greek Civil War itself. In this, by the way, he has drawn some fire from those who believe he hasn’t given the Communist guerillas their due.

But when I read Gage’s book I actually thought his portrait of said Communists was somewhat sympathetic. It’s hard to forget his description of them; one in particular was the local schoolteacher, initially a gentle idealist, as I recall. The book delineates, step by careful step, how over the course of time these people compromised and hardened until they were all but unrecognizable, their dreams soured and their cause utterly transformed into something they wouldn’t have recognized (or supported) at the outset. To me, that was a twin tragedy.

The two brothers, Prokopi and Spiro Skevis, the locals who, in Gage’s words, “sowed the seeds of Communism” in Lia, his home village, both were killed in battle rather than at the hands of their own. But Gage writes that, after the execution of his mother and four other villagers:

Spiro Skevis’ success in bringing Communism to the Mourgana villages had turned to ashes in his mouth. The execution in Lia of his five fellow villagers tormented him. A captain in his battalion later told me how, shortly after the retreat from the Mourgana, Spiro went out of control and tried to kill one of the chief aides [to the judge in the trial that led to Gage’s mother’s execution], drawing a gun on him and screaming that the man was a criminal, a murderer of women. Other guerillas jumped Spiro before he could pull the trigger. He went to the grave tormented by the perversion of the movement that he and Prokopi had begun with such high intentions.

I don’t think Spiro would be alone among revolutionaries in having such regrets. Ghotbzadeh, Robespierre, Trotsky, and the rest—what were they all thinking in their last moments?

New dress code may go into effect in Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran may be about to revive an old custom. A law passed by the Iranian parliament needs only the approval of “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenehi to become practice.

It actually was passed two years ago, but languished until recently “revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” What a surprise.

Here’s the gist of it:

Iran’s roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

Oh well, there are so few of them left in Iran, anyway. But it wasn’t always that way.

See this, this, and this.

[NOTE: Allahpundit cautions that the story may not be true.

And here’s more on the confusion.

Still more evidence that this is likely to be false.]

Revolutions devouring their own

The New Neo Posted on by

In the Atlantic article I discussed yesterday, a name on the first page caught my eye: Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the Iranian foreign minister at the time of the hostage crisis.

Suddenly, although I hadn’t thought of him in decades, the memory came back. Ghotbzadeh! I recall his sardonic, jaded, man-of-the-world expression—a strange combination of arrogance and weariness. As the spokesperson for the regime, he was featured often on TV (I think on the nascent “Nightline,” then entitled “America Held Hostage”). As a visible and familiar figure, he became somewhat of a focus for my frustration and annoyance with the entire situation. Something about him seemed hollow, although he was clearly intelligent and articulate.

As events unfolded, it turned out that Ghotbzadeh was one of those cautionary figures, a man who was instrumental in planning a revolution that then got away from him and proceeded to devour him in the process. Like Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins; like Trotsky and so many other engineers of the Russian revolution who were slaughtered in the great purges; authors of violent revolutions often come to violent ends at the hands of their violent former comrades.

Thus it was with Ghotbzadeh. Here he is:

Ghotbzadeh was close to the Ayatollah Khomeini while both were in exile in Paris, and became one of his right-hand men back home in the early days of the revolution. He seems to have been motivated most strongly by hatred of the Shah’s regime. But, paradoxically, his role in the hostage crisis was as a relative moderate (accent on the “relative;” moderate in comparison to what?). He seemed to be working for a diplomatic solution, and lost favor with the Iranian powers that be in the process.

Former hostage and Ambassador at the time, Bruce Laingen, has this to say about Ghotbzadeh:

I didn’t like him at the outset for the role he played as Foreign Minister, but I sensed as time went on over those months, that he came to the conclusion, himself, fairly early, that this hostage business was counterproductive to the revolution and that it needed to be ended. I think he genuinely wanted to end it and was prepared to make some concessions to do that. And he stuck his neck out to do that. He showed some guts.

It all unraveled rather quickly:

Ghotbzadeh finally resigned in 1980 over the deadlock in negotiations. That year, after he was arrested and briefly detained after criticizing the ruling Islamic Republican Party, he retired from public life. In 1982 he was arrested on charges of plotting against the regime. Although he denied any conspiracy to take Khomeini’s life, he apparently admitted complicity with Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariat-Madari in a plot to overthrow the government. Ghotbzadeh was convicted in August 1982 and executed the following month.

Did he really plan to end the Khomeini reign, and, if so, with what was he planning to replace it? Or were the charges trumped up, and was he forced to confess to crimes he didn’t commit? At the time, I remember being astounded at the news of his startling reversal of fortune and allegiance; it was quite a switch from disliking him to feeling some sympathy for the man.

Guillotining having gone out of style, Ghotbzadeh was shot by a firing squad shortly after his trial. The revolution had eaten another of its own.

But not everyone connected with the early days of the revolution has met such a fate. Others connected with the hostage crisis have prospered. It’s unclear whether or not the current Iranian President, our good friend Ahmadinejad, was one of those “student” hostage-takers, although several former hostages have identified him as such. But there’s very little doubt about the identity of another former hostage-taker who’s riding high at present: Hussein Sheikholeslam, recently an Iranian diplomat and legislator.

Why do I mention Sheikholeslam? Only because I came across an interesting fact about him, an indication of the sort of cross-fertilization process that seems to have been at work in the revolutions of the 60s/70s. Sheikholeslam may not have been an actual student at the time of the hostage-taking in Iran. But whether or not Sheikholeslam was a student at that point, he certainly had been a student earlier—at UC Berkeley, where he learned a thing or two:

UC Berkeley gained a reputation as a center of student anti-war protest during the 1960s and 1970s. During that tempestuous period, an Iranian student named Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam attended Cal. He became fluent in English. He also absorbed the demonstrations criticizing American imperialism in Vietnam and other nations.

After Hussein returned to Iran, writes Mark Bowden in his new book, “Guests of the Ayatollah,” his anti-Americanism planted deep roots in his Islamic religion. In late 1979, the tree connected to those roots bore ugly fruit.

The student protests of the 60s didn’t actually revolutionize much in the directly political and traditionally revolutionary (i.e. a sudden overthrow of the existing government) sense in the US. The “revolution” they began here took a cultural form, with resultant political results (and intent). But in Iran, students who had learned the anti-American and propaganda lessons of the 60s used them later to great (and more instant) effect. Some forget that the 60s didn’t just happen in this country; the protests occurred in Europe as well.

Khomeini spent some of his exile in France, but I was surprised to learn (from Wikipedia, so this could be taken with a grain of salt) that the French were not necessarily simpatico to him during his rather short sojourn there:

In 1963, [Khomeini] publicly denounced the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was thereby imprisoned for 8 months, and upon his release in 1964, he made a similar denunciation of the United States. This led to his forced exile out of Iran. He initially went to Turkey but was later allowed to move to Iraq, where he stayed until being forced to leave in 1978, after then-Vice President Saddam Hussein forced him out…after which he went to Neauphle-le-Ché¢teau in France. According to Alexandre de Marenches (then head of the French secret services), France suggested to the Shah that they could “arrange for Khomeini to have a fatal accident”; the Shah declined the assassination offer, arguing that this would make him a martyr.

[NOTE: My post about Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, is relevant here. Nafisi, an Iranian national, likewise fell in with other radical Iranian students while studying in this country. Then, when she returned to Iran, she saw quite a few of those former associates imprisoned—and in some cases executed—by their former comrades-in-arms.]

Not a rumor: McCartneys separate

The New Neo Posted on by

It was no rumor, after all (or rather, no mere rumor). The McCartneys have split.

The speculation so far seems to revolve around the money angle: “McCartney Divorce Could Be Biggest in UK History.”

And, once again, the photo of Paul accompanying the article is quite cruel. Shall I be cruel and reproduce it? Oh, okay; but only as an object lesson in a point I tried to make yesterday–do not, especially as you get older, allow photographs to be taken from below chin level:


Just to refresh your memory, here’s Paul from a similar angle in happier days:


Reports are that the divorce is that somewhat rara avis, an amicable one. Sometimes divorces can be exactly that, and I hope this one ends up fitting the description by the time it’s over. There’s a young child involved, for starters.

There are also older children involved–or perhaps the word “offspring” would be more appropriate; they’re certainly not kids–who are reported to have disliked Heather from the start.

I don’t claim to have any special knowledge of the inner workings of the McCartney marriage–I barely know anything about its outer workings. But my guess is that, after a marriage as long and extraordinarily harmonious as McCartney’s first one is reported to have been, change can come hard.

And of course, even though Paul is a fairly well-preserved almost-sixty-four, the age difference between Paul and Heather is profound. She’s thirty-eight, which makes her approximately half his age and, more importantly, about the age of his children.

Remarriages involving stepchildren, small or grown up, can have extra difficulties. It stands to reason, especially when the children’s loyalty to a first spouse is profound, which is often (and understandably so) the case. One would think that if the children are grown up the path is eased (and this is ordinarily very true), but having a stepparent of one’s own age is a special case that can be experienced as unbalancing.

Of course, it’s all sheer speculation on my part as to the factors that may have contributed to the breakup. The only ones who know the true story of a marriage are the participants, and much of the time even they don’t know a whole lot. The recent divorce rate, often quoted as one in two, actually isn’t quite that high, but it’s high enough, with the US leading at 44% and the UK following close on its heels. So perhaps Paul is simply typical of our times: he’s 1 for 2 so far.