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Monday, May 15, 2006

Classic Salon.com

"'Any attack on Iran will be good for the government'

Nobel laureate and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi discusses the plight of women in Iran, Bush's similarity to Ahmadinejad and why direct negotiations are the only solution."
This is the headline and introductory teaser to one of Salon's lead stories for May 15, 2006. This kind of thing is mother's milk to the editors at Salon, but the level of analysis and insight it represents is amazingly trivial. Some of the points made by Ebadi--who was surprised to find herself on a regime hit list two decades after, as the writer delicately puts it, she "supported Iran's Islamic revolution, but it quickly turned on her"--seem as naïve as her apparent earlier belief that Islamic fundamentalism would benefit her as a female jurist. Having so stupendously misread her own self-interest, almost to the point of being a death-squad victim, Ebadi now offers a few gems about the current situation:
  • "Any attack on Iran will be good for the government and will actually damage the democratic movement in Iran."

    My guess is that most any attack on Iran would quickly result in there no longer being a government. Say what you will about our attack on Iraq and its aftermath, but it was not "good for the government." I don't see how any observer anywhere could reasonably conclude that a U.S. attack on Iran would be anything but a calamity for its government.

  • "[T]he people of Iran are very critical of their government, but they will not allow a single American soldier to step foot in Iran. The problems between Iran and America have only one solution -- direct negotiations between the two countries."

    Not allow? That's a funny concept when you are speaking about the United States attacking a country. Will they "not allow" us to soften up their air defenses first?

    So of course the only solution is direct negotiations, and if those don't work, well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about . . . well, I guess about just anything we can't agree on. Oh, well.

  • "Once in a while I have the impression that what Mr. Bush says is very much like what Mr. Ahmadinejad says. For example, when Mr. Bush says he has a mission from God to settle the problems in the Middle East. Mr. Bush sometimes wants to bring democracy through the use of force, like the government of Iran wants to push people by force into paradise."

    Oh, come on. This was in response to that great set-up question "Do you see similarities between the fundamentalists in America and those in Iran?" Expected answer: Oh, why, yes, funny you should ask--I equate them. By the way, her last sentence also works if you substitute "Israel" for "people" and "the sea" for "paradise."


posted at 12:19 AM

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