Ruth Group Report: Showdown over Iran
From the pen of Dolores Heeb comes this evocative report on last night’s important Ruth Group meeting:
“The Ruth Group hosted an excellent and frightening look at current U.S.-Iran relations. Our own David Harris was joined by Jerry Dekker from New College, SF who has been intimately involved with Iran for the past 38 years, both living there and visiting frequently.
David gave a powerful presentation of the horrific results the behind-the-scenes administration plan to nuke Iran would have - even more (if possible) hatred from the muslim world, a release of the restraint the shia have exercised towards our soldiers in Iraq, retaliation not just against Israel but on our own soil, a shutdown of oil supplies, and the conversion of petro-dollars to petro-euros which could cause a rapid collapse in our economy, already in a fragile state because of the deficit.
And, as David pointed out, all of this is unnecessary and against our interests, and we must make our voices heard about this as much as possible to avert this tragedy and utter debacle.
Jerry spoke of the affinity the Iranian people feel for us and their bewilderment of what this could possibly be about. His efforts focus on building citizen-to-citizen bridges with tours in Iran. David asked about the possibility of a large contingent of Americans flooding Iran to bring attention to these dastardly administration policies.
Lynn Woolsey spoke to us by phone from Washington about a hearing on Iran she and Barbara Lee had convened earlier in the day. Jessica Matthews (President, Carnegie Endowment for Peace) and Samantha Powers (author of “A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide”) spoke, and, from her report, they focused on exactly the same areas David had just covered. The most striking part of her report was that she mentioned a number of times how depressing the hearing was - the facts are dire, folks.
Lynn said that the 2-hour Washington hearing is available at politicstv.com, and she urged us to watch it.
The run-up to the Iraq war was awful and the results as are what we all know. The same groundwork is being laid for a war with Iran, but this has the potential and likelihood to be a much bigger disaster that could change our way of life forever. We must stop this, and taking back Congress in November would at least put some check into the utter madness of these policies.”
I’d just add one thing to what Dolores says: if there’s a better analysis than David’s of what’s really going on vis-a-vis Iran, I’ve yet to see it (and I spent a fair amount of time this past week checking sources). Luckily Jane Heaven of KPFA brought along her new MP3 recorder, so we’ll be getting this out over the internet. And we’ll push for Pacifica to broadcast it.
Bob
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Comment Guidlines: This space is for commenting on the post above, the ideas, the context,the author. Your ideas, strong but civil, are appreciated. Long cuts and pastes from elsewhere are not. This is NOT the place to create your own private BLOG. Links to other articles are fine, if appropriate. Line and paragraph breaks are automatic; e-mail address are never displayed.
HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
May 25th, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
I agree with Bob. it was a very insightful meeting with excellent information given to us by David Harris, in a very informative talk.
I gave my opinion when i stood and asked my question. i believe this is all driven by the Israeli lobby in washington, and the making of enemies in the middle east will continue until we stop these powerful lobblies from controlling the foreign Policy of the U.S.
I would like to here more speakers at our meeting on the issue of the powerful lobbies, and how they control all of us.
ken richards
May 26th, 2006 @ 9:42 am
The Israeli connection is a particularly scary part of the run-up to a new war. Just a couple of weeks ago, I read an article that reported that the Israeli intelligence services didn’t believe Iran was as much of an immediate threat as it was being portrayed in the American press - that they believed Iran was at least 7 years away from building a bomb.
Yet, during the recent visit of the Israeli PM, he claimed that Iran was months away from having a bomb!
Sound familiar? The intelligence is being cooked again to support war, and this time, since the CIA is so thoroughly discredited, they’ll use Mossad.
I’m worried that an attack may be imminent - shortly before the mid-term elections even.
But I don’t think blaming Israel or street demonstrations and sign waving protests are going to stop this one, and while we can be justly proud of turning the American public around on the messy quagmire in Iraq, I suspect that the American public has NOT been turned off of the idea of preemptive war against terror to make the US safer.
Did you notice that even Lynn Woolsey indicated that that the prospect of a nuclear Iran was frightening? As long as the American public believes that Iran is a dangerous, unstable place that foments terrorism and is a real threat to the US, then there is a very real chance that Bush will attack. He’ll see the short term political benefits of this and he’s simply too stupid and shortsighted to see the disasterous consequences.
To prevent this war, I think we need to somehow turn around the public perception of Iran as a dangerous, anti-American loose cannon.
I can think of only one thing that could possibly accomplish this relatively quickly - to persuade some major, mainstream American political or cultural figures (Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Kennedy, Bill Clinton,?????) to go to Iran for some personal diplomacy while, at the same time, persuading the Iranians to roll out the red carpet and use this as an opportunity to embarrass Bush for refusing to talk to them face to face.
Such a private diplomatic mission could go a long way toward doing what should have been done 25 years ago -reestablishing normal relations with Iran. It would also put a human face on the boogie man that Bush is trying to create and make it much more difficult to start a war without some face to face official diplomacy and negotiations.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to write a letter to Jimmy Carter right away. If anybody has some better suggestions for personal diplomats or some better ideas for heading off this attack, I’d appreciate hearing from you.
May 26th, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Bill
I think you’re onto something. Seems to me Carter would be the best person of the ones you name–and I’d guess he would already be concerned about it. Question is, how to get through to him. Lynn Woolsey will be home in her district all next week so I can ask whether she would be willing to approach Carter. Maybe Boxer would get involved, but I wouldn’t count on it.
When Woolsey said (two or three times) that it was depressing, I read into it that she was feeling that way about the fecklessness of Congress as well as the looming catastrophe itself. Maybe a campaign by MoveOn to kick some butts in Congress would do some good, I dunno. This is incredibly high-priority stuff.
The one resolution that’s out there so far is by DeFazio of Oregon. He’s a pretty good guy though not as progressive as Woolsey or Lee. But I’ll inquire and see what he’s up to. Also, Dennis Kucinich is active around this issue. We need to work with members of the Progressive Caucus, as they’re the best we’ve got.
May 26th, 2006 @ 2:38 pm
in response to Bill’s request for ideas, David’s question of Jerry about what would happen if we could inundate Iraq with a large contingent of Americans is intriguing to consider.