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what does iranian involvement with the devolving situation in iraq mean?
regionally, the motives would seem self-evident: iran does not want a vacuum in iraq. who would? what good would come of it? the dangers to iranian stability that could follow from a successful anti-colonial war in iraq are quite great-this simply because it is not at all obvious what relations obtain between the various shi'a militas in iraq and iran. it is not at all obvious that there are any shared interests--and further it is not obvious what kind of support the present regime in iran really has internally--and given that, the problems iran might face in the context of a vacuum in iraq could be considerable.
what iranian involvement means from the american viewpoint is almost comic. think of the amount of shit the americans will have to eat in order to cajole iran into playing along--this is another backdraft from the cold war period--from the installation and support of the shah through arming iraq during the 1980s to the more recent penis-waving conflicts over iran's nuclear program. it is a humiliation for the bush administration. and one coherent index of the role of the administration's "public diplomacy" efforts is that it is not seen for what it is in the states itself. delusion is preferable in this context, it seems.
if iran plays nice, it will be for its own purposes. it seems pretty clear that the nuclear program is an element in iranian desires to be understood as a regional Power and being in a position to maybe develop nuclear weapons (not at this point perhaps, but as a spin-off at some later date, surely) is a signifier of being part of the Collosal Penis Club of international power.
more cold war rules to the international power game, you see. iran would stand to benefit greatly in terms of status were it to participate in the decolonization of iraq.
what else does it mean? well, it means that the bushwar is a catastrophe of a very large magnitude and that there are no good options open and that cowboy george is in a position of having to flail about looking for another plan that will enable the americans--and the american right in particular--to not face something of a waterloo in iraq. were it not for the continuing human cost of this debacle, this would be funny in a way that would almost make you think there was some kind of larger-scale justice in the world. but there is this human cost, and it is quite a large cost and it will continue to augment and so it is not funny.
it is profoundly not funny.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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