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iran could be negociated with. they've been inclined to be pissy with the us because the americans backed the shah, who was not at all a swell guy. the americans trained savak, the shah's secret police, which brutally suppressed any political opposition to the shah--the only spaces that savak did not work in were the mosques, which not surprisingly became centers of political opposition to the shah. the revolution was not surprising, but it was more complicated than it's outcomes, and this little potted story would have you think---the point is that the relation with iran is a form of blowback too. but the iranians are and have been interested in a different kind of relation with the united states despite ahmadinjehad, who has been a political weak president that has used dickwaving in the direction of israel and the united states to prop himself up. all that's required to ameliorate things with iran is a saner approach.
israel/palestine is another matter altogether. that is obviously the source of much trouble for the states in the region. given how locked into place american policy seems to have been, and how biden and palin were falling all over each other to demonstrate their "love of israel" in the debates, and given what i've read from obama, i don't see any pressure any time soon t0, say, start dismantling the settlements or end the brutal occupation or change the situation relative to gaza...
as for "democratization"---like charlatan said, american policy has reduced it to a meme. its a shame, too. but it is as it is. i don't think the americans are in much of a position to sit down and talk to anyone about how to run themselves, particularly not at the moment. and if another republican administration somehow gets into power, the us won't be in such a position for a long time.
we're boxed in by a long history of hypocrisy in relation to the term "democracy". more blowback. i don't see how you can wish that away. and it's a Problem.
best we can hope for, i think, is obama to be elected and the theater of change to have some effect. maybe if the us is forced to change its direction more broadly as a function of the ongoing economic fiasco and to reconsider its foreign policy as this "globalizing capitalism" charade becomes something else, new possibilities will emerge. it's hard to say. one can hope, i guess.
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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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