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We'd better learn to empathize with the enemy
By Miles Tompkin
02/04/06 "Halifax Herald" -- -- This past Christmas, my son gave
me a CD entitled
The Fog Of War, a documentary about former U.S.
Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara. In
this must-see documentary, the 85-year-old gives us 11 lessons
of war, none more important then the first: empathize with the
enemy.
In a Feb. 2 opinion piece, Andrew Smith worries about history
repeating itself in Iran and equates the present tensions in the
area to Hitler and Nazism. It is a comparison that has very
little to do with the present crisis, and any effort to suggest
that it has is to deny the real problems and will lead us to a
potential catastrophe that will make Iraq look like a Sunday
school picnic.
Is Mr. Smith so phobic as to suggest that Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
Jordan, Turkey and Syria were so smitten with Hitler that they
blindly jumped aboard the Nazi train? He suggests that the "war
on terror" is something left over from unfinished business in
the Second World War. I would suggest that Mr. Smith examine the
history of the era more closely, with an unbiased eye towards
the force of Zionism and the role of the imperial Western
influences in the area.
Iran made slow, creeping moves towards democracy until the 1950s
when the populist Mohammed Mossadegh came to power. His move to
nationalize the Anglo Iranian Oil Company led to a sequence of
events regarding sanctions, military exercises and threats, and
covert activity that has in no small part created the tensions
of today's Iran.
Iran was a British/Russian dessert, not Nazi. If the devil
himself could have removed the British from Iran, he would have
gained popular support. In fact, once Eisenhower gained power,
the CIA /British were happy to have Fazlollah Zahedi and
Bakhtiari, two Nazi collaborators, fill the void. Sad, but very
true.
Enter the Shah of Iran, a man whom Amnesty International
described in 1976 as having the "worst human rights record on
the planet," and to whom the CIA taught torture techniques that
"were beyond belief." This was fascism of the first degree,
promoted for the self-interest of the British and later the
United States; but all backed by the powers in Israel, who see a
moderate, Arab-friendly Iran as a threat to their expansionist
ideal. This is the history that is repeating itself in Iran,
only this time it is the Iranian Oil Stock Exchange that is the
threat.
Nuclear issues are but a hot button to promote fear in order to
convince the United States and the West that Iranian-inspired
extremism is a major threat to the West. Hitler is just a
sure-fire button. The Iranians had nothing to do with the
Holocaust, and the Palestinians less. The Christians of the
world certainly carry more blame for that vile atrocity than any
poor soul in the Middle East and Persia.
At present, the anti-Iranian position is being led by forces in
Israel (that have nothing to do with the theology of Judaism)
through the neo-con regime in Washington. They can ill afford
any friendliness between Iraq and Iran, and expect to fulfil the
wishes of their fanatical arm by twisting the history of the era
to fit with the goals of today.
When will we ever learn? Terrorism is not some leftover lesson
learned from Adolf Hitler. Terrorism is a product of fanaticism
and we embraced it in Afghanistan for short-term gain in the
late 1970s. We embrace it whenever it fulfils our strategic
needs, come hell or high water.
We had better take seriously this tension in Iraq, open some
dialogue with Iran, and hold our noses and open some with Hamas,
because a popular based movement has arrived there as well. They
are no more extreme than the Sunnis we are now breaking bread
with, or the mujahadin that we funded and supported in
Afghanistan.
If we don't want history to repeat itself, we had better
empathize with the enemy. We have done no justice towards them
in this century, and we ignore that fact at our peril. Many
Israelis realize this, and their press is far more open to
discuss it; but for some reason, we never hear their voices. Let
us never forget the Holocaust and the vile regime that killed so
many innocent people, but we cannot contort the history of
Hitler in Europe to promote our version of history in Palestine
and Iran.
They have their own self-interests, to be sure, and have blood
on their hands as well. Yet the radical forces in Iran would
never have come to pass had we justly dealt with the popular
movement of the day. Mossadegh looks Gandhi-like by today's
standards. The outcome and the consequences are grave, and
subscribing to the thesis put forth by Andrew Smith is to put
our heads in the sand.
Miles Tompkins lives in Antigonish.
Copyright The Halifax Herald.
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