A few years ago, the young wife (40) of a dear friend of mine tragically died of cancer, leaving behind my friend and her two beloved girls, aged sixteen and thirteen. She was a wonderful woman.
I had the honour of singing at the funeral—with another great friend.
A few days ago, during a festival of lights, with thousands of people wandering on stilts and celebrating and dancing and playing drums and lutes etc. (I’m not kidding), around a lake near to where I live, I ran into this great and talented friend of mine (we were in a band together, and he’s a percussionist of considerable passion).
He was strolling with his new girlfriend, which was heart-warming to see. She was lovely, and they seemed very happy. I spontaneously ran in for hugs. With them was a tiny little older woman, maybe 75ish, with a little black scarf around her head, and warm, wet eyes. She was the girlfriend’s mother, from Iran, visiting. She didn’t speak any English.
Forgetting whatever customs I shouldn’t have been forgetting, I spontaneously hugged her, too—yes, the mom. Her response was, well, sheer delight. She beamed and grabbed everybody’s hands nearby to say hello. I felt love radiate.
I have a mom, too!
And then it occurred to me: “These are the people who will die‚ this tiny little mother, undoubtedly grandmother by now—if Iran is bombed.”
It won’t be the leaders and it won’t be for freedom. Who really knows the intentions of so many leaders?
I heard a statistic recently: Ten percent of the people killed in WWI were civilians, in WWII 50% of the people killed were civilians, in Vietnam 70% of the people killed were civilians, and in Iraq 90% of the people killed have been civilians.
Here’s an interview with Stephen Kinzer and Ervand Abrahamian on Democracy Now from 2003, the 50th anniversary of the British and American planned and executed overthrow of the DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader of Iran, Dr Mossadegh.
An excerpt:
STEPHEN KINZER: This was a hugely important episode, and looking at it from the perspective of history, we can see that it really shaped a lot of the 50 years that have followed since then in the Middle East and beyond.
But yet, it’s an episode that most Americans don’t even know happened.
As I was writing my book [All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror], I had the sense that I was dredging up an incident that had been largely forgotten. During my work, I realized early on that Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran, had been the Man of the Year for Time magazine in 1951.
Does it ever end?
And another excerpt…
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: For me, the oil was important both for the United States and for Britain. It’s not just the question of oil in Iran. It was a question of control over oil internationally.
If Mossadegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same.
Once you have control, then you can determine how much oil you produce in your country, who you sell it to, when you sell it, and that meant basically shifting power from the oil companies, both British Petroleum, Angloversion, American companies, shifting it to local countries like Iran and Venezuela.
And in this, the U.S. had as much stake in preventing nationalization in Iran as the British did…
I think on this issue actually you see a big cultural gap between the American public and the Iranian public.
For the Iranian public, the ‘53 coup shapes basically Iranian history, as Stephen shows very much in his book. But for Americans, the ‘53 coup was something unreal for them.
It wasn’t something they were aware of. If they were aware it, it was like Jimmy Carter saying that this was ancient history. For the U.S. it may have been ancient history but for Iranians it was not.
So when the students took over the embassy [in 1979 with the overthrow of the Shah], they actually called it the “den of spies” because they knew that in ‘53 the coup had been actually plotted from the U.S. compound…That very building.
Remembering the complexities of history, whatever one’s ideology, seems to me so important.
For the entire interview, which is really worth the read, press here.
And here’s to little old ladies, with warm eyes, all over the world.
Lots of love to you and yours,
Pete xo
PS Press here to hear Blue, which was the song that was sung at the funeral. I wrote it years ago, 1991, as the first Gulf War unfolded…
Most of the time, America has its hands in so many things where it doesn’t at all belong and the American people know very little about it. Our mission in Iraq was carefully guarded from the American people. We thought we wanted to find Weapons of Mass Destruction. We thought ousting Sadam Hussein was another goal. We didn’t know that oil was our number one priority or that better positioning ourselves for our war with Iran was the actual goal.
Dear Michael,
Thanks for the note and the astute comments. What I think may be more important is to consider that America’s mission in Iraq wasn’t, in fact, really “carefully guarded” at all.
The freedom to push outright lies, to move forward without the inspectors having found anything etc., is quite astounding—but by no means unheard of. Oil has been the root cause of so much Middle Eastern conflict for decades. Indeed, it was the impetus behind the Iranian coup d’etat of 1953.
But the whole thing is quite incredible. I wonder what forces equally intelligent people to think so differently.
Here’s to that war ending as cleanly as possible, amd with as little bloodshed as possible. There’s no way t know what way that would happen, but the people of Iraq seem to want the soldiers out. And the country itself should be destroyed enough for US foreign policy interests to be safe—to make Iraq incapable of running its own affairs, and taking control of its own oil.
This seems to be mission accomplished, for years to come.
Pete
[...] In short, politicians and people still freely, openly and excitedly argue for war (which by definition includes, more and more over the decades, percentage-wise, the decimation of civilians). In contrast, not many people any longer argue for slavery or stopping a woman’s right to vote. [...]