Deaf Ears

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently made a very public attempt to officially open diplomatic channels with the United States after a lapse of almost 30 years. Response in the US has ranged from complete dismissal to lukewarm acknowledgement to braying laughter. Why the Iranians will be Rebuffed by William Blum (CounterPunch) provides a summary of similar efforts from the last century when leaders noticed that their sovereignty was in danger of being shoveled into the slavering maw of American empire.

These include the lesser known victims of US rapacity like, “Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop, leader of Grenada, in 1983” as well as the more household names, like Ho Chi Minh, who “wrote at least eight letters to US President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French”. Minh, despite his dedication to democracy and the well-being of his people, and who “reportedly … had a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk”, didn’t pick up on the fact that American rhetoric about democracy was just that—rhetoric. On top of that, Minh was on the other side of the world and nothing but a dirty, tricky red up to no good—a red who needed to be taught a lesson. To the American empire, democracy is an effective way of assuaging the public while the fruits of their labors are directed to the rich.

More recently, Cesar Chavez, upon discovering plans for an overthrow aided by the CIA, “sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington”—alas, to no avail. The coup “took place soon thereafter” (but lasted only a few days as Chavez was at least realistic enough to be ready for it). Even highly-placed officials in Iraq, aware that their madman of a leader was steering them onto a collision course with the equally mad leader of the US offered up a plethora of concessions—a veritable grab-bag of goodies for the US:

“They offered to allow American troops and experts and ‘2000 FBI agents’ to conduct a search. The Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 … [and] pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections … [t]hey also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process. [Furthermore] ‘If this is about oil,’ said the intelligence official, ‘we will talk about US oil concessions.’”

These offers were rejected out of hand by the US government. The war had been planned and there was no stopping it by conceding to all the public reasons for the war. The Iraqis would have done better to send their letters directly to Halliburton, were they truly savvy about how our country is run. Even this would not have helped, as the US is masterful at simply shrugging off even reasonable-sounding overtures from official enemies as the sibilant hiss of a forked tongue—to listen to them is to give aid and comfort to the enemy and to let the terrorists win. The corporate media is only too happy to comply.

If history is anything to go by, Iran stands no chance whatsoever of talking their way out of being bombed flat, as no one is listening. No one at all.