Norman Solomon | The Killing Street Memo

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Norman Solomon | The Killing Street Memo

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:28:47 -0700

 

 

The Killing Street Memo

By Norman Solomon

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Friday 17 June 2005

 

Keep them behind the war curve.

 

 

While some Americans are exposing the deception for the latest

war, others steadily lay the groundwork for the next one.

 

Focus plenty of news reports on alienated youth in Iran,

spotlighting despair that borders on nihilism. Meanwhile, give scant

media attention to the growth of civil society, with many thousands of

Iranian young people and their elders striving to create a diffuse yet

coherent social movement for democracy and human rights.

 

Make it easy for the US public to forget - or remain ignorant of -

key elements in the United States history with Iran. Such as the

US-organized 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically-elected

Iranian prime minister, democrat Muhammad Mussadiq, and installed a

brutal shah who ruled for a quarter century. Or the US government's

record of aiding the Saddam Hussein regime in its eight-year war with

Iran after Iraqi troops attacked Iran in 1980.

 

Count on most members of Congress, even those lambasting the White

House over the Downing Street Memo, to be silent or voice support

while the Bush administration proceeds with agenda-setting for a US -

or US-backed Israeli - missile attack on Iran. Along the way, make

that country out to be a nuclear pariah while it adheres to the

Non-Proliferation Treaty (which the nuclear-armed Israeli government

still refuses to sign).

 

Incrementally poison the potential for a lessening of tensions

between Washington and Tehran.

 

With implicit threats of military action against Iran, heighten

the obstacles faced by Iranian democracy activists.

 

Denigrate the presidential election in Iran, even though - or

maybe because - the flawed election has been a valuable tool utilized

by an emerging democracy movement to widen public discourse and deepen

the country's political process.

 

Strengthen the hand of Iran's hardliners while denouncing them.

Undermine the democracy activists of Iran while claiming to favor

them. Make sure that Washington reduces the odds of democratic

progress by greatly pressurizing the situation, enabling Iranian

advocates of repression to plausibly claim that Iran is under threat

of foreign intervention.

 

Above all, keep encouraging Americans to see Iran as a nation best

understood with Washington's policy-driven clichés, rather than a

country with a complex and authentic political process underway. The

less that Americans really know about Iran, the easier it will be to

launch the missiles.

 

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public

Accuracy, is currently in Tehran. His latest book, War Made Easy: How

Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, came off the press

this week. For information, go to WarMadeEasy.com.

 

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