The time has come to stop the madness. No confrontation with Iran is going to get what the US government or the EU or the rest of the free world wants: a peaceful appreciation of a resource, natural or not, that is unlikely to go stagnant into the future.
If we of the civilized world, as we like to think of ourselves, anyway, are going to address the issue of how other countries address nuclear anything, we need to hit first and hit hard with our most powerful weapon. We need to arm the world with an intelligent, transparent, community-monitored, community-friendly, open and honest public model of nuclear intelligence. And we need to dump in the billions of dollars necessary to make this kind of change happen.
Democratic liberty and justice demands that we figure out how to stop a madness that draws its strength mostly from being able to operate behind the veil of corporate or geopolitical profitability.
If any of our "free and humanitarian nations" are willing to blow up Iran (figuratively or literally) to force or pressure them to change, should we not first be willing to carpet bomb their culture with the very things that keep our nuclear industry as safe as it is: a community commitment to transparency and a watchdog network of grassroots advocates embolden with the passion of caring?
So what should we be doing if not re-directing the world's military and economic guns and money on Iran and, more specifically, Iran's people who will feel the brunt of this kind of force?
We should be:
- Coalescing the world's brain trust on grassroots advocacy and organizing, with the goal of putting together a diverse, multilateral, Plans of Attack. (Several major pieces have been developed recently detailing military plans, so why not counter them with humanitarian alternatives?)
- Identifying which European, Middle Eastern and American nongovernmental organizations have the intellectual wherewithal to put boots of networking specialists on the ground in and around Iran and its allies. (Ask advocates of many stripes whether they are used to facing dangers to achieve their missions?)
- Begin reaching out through religious, business and health and wellness collaborations to find their secret access points to people within Iran who are willing to sell their souls for change. (History frequently tells us of underground support systems that often work silently for profit or subsistence.)
- Use the power of the world to develop international compromises and monitoring plans that focus first on initiating cultural change rather than big-stick threats. (The true purpose, some might say, of the existence of any united nations!)
I'm in the process of writing a larger piece to detail more specifically what a progressive Plan of Attack could be like, as a direct counter to the belief that liberals of any partisan persuasion have no alternatives for safety and security. (Which, I admit, I wouldn't mind getting paid to write, Mr. or Ms. Publisher!) We have, after all, generations of successful civil and human rights accomplishments that show just how influential we can be at making full-fledged change happen—just ask the Queen of Kings, Coretta herself, as she moves for her unification with one or more of the Great Ones above!
Just imagine what would happen if the world's most powerful nations told Iran (or name your own bad country) that before we go to military war against you we will aim, double barreled, directly at you the full power of our knowledge, confidence, tactics and technology for grassroots change. And if we tell them that this approach, whether they like it or not, will result in the full-scale destruction of their oppressive systems and replace them with straightforward, open and transparent alternatives that will roll over their control.
As a life-time participant in the nonprofit/social advocacy sector, I know that we can and have made sweeping changes in our culture with little or no money, and way too little confidence in state-of-the-art technologies.
So now imagine what we could collectively do with a collaboration of the willing who have the advanced capabilities, the emotion of liberty and $100 billion to boot to make such a battle for the future of the planet succeed?
Allan
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Comments: 7
Thanks Bonnie. I actually have tried twice, and lost. But in both instances I received the support, believe it or not, of Green, Demo and Repub representatives or official parties. And of the major newspapers. But no luck with the voters -- yet!
Allan
With all due respect, what could a liberal bunch of hippies do differently? Maybe John and I need a better education as to what you mean by Grassroots. "Tree hugging" kind of sums it up for me too. Again, I mean no disrespect.
I guess I'm struggling with this piece...I want more specifics. What is the "humanitarian alternative"? A PR campaign? Infiltrating through "secret access points" sounds like the CIA.
When people are homeless, they don't hug trees. Churches and neighborhood groups give them homes.
When women and children are beaten and abused by their husbands and seek a network of support and care to start a new life, they don't hug trees. Caring people protect them and help them to start new lives.
When a country is overrun with Nazi devils and their country men and women need to survive, they don't hug trees. Underground railroads get them to safety.
Where you get the idea that what nonprofit humanitarians do has anything to do with what tree huggers do is beyond me.
The heart and soul of the civil and human rights movement has to do with people developing collaboratives of individuals and neighborhoods working together to address their challenges.
This is the resource we should be supporting.
There is no question but that the UN tries to use this humanitarian perspective more than the US. And even more confidently the EU is succeeding at doing this more than the rest of the world combined. But the US just complains about this idea and it often undercuts their plans for fear that they do not give deference to military demonstrations of power.
The US military agrees that there are networks of people who run the countercultures of countries that are under the thumb of dictators, like Iraq. We try to use our "intelligence" experts to buy and manipulate their way into these networks. And we mostly do a shitty job because our military people do not know what they are doing and they miss the real underground network in favor of those seeking compensation for fake information.
Bob Woodward documents this very well in his "Plan of Attack."
I'm suggesting that we as a country learn to use this natural resource better. The bullet points are examples of how to do this in a step by step process to stop the insanity of conflict with Iran over nuclear weapons. The details should come from the active people who live and die in these cultures and neighborhoods.
Real grassroots activist organizations know how to do it right. They just need the support of official groups like the UN and the US government to be more effective in the efforts as THEY (not I) spell out the details for such a collaborative strategy.
Your belief that all grassroots people are environmental Nazies says more about your warped perspective than the reality of people helping people.
Put bluntly, the nonprofit sector thinks the environmental groups are from another planet.
So I would ask that you stop being one-sided and see how change has actually occurred in this nation before dismissing anything not imposed by a military or paramilitary institutions.
If we are willing to pump hundreds of billions into military solutions, what would be wrong with trying first to pump humdreds of millions or even a billion into true grassroots models?
That is what my article suggests.
Allan
I would LOVE for us (not the U.S. but the world) to turn Iran around via a humanitarian route. I am all for it! I'm purposely being difficult here because I think you're onto something I just don't know what "it" is.
Clearly one needs more than a ~500 word article to get into the details of how to turn around a nation.
Either way, militarily or grassroots, it's tough work. It's a tough environment. We have to remember we're dealing with a different animal.
My beef with his approach is this: Applying a happy, do-good grassroots campaign like we would for the homeless in the United States is alot different than infiltrating a fledging democracy. Iranians are not so willingly going to stand up against their country. If the CIA can't find these underground networks how could a soup kitchen worker from New York do any different?
The CIA can't find the rest of the alphabet. When one reads the accounts of their efforts to use anything approaching a grassroots network they openly bribe their friends and ignore everyone else. The existence of such networks, according to the materials I read, is not in question any more than it is in any other nation. But that does not mean we know where they are or that they are willing to trust our people who come looking.
But even so, how hard to you think it would be to convert people into making such a network with the power, force and (again) American dollars to make it happen? People in this country are willing to give their lives for social change. Why wouldn't you think others in suffering countries (or even neighoring countries) wouldn't if supported in a proper manner.
By the way, your assessment of the work of helping the homeless as "happy, do good grassroots" stuff is demeaning to people who work very hard, struggle, pain, etc. to make these projects work. And that, I think, is really the issue at hand here. Nobody gets this mentality (especially not Presidents of the US) so they don't think in the right way.
I am working on a series of novels as well as substantive pieces to go into much greater detail, even though I think the best source is for grassroots people to sketch out the deails themselves. No spiritual representative of any flavor has appointed me as a spokesperson. It would be much easier, of course, if someone would pay me to work on these so I didn't have to take time to feed, house, or fight for social justice instead of writing .... but no luck on that front yet.
Allan