Today, media folks are all over the map trying to figure out what the meaning of the release of the British sailors and marines means.
There seems to be an unwillingness to acknowledge the most simple explanation. It's about forgiveness. It's about compassion. It's about a recognized concern for common interests.
More over the jump
I'm no big fan of the Iranian president. He got elected emulating Bush's fear-mongering. Like Bush, he has attempted to push Iran back from it's recent progress in human rights, diplomacy, and republican democracy.
He made a very clumsy attempt to distinguish the rightwing Zionist zealots in Israel from the general population, and compounded the mistranslations of his words by questioning the historical accuracy of the holocaust.
He is paying for that foolishness with sound defeats of his party at the polls, and with rebukes from the Supreme Leader, the Iranian Parliament and the Iranian press.
But the recent crises over the British sailors and marines has shown that this clumsy deluded fool has at least ONE THING in his favor. Faced with repeated incursions into Iran's territory, kidnapping and illegal detention of Iranian diplomats, acts of domestic terrorism bankrolled by an occupying power in adjacent countries, and war gaming that was leaked to the international press as prelude to a nuclear attack on his nation, he demonstrated how civilized people deal with international incidents.
He treated the captives well, investigated the facts, publicized the facts, and asked for an apology to end the crisis. Having gotten tough talk in return, he replied that he had evidence to put the sailors and marines on trial.
No one knows what the Blair government did in response to that. But we do know what happened next. The Iranian president made a speech detailing the abuses his country has suffered at the hands of foreign occupiers. He honored his own troops, saying they acted lawfully, honorably and humanely. And then he announced that he would PARDON the British sailors and marines for any transgressions, FORGIVING them, and releasing them to go home. Then he asked these same people to carry back with them warm regards and a message of hope for better relations in the future with their country.
I ask you, can you imagine George Bush doing that?
Tomorrow is Good Friday. It is the day that was chosen to unleash a nuclear attack on Iran. I've read a report that the attack has been called off.
Is Nancy Pelosi going to Iran next?
Is there, at long last, hope that the concept of FORGIVENESS can be the start of a new era for all of us? Diplomatic relations with Iran? Cooperation between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt for a comprehensive multi-polar security in the Middle East? A regional structure to negotiate the final settlement for the Palestinian State and secure borders for Israel?
Understand, that Iran and Saudi Arabia have considerable influence in Palestine and Lebanon. A settlement between Sunni and Shia peoples will marginalize the radicals, like al-queda. Hezbollah is the Iranian government's efforts to export the republican Iranian Revolution.
Forgiveness. Compassion. Spiritual values that transcend orthodoxy and even religions. If you want someone to be free, do you offer them freedom at the point of a gun, or with an open hand?
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is descended from both the House of Saud AND the Shammar tribe. Of great importance to the Shammar tribe (6 million strong) is a place called Al-Jezeera. It is the HEART of Iraq. Another interesting thing I learned about the Shammar tribe: They are the bridge, theologically speaking, between Sunnis and Shia. At hand is quite possibly a unity of Islam, similar to what took place during the Islamic Golden Age, in which the focus of Islam was upon "llm" or the pursuit of knowledge.
Peace in Iraq is dependent upon such a turn of events.
While radical fundamentalist Islamic thought seeks to re-establish the Caliphate, they seek this for the ends of empire, orthodoxy, and cultural superiority, and not for the ends that made the Golden Caliphate possible. Tolerance. Compassion. Forgiveness. FREEDOM.