Wright: Boycott Threat Puts Pressure on Iran
Robin Wright at the Washington Post has a piece online today on the growing pressure among US academics to boycott conferences and intellectual contact with Iran as long as Dr. Haleh Esfandiari is detained by Tehran.
Wright quotes a statement from Noam Chomsky on Haleh's imprisonment:
' "Now is a time for diplomacy, negotiations and relaxation of tensions, in accordance with the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians, as recent polls reveal," he said. "The intolerable treatment of this highly respected scholar and human rights activist severely undermines the efforts of those who are seeking peace, justice and freedom in the region and the world." '
She also quotes my entry, "Haleh in Prison," from Friday's IC.
She notes that 16 women in Congress have spoken out jointly on this issue, including Hillary Clinton.
It is great to have this coverage in a major US newspaper. But I still haven't been contacted by any organizations with capacity to do a demonstration in front of, e.g., the Iranian Embassy in London. Make it Friday, June 1, and I could help lead it.
Paris, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo would also be good places for a demonstration, and it is good if some prominent academics can take the lead.
Links:
Moroccan-American author Leila Lalami has spoken out on the issue.
Also Karen Tumulty at Time's blog, where she notes that Sam Brownback has spoken out on Haleh's imprisonment.
Amnesty International has a convenient form for sending protest emails to the Iranian government.
The Lehrer News Hour discussion of the imprisonment.
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/19/2007 08:10:00 AM
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2 Comments:
I guess we ARE going to need a 'war czar' after all, and unfortunately, we already have one who's apparently AWOL in that capacity as well.
"In fact, the Constitution of the United States is quite explicit about who the 'war czar' of the nation should be whenever the United States has to wage war: That czar is clearly defined in the Constitution as the president of the United States. For it is he who is expressly designated as not only the chief executive and head of state, but also as the commander in chief of the armed forces."
[...]
US Features
War czar compromise -- Part 2
By Martin Sieff May 19, 2007, 3:06 GMT
[CV: UPI's Managing Editor of International Affairs, Masters in Modern
History from Oxford University in 1972 specializing in modern U.S.
history and studied 20th century Middle East history at the London
School of Economics.]
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The Bush administration looked for a 'war czar.' Instead it got a 'junior war coordinator.' But according to American history and to the U.S. Constitution, who should be 'war czar' anyway?
The whole concept of a 'czar' implies a supreme boss. The term, after all, described the all-powerful, authoritarian emperor of all the Russias for more than 400 years. At times of crisis, especially during wars, over the past century, the call has repeatedly gone up for 'czars' to be given sweeping authority over key areas of American war-making, manufacturing or other areas of American life to address some crucial crisis of the moment.
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In fact, the Constitution of the United States is quite explicit about who the 'war czar' of the nation should be whenever the United States has to wage war: That czar is clearly defined in the Constitution as the president of the United States. For it is he who is expressly designated as not only the chief executive and head of state, but also as the commander in chief of the armed forces.
Different presidents have interpreted the nature of the commander in chief`s role very differently throughout U.S. history. The second president, John Adams, was the first to separate, in practice, the positions of commander in chief and president. He brought back the revered first president and author of victory in the American War of Independence, George Washington, to raise a new army at a time of heightened international tensions in the late 1790s. But Washington then died, and his power passed to the ambitious, brilliant but unstable Alexander Hamilton. There were fears that Hamilton might put together an army to topple Adams and destroy the infant Republic.
That fear passed. In the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, left no one in any doubt that he was the 'war czar.' He watched daily operations in the field, especially of the Army of Northern Virginia, with an obsessively close eye. He personally selected and fired generals, and his choice of them was for years remarkably bad.
In World War I, President Woodrow Wilson, who knew nothing about war,
[...]
In full [part 2]
[Part 1]
Part 3 is to be called "From Rumsfeld to Lute" but isd not available yet.
Abominable as the treatment of Ms. Esfandiari is, is it really appropriate to boycott intellectual contact between the two countries at a time when such contact is so desperately lacking? Iran's government has a horrible record of mistreating dissidents and intellectuals ("rowshan-fekran" as if that was an insult!), why make a special case for Esfandiari? Because she's American? Let's please not forget the scores of other political prisoners held by the regime.
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