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Monday, November 17, 2008

Iran Won't Bring Back Its Bat And Ball


Life imitates high school. You wanted to hang out with the Bad Kids in high school because you identified with them and the administration treated them with disgust. As long as deans told them to cut their hair and teachers called them stoners, the Bad Kids always had ready appeal. Why can't the adults just leave them alone? What business is theirs how long the Bad Kids hair is?

If you were a bright dean, you wouldn't harass those misfit Bad Kids. You would co-opt them. Bring up how you both listen to Led Zeppelin. Humanize them. Now, the Bad Kids don't seem so bad. They look more like all of us nerds. And as a nerd, maybe I don't look so good with this long hair. Maybe I'd better cut it off. The Bad Kids need to react. Either they continue their surliness and lose their audience, or they adapt to society and try to rein in all that anti-social behavior.

During the campaign, President-elect Obama expressed a willingness to open constructive diaglogue with Iran. Iran is the current worldwide Bad Kid. They have made much hay from the monumental mistakes of the Bush Administration. They are the little shit in the back of the class, middle finger extended, nuclear material (maybe) in their pocket. Iran's appeal lies not in its policies, which, as a Shiite theocracy, are not attractive to the vast majority of the Arab public. No, they're cool because they stand up to us and Israel. They refuse to stop processing uranium. They play our allies off of each other.

But Obama wants to talk, unconditionally. The Arab public's reaction to his election was strongly positive. The new dean doesn't want conflict anymore, and neither does the student body. According to Thursday's Washington Post, Iran won't cut their hair.

"People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous," Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.

"The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack," Taeb said.

Keep up the pressure, incoming Obama administration. Unless we see a spike in oil soon, Iran's regime will be on the ropes. Let's let the Bad Kid define itself without that bad 'ole dean image handy. Don't withdraw the offer to talk, and stay positive. We can't get the Arab public to cut their hair overnight, but we can humanize everybody and that's a huge first step. Let's make the Arab public think for themselves, and not allow our policies to be ignored through the Bad Kid's ignorance and our heavy-handedness.

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