Nobody even conisders the possibility that Barack Obama might not win the Democratic Presidential Primary in Illinois - but it could happen, and if the Republicans are SERIOUS about winning the Presidency, it SHOULD. Here's how!

All you Illinois Republicans, for the primary voting this upcoming March 20, 2012, do yourselves a favor, and vote in the DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY, and vote for BARBARA BOXER! If y'all do that, then Barack Obama will NOT win his own state's primary, and then, if your brethern and sistern in New York, Texas, Florida, California, Ohio get their self-centered acts together and do the same thing, all of a sudden, the Democratic convention takes on a new meaning!  Hell, Hellary Rodjam Clinton might even be convinced to run!


As for mittens, just where IS his base (deep within the corporate walls of the Republican party's financial base - it's financial elites, and it's insrance elites, and its real-estate elites, and its pharmacuetical elites, and its health insurance elites, and its hospital CEO elites)?  What geographical boundaries can he legitimately claim as his own.  Michigan?  Think again!

Mitt Romney's home turf? It's not Michigan

He hasn't lived there in almost 50 years and few remember his dad

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A supporter wears campaign buttons from Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign and from the 1968 campaign of George Romney, Mitt Romney's father. (BRIAN SNYDER, Reuters Photo / January 24, 2012)

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By Ian C. Friedman

February 18, 2012

On Tuesday, Mitt Romney added his voice to the chorus of political writers, observers and commentators who describe Michigan as his "home state." Romney opened his op-ed in the Detroit News with the trying-way-too-hard lines, "I am a son of Detroit … I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan and Trumbull. Cars got in my bones early. And not just any cars, American cars."

Let's set aside how Vernors (a local ginger ale) is overrated and that real Detroit Tigers fans always say that they used to watch games at the old Tiger Stadium's address at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. What's most important is that Romney is asserting that Michigan is his home turf and he is betting that his past in the state will help him in the crucial Feb. 28 Michigan primary. But Michigan is not Romney's home turf and his claiming it as such is not a good idea.

Technically, Romney is a Michigander —he was born in Detroit in 1947 and was raised in the tony suburb of Bloomfield Hills. But after Romney graduated from high school in 1965 he never lived in the state again.

If Romney has a true home state, it is Massachusetts, where he attended business and law school at Harvard, raised his family in the Boston suburb of Belmont, and served as governor of the state from 2003 to 2007. Romney also has much stronger ties to heavily Mormon Utah, where he attended Brigham Young University and where he returned to serve as the executive director of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Yet this notion that Michigan is Romney's home state persists. Some of this belief is because his father George was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. But those who argue that Mitt will benefit from being the son of a very popular governor of Michigan are ignoring an important fact: There are very few people alive in Michigan who actually remember — let alone voted for — George.

In order to have voted for George, whose last campaign for governor took place in 1966, a Michigander would have to have been born by 1945. Lifelong residents who are in their late 60s are likely not a huge part of Michigan's GOP primary electorate. And even if they were, if those folks admired George's liberal brand of Republicanism (supporting civil rights legislation, critiquing American involvement in the Vietnam War, advocating for expansion of government social programs) they may have already fled today's more rigidly right-wing GOP.

The sad reality for Mitt Romney is that Michigan is really just another state. Even more unfortunate for Romney, many do not view it that way. Instead, they see Michigan as a state to which Romney still has a politically advantageous connection. The more this false perception is held, the higher the expectations will be that Romney will win the state decisively. These heightened expectations can only serve to harm Romney if he loses in Michigan. Losing in Colorado was a surprise, but falling in his home state? That will invigorate the anyone-but-Mitts (particularly Rick Santorum) and likely dominate the post-election commentary as well as the thoughts of Republican voters in other states heading to Super Tuesday.

Then, of course, there's the matter of the four words that may burden Romney in the primary and, if he manages to win the Republican nomination, will certainly weigh him down in Michigan in the general election: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

These were the words headlining Romney's 2008 New York Times' op-ed. Though it's typically the case that someone other than an article's author is responsible for its title, the content of Romney's argument — that the desperately floundering automotive giantsChrysler and General Motors should not receive $85 billion in federal loans to survive — does not alter the meaning of it.

Romney can attempt to wiggle out of this as much as he likes, and his recent article suggests that he will try. But time has not been kind to his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" argument. Chrysler and General Motors are enjoying record sales and they have paid back almost all of the bailout money. The success of the rescue is widely credited with saving countless jobs in the auto industry and preventing a job-destroying ripple effect that would have traumatized Michigan and much of the United States. This makes Romney's 2008 article appear foolish and it makes his latest published attempt to rationalize the piece appear callous.

Romney's Detroit News op-ed wasn't his only media splash in Michigan last week. His campaign also debuted a new television ad. Titled "Growing Up," it features Romney driving around a Michigan neighborhood, as he reminisces on his past in the state before decrying the impact of unions, liberals and President Barack Obama. Throughout the ad, attractive photos of Mitt are shown; as a boy flashing an eager smile while sitting in a cool '50s-era car, and posing with his future wife, Ann. It includes footage of people exiting a factory that looks as if it came from a colorized newsreel of several generations past.

The ad clearly is meant to convey that Romney has roots in the state. But its retro feel unintentionally emphasizes that his only meaningful connection to Michigan are those roots. What remains is the strong impression that Romney is from Michigan, but not of Michigan, or for Michigan. His narration concludes, "Michigan's been my home, and this is personal." But his pace is rushed, his sentiment is inauthentic and his tone is unconvincing.

Ian C. Friedman, born and raised in Flint, Mich., is a University of Michigangraduate. He is the creator of wordsmatterblog.com, which analyzes quotations in American history and culture. He lives in Oak Park.

Survival of the Fittest

A Dickensian Watergate

by CHARLES R. LARSON

There’s a certain Dickensian quality to Thomas Mallon’s always inventive novel, Watergate: a large cast of characters from widely different backgrounds and classes, some tragic, others comic; varied back stories and tag-lines (mostly personality quirks); a carefully plotted narrative that brings most of the main characters back into the story after many years for a curtain call. The rub, of course, is that except for some minor characters, totally invented by the author, the others are based on real historical figures—or so they seem today, decades later, after events that began in 1972.  I suspect that those of us who lived through the incidents depicted will have a significantly different reaction to Watergate than those born afterwards, though both groups of readers will find the story mesmerizing, difficult to put aside, in true Dickensian form.

One example will suffice: the Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973.  When Archibald Cox refused to accept summaries of the disputed tape recordings, Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire special prosecutor Cox.  Richardson (according to Mallon) had apparently agreed but then quickly reneged, and resigned instead.  So did William D. Ruckelshaus, his first deputy.  The department’s number three man implemented the firing.  Mallon writes, “Then the rumors arrived: that the FBI had gone to the special prosecutor’s office on K Street—perhaps to seize files; perhaps to protect them.  Or the files [what Cox already had on Nixon] had already been hidden by the special prosecutor’s staff, who—rumor also had it—were rushing from their homes to the office.”

Richardson’s refusal to fire Cox and his resignation were all over the news that evening.  Those of us who worked in Washington knew that the city was rife with rumors.  Nixon was going to suspend the constitution.  Martial Law would be instigated—anything so that he could stay in office, as the wagons circled the White House.  The news of Cox’s firing spread like wild fire through a party my wife and I were attending in the city that Saturday night.  As we drove home hours later along Western Avenue (the street that separates the District of Columbia from Maryland) and approached Connecticut Avenue (which passes near the White House several miles further into the city), police cars blocked entry to the city on that major route.  Driving the rest of the way home, we were convinced that Nixon had, indeed, hijacked the constitution and the country was doomed.

My point is that if Nixon and his cronies who implemented the Watergate burglary were paranoid that others were out to get them, so were many of us who lived and worked in Washington during those crazy days.  Later, when Woodward and Bernstein were reporting on the White House’s dastardly duties, most of us were incredulous.  How much longer was it going to take to cut this cancer out of the country politic?  Stuff for a novel, a very good novel, like Thomas Mallon’s.

Mallon’s strength as a writer (he has published many other novels) is his characterization.  And in Watergate, he is starting with known eccentric characters, fascinating characters.  Although he chooses to give little space to G. Gordon Liddy (a true whacko) and Chuck Colson (who later retreated into religion)—these men who were the chief instigators of the botched Watergate burglary of the Democratic National Party)—there are plenty of others to give us a wild train ride of a story, including, Howard Hunt, Rosemary Woods, Fred LaRue, Elliot Richardson, both Dick and Pat Nixon, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth.  Alice (Teddy Roosevelt’s granddaughter, who celebrates her 90^th birthday during the course of the story), depicted as a woman who had great fondness for both Dick and Pat, has one of the best lines in the novel.  In the

midst of the Saturday Night Massacre, she scribbles on a piece of paper for her nephew, the journalist Joseph Alsop, “The clock is dick-dick-dicking.”  Which is to say that there is plenty of comic relief in Watergate—especially Alice but also Martha Mitchell, drunk most of the time but still quick-witted and an embarrassment for her husband, formerly the Attorney General.

We are in the minds of all of these people in a narrative that is almost always convincing.  That means that Nixon himself talks in profanities (the tapes revealed all of that to a shocked nation).  Or, more frequently, his self-pity, such as the following passage at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, in August of 1972, a couple of months after the Watergate break in is public knowledge, when the President is walking to the podium to accept his party’s nomination:

“The president wipes his right eye.  No, it isn’t nostalgia causing the tears; it’s the goddamned Vietnam Veterans against the War, who even now are only blocks away on Collins Avenue, provoking the cops into firing the occasional canister of gas.  He’s seen the news clips; half of them seem to be in wheelchairs, which he bets they need about as much as he does.  Colson doubts that most of them have even been in the army, let alone over to Vietnam.  If the Secret Service had let them get any closer as he came into the hall, he’d have flashed them the ‘V’ sign, which drives them nuts whenever he uses it in the old Churchillian sense of victory instead of peace.”

In this novel of power and its colossal abuse Mallon gets it exactly right.  Everyone’s posturing, everyone’s trying to protect has own ass.  Most of the President’s Men (Mitchell, Colson, Hunt, LaRue, Dean, Haldeman, Agnew, Eirchlman, Haig) are rank amateurs, way over their heads and giddy with power.  Ordinary men caught up in the deception of an unordinary situation.  As most of them stumble and end up indicted and in jail, Nixon feels increasingly isolated, alone.  And everyone else is out to get him.

Then there’s his faithful secretary of many years, Rose Woods, whom Mallon speculates intentionally erased the tapes—not to protect her boss, but because 

she’s been drinking too much and believes that a remark of one of the participants presents her in an unflattering context.  This is probably as reasonable an explanation as we will ever have, providing her (as a character) with her own sense of vulnerability, more than loyalty to the president.  Ditto Fred LaRue—special advisor to the President—who is given a back story about his father’s death that humanizes him, even if the story may be heavy on its Freudian implications.

Finally, Nixon himself, the most loathed President in modern times.  Almost at the end, in July of 1974, after he returns to the United States after still another important (few would deny this) international trip, still working tireously for international diplomacy, though this time in Pat’s point-of-view, “Part of her husband, she felt certain, had hoped he would die in Cairo—in a more heroic version of what could have happened at the naval hospital last summer.  That time history might have said he’d been hounded to death by his enemies; this time, if he’d collapsed in the limousine inside the tornado of sound—the clot having traveled from his leg to his heart—history would be forced to say he’d died pursuing peace for the world.”  Thoughts of a First Lady who winces at what she’d been called (Plastic Pat), yet is capable of her own private life and hidden resources for survival.

Is the world ready for a humanized Richard Nixon?  Substitute the name of any more recent American politician you’ve been cursing.  And then ask yourself why it is that, with politics, Americans so often pick losers.

WatergateBy Thomas Mallon
Pantheon, 432 pp., $26.95

Charles R. Larson is Emeritus Professor of Literature, American University, in Washington, D.C.  Email: clarson@american.edu.

"Christ, What Are Patterns For?"

Creating Equality

by MISSY BEATTIE

I believed the pen could smash rock, paper, scissors, and injustice.

I signed petitions.

Wrote letters to Congressmen and women.

And the op-ed articles.  Five hundred, at least.

I thought I could make a difference, working within the system, a dead end when the system itself is a failure for all but the filthy wealthy.

One of my children, concerned about my cynicism, told me to abandon political writing and, instead, work on family stories.  Our family. Our stories.  Another son suggested continuing education courses.  I made inquiries. The “Creating Memories” instructor wrote, encouraging me:

… provides us with a better understanding of who we are and  what our lives have been about. Memoir writing is one of the most effective means to integrate our life experiences and clarify/identify patterns and meaning to guide us.

I look at this and think about words, the nouns, vowels, adjectives, pushing them against each other to integrate life experiences and identify patterns. Suddenly, I hear lines from Amy Lowell’s poem, “Patterns.” Her words are shattering.  Could crush rock, paper, scissors.  But not injustice:

In my gown.

Gorgeously arrayed,

Boned and stayed.

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace

By each button, hook, and lace.

For the man who should loose me is dead,

Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

In a pattern called a war.

Christ!  What are patterns for?

Yes, I can write about my children, marriage, and an incident one son wants recorded: “Mom, please write about the time you sent Dad off with that leather sandwich.”

Explanation:  I was pissed (justifiably) and instead of using lunchmeat, I slapped a piece of leather (a ticket stub from a country and western concert), on a slice of bread, suffocated it under an inch of mayo, and completed the construction with more bread.  And I said to my parents, “If he doesn’t think this is funny (he didn’t), I’ll divorce him (I didn’t) for not having a sense of humor (absent that day).”

But what can be more personal than war?  The death of a nephew?  The thousands of dead troops? The brain injured? The suicides? Those our weapons maim and kill, the babies born with birth defects, the devastation of a civilization? When Chase was hit by a vehicle borne IED and I wrote that first opinion piece, a relative criticized and said, “You shouldn’t politicize this.”  I told him that dying in war is political. Not just personal.

Entering political/personal purgatory before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d write “leaders,” questioning and imploring. I remember an email to Sen. Bill Frist in which I chastised him for flipping in support of Big Tobacco, saying that as a cardiac transplant surgeon, he must have advised patients to quit smoking.  Hmm, recording that Nashville story triggers another:  My husband, on his way home from work, almost ran down Lamar Alexander. Yes, cigarettes, cars, and politicians are pollutants, capable of killing.

John Boehner recently said that the House of Representatives wasn’t designed to work.  My immediate thought:  This is the house that really deserves foreclosure.   Congress has a 10 percent approval rating (never been lower). But drop that limbo stick and these slickos can still slither underneath to pass legislation that’s an assault on human rights.

And despite Wall Street crimes, resulting in the gutting of the middle class, no one has been prosecuted.  That’s why the Occupy movement is essential.  And must create a new economy.  Occupy should open its own stores, starting with one, then, more and more.  Allowing Walmart to take over a town is like signing your own death warrant.  What happens, say, if a particular Walmart doesn’t generate enough profit, closes, and there’s nothing else within 50 to 100 miles?

Okay, this morning, I enrolled in the writing course.  It’s supposed to Calgon me from political reality.  But it won’t.  And it shouldn’t.  Because the suffering among my species, the destruction of our planet, and the carnage delivered by Wall Street and US empire/American exceptionalism are omnipresent.  Recorders of inhumanity haven’t disabled inhumanity’s source.  Perhaps, Occupy will, by building an egalitarian system. Affirmative family stories.

Lofty Goals in Need of a Financial and Political Base

Inside Obama’s Energy and Environment Budget

by DAPHNE WYSHAM

President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposal offers a window into which battles he aims to fight and which ones he intends to avoid. Here’s a breakdown of the energy policies embedded in the proposed budget.

First the good energy news: The Obama Administration clearly views action on climate change as a priority, regardless of inaction on Capitol Hill. In this document, President Obama isn’t shy about using the words “climate change,” contrary to efforts to steer clear of this language on Capitol Hill and in prior presidential speeches. And climate change, as the Pentagon has noted, is a far greater threat to the world than terrorism. So tackling climate change and the U.S. role in stopping it should be both discussed openly and tackled vigorously if we are to have a safe, secure and energy-independent future.

However, just as mentioning the words “climate change” matter, so, too, does clarity in the meaning of other words — such as “renewable energy” and “clean energy.” In this budget document, as in his State of the Union speeches, it is clear that the Obama Administration joins industry in obfuscating what they really mean by those terms, which, in reality, will mean a longer delay in getting truly clean, renewable energy up and running.

Obama is eager to highlight in his 2013 budget, as in the past, his desire for a nationwide push on public transit and high-speed inter-city rail that would provide 80 percent of Americans with access to a passenger rail system. If approved by Congress, this measure could have a significant impact on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and public transportation options. Perhaps high gas prices in the future will make this effort more politically viable on Capitol Hill — where members of Congress remain beholden to oil industry lobbyists — than it has been in the past.

Also, on the positive side of the ledger: Obama proposes eliminating $4 billion in annual fossil fuel subsidies and cutting oil and gas tax incentives by $41 billion over 10 years. Oil, gas, and coal companies have seen record profits in recent decades, and so this cut in subsidies is long overdue. But it isn’t enough. Another $80 billion in subsidies for the fossil fuel industries could be trimmed from the budget over the next 10 years while safeguarding both public health and the environment. (See below.)

His Interior Department budget proposes an $86 million subsidy for renewable energy development on public lands to produce 11,000 megawatts of clean energy by the end of 2013 — enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes. This is welcome but small compared to the dirty energy subsidies that have been in place for decades.

Obama’s Transportation Department budget features healthy infusions of cash for public transit — $108 billion over six years — as well as $47 billion for high-speed rail over six years.

Mediocre News Masquerading as Good News:

Obama is also pushing energy efficiency in public and commercial buildings, by encouraging non-residential energy efficiency targets of 20 percent increases in efficiency over 10 years. While this is welcome, a more ambitious target, as laid out by the group, Architecture 2030, would have all buildings — residential and non-residential — be carbon neutral by 2030. This more ambitious target is in our interest from a climate perspective, would save people money at a time of economic austerity, and could greatly benefit workers in the hard-hit construction trades while rejuvenating the tax base in towns across the United States as construction work is stimulated. It could also be coupled with refinancing packages for small businesses based on their energy efficiency that would help them avoid bankruptcy.

While Obama’s proposed State Department budget makes reference to “promoting low-emissions economic development” around the world, this goal runs counter to the actual policies that are being carried out by the various development banks where the U.S. State Department (together with the Treasury Department and EPA) plays a decisive role in shaping investment policies — such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank — and U.S. export credit and insurance agencies, U.S. Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation, where government finance continues to underwrite fossil fuel-powered infrastructure throughout the developing world disproportionately over renewable energy.

Obama’s Energy Department budget proposal delivers some positive news, such as $310 million for the “Sunshot Intiative to make solar energy cost competitive nationwide without subsidies by the end of the decade” and $95 million for wind energy, and $65 million for geothermal energy. However, as my  Institute for Policy Studies colleague Robert Alvarez notes, most of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to nuclear weapons upgrading, not energy development: “The Department of Energy Budget proposes to spend no more than 20 percent on actual energy activities. Of that nuclear energy continues to dominate research and development spending to shore up the department’s aging nuclear sites. About 60 percent of Energy’s budget is going mostly for nuclear weapons and the cleanup of nuclear weapons sites,” he explains.

Obama’s proposed Environmental Protection Agency budget has suffered some cuts relative to 2011 spending levels, but maintains its important focus on higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and public health measures.

While Obama’s push for renewable energy development, with $6.1 billion in loans to rural electric cooperatives and utilities in support of renewable energy development in rural areas, is a positive development, the budget lumps “advanced biofuels” in with “renewable energy.” Yet “advanced biofuels” aren’t technically renewable, though Congress, under the “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007” claims they are. Under their definition, “advanced biofuels” includes “fuel other than ethanol derived from corn starch, that has lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, as determined by the EPA’s administrator, after notice and opportunity for comment, that are at least 50 percent less than baseline lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions” and can include ethanol derived from trees, ethanol derived from sugar or starch other than corn starch; ethanol derived from waste material, including crop residue, other vegetative waste material, animal waste, and food waste and yard waste; biomass-based diesel; biogas (including landfill gas and sewage waste treatment gas) produced through the conversion of organic matter from renewable biomass; butanol or other alcohols produced through the conversion of organic matter from renewable biomass; other fuel derived from cellulosic biomass.

Incinerating these materials isn’t “carbon neutral,” as some claim, and can have severe adverse public health and environmental impacts. In addition, using crops for fuel on scarce cropland contributes to the rise in the price of food globally, with devastating impacts for the poorest. Nevertheless, Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for the Department of Agriculture continues to subsidize “advanced biofuels” with a $200 million subsidy.

The Bad news:

Obama’s “clean energy standard,” includes nuclear power, gas, and carbon capture and storage for coal burners, as well as authentically renewable energy (and several forms of so-called biomass-based energy that are becoming increasingly problematic). And this is what he continues to push for.

Nearly two years after the BP oil disaster, Obama is pushing for the development of over 75 percent of undiscovered technically recoverable offshore oil and gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf. While he’s simultaneously calling for an expansion in regulatory oversight of this activity as called for in the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in its January 2011 report, through the creation of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Congress has yet to pass a bill mandating the other recommendations contained in that report. While BP did pay a $20 billion settlement, little of that money has reached the victims of the spill, and the health of the communities in the coastal regions has been devastated — perhaps irreparably. The EPA’s attempts to respond to this debacle with chemical dispersants only added to the environmental and public health problems suffered by coastal residents. Vast quantities of oil remains at the bottom of the sea floor, undigested by microbes. Barring stronger measures to ensure such a crisis never happens again, opening up further offshore regions for drilling is reckless in the extreme.

Likewise, Obama’s budget proposals include a $770 million subsidy for the development of “advanced small modular (nuclear) reactors,” despite the clear hazards revealed in the multiple nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan, the public health risks associated with all reactors, and despite the costs associated with uranium mining and waste disposal — costs that the private sector has been reluctant to bear for decades.

Unmentioned:

Although Obama’s Interior Department budget proposal refers to reforms in royalties paid for private companies to use public lands and the collection of $3 billion over 10 years, this does not go far enough. Revenue could be far greater and the costs to the taxpayer far lower if the 1872 mining law, which allows mining companies to stake a claim on public lands for a mere $5 an acre (still!), while mining for highly lucrative oil, gas, gold and other minerals, were brought into the 21^st century. Environmental protections are non-existent in these claims, resulting in the headwaters of roughly 40 percent of Western U.S. watersheds being polluted, according to the EPA, and the taxpayer picking up the bill for cleanup, estimated by Earthworks and others at roughly $32-72 billion. An amendment to this law could generateincome on the order of $122 billion for U.S. taxpayers on public lands, discourage wasteful, hazardous and speculative investment on public lands, and ensure that highly profitable mining companies are forced to clean up their own messes.

This budget, much like Obama’s State of the Union speech, is unlikely to go far this year, with the gridlock on Capitol Hill. However, if Obama is reelected, and if the Democrats retake the House, a more ambitious version of these proposals could make a positive difference, both to our economy and to our environment.

Daphne Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN).

This column is distributed by OtherWords.

Demonizing Iran

Demonizing Iran

Not Another Rabbit Hole!

by IAN HARRIS

When Alice went down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carol’s novel, Alice and Wonderland, she experienced all kinds of unpleasant surprises. What kind of surprises will we Americans face if our government bombs Iran?

The last time the United States went down the Iranian rabbit hole was in 1953, almost 60 years ago. In 1953 the United States and England engineered a coup that replaced a popular elected leader in Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, with a cruel tyrant, the Shah Pahlavi. The consequences of that intervention have been disastrous, not just for the citizens of the United States but for the whole world.

The Shah was so unpopular that he had to flee in 1979 from a popular revolution that ultimately brought the mullahs and Ayatollah Khomeini to power. These conservative religious leaders imposed a theocracy based upon sharia law that has served as a model for Muslims throughout the world, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, to press for similar ultra-conservative regimes based upon strict readings of the Koran. Much of the global terrorist chaos that now confronts the world can be traced back to the first time we imposed our will upon the Iranian people.

The United States has been down many rabbit holes, like the war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq, and the ten year war in Afghanistan. These avoidable blunders have caused extreme suffering in the countries attacked and grief in this country. These expensive military excursions have wreaked havoc upon the economy in the United States and destroyed the lives of thousands of veterans. After all these failed policies haven’t we learned that we cannot control what happens as a result of U.S. military involvement in other countries? The Law of Unintended Consequences is exactly why we are in a poor economic position right now. Why repeat and compound these mistakes?

President Obama has ratcheted up sanctions against Iran and U.S. and Israeli military leaders are now considering a bomb attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran says that it wants radioactive material so that it can generate nuclear power. In 2006 it cranked up its nuclear power program to produce uranium U 235 that can be used in a fissionable reactor. Even though Iran has huge petroleum reserves, it does not have refining capacity and hence wants nuclear power to provide for the electricity needs of its 75 million people. Just like the United States, it seeks energy independence.

Iran has stated that it does not seek to produce uranium 238 that could be used in a nuclear weapon.  It is a signatory to the International Atomic Energy Agreement (IAEA).  Such a membership allows the IAEA to inspect a country’s nuclear facilities. Inspectors from this agency have visited Iran numerous times and declared their facilities appropriate for the production of nuclear fuel that could be used in an atomic power reactor. Interestingly, other countries in the area that have nuclear weapons–Israel, India, and Pakistan have not joined the IAEA, are thus not inspected, and we are not sanctioning them.

The sanctions proposed by the West are not having a positive effect.  They are mostly hurting the Iranian urban middle class.  The current regime has been unpopular since the 2009 Iranian elections.  The American government should cool down some of its hostile rhetoric to appeal to this sector that supports reform efforts in Iran. Our current policies are doing just the opposite.

Sanctions are piling up. They strengthen the grip of the conservatives in power who rile against provocative statements made by Western and Israeli politicians busy demonizing the Iranians in order to win political points at home. It doesn’t help that the U.S., Israel, Iran, and France are all having elections this year. With a steady barrage of hostile threats the Iranians appropriately feel they need to arm to defend against possible U.S. aggression like what happened to Iran’s neighbors, Afghanistan and Iraq. Outside threats can be used by those in power to clamp down on Iranian civil society.

What we have here is a classical case of warmongering gone crazy. The mass media in the United States is demonizing Iran by describing it having a nuclear weapons program when in fact it has a nuclear power program, just like it did in 2002 in the build up to the war on Iraq when we were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction—another instance when the IAEA said there in fact were no nuclear bombs there.

Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense, has said publicly that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Military leaders in both Israel and the United States have declared that Iran does not have nukes. Our president is pleading with Israel not to bomb Iran. In spite of these informed comments, we are being bombarded daily by claims of Iranian threats to U.S. security.

The United States is on record after the first Gulf war calling for a Weapons of Mass Destruction-free zone in the Middle East. The situation in Iran calls for diplomacy at every level, citizen to citizen, government to government, International Nongovernment Organization (INGO) to INGO. The United Nations has called for a conference on a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Such a bold policy initiative could reduce tensions throughout the area. Let’s avoid another disastrous foreign excursion with its unpredictable results. As the popular bumper sticker says, “War is not the answer.”

Ian Harris is emeritus professor of Education at the U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and member of the International Peace Research Association Foundation.