Iran, Libya and the Clapper of Freedom

The late Ayatollah Khomeini (aka The Supreme Guide) had the opinion that America was a syphilitic, sunset culture fomenting its own destruction. His Khomeinist revolution brought a radical political sect of Shiism to power in Iran. They are not people without skill in international treachery.

Current events in political affairs bring us to consider the North Shore of Africa as our American concern. We might wonder why with the gas stations of the U.A.E. and Bahrain etc fueling tankers for all points Moammar Kaddafi’s deserts should be on the front burner of CNN. Even Senator John ‘Fighter Ace’ McCain has ideas about implementing a No-fly zone over Tripoli denying thus air superiority to the Libyan Air Force. The rebels of Libya need a quick air force at no cost and might have tweeted the world asking for one. The U.S.A. just might have one to spare in order to provide realistic fighter training to its pilots.

So what would the U.S.A. get in its providing of free air superiority to the rebel army? Well, we could get out of our 7 year old peaceful relationship with the Libyan Government. Also, no matter who wins, the United States could be denounced later as ‘The Great Satan’ that was either overthrown by local fighters or was a sponsor of the former regime.

If the United States provides for the destruction of the Libyan Government enabling a free society to develop a democracy in Libya, then we can be assured that a wealth of international terrorists will arrive to take advantage of the freedom to plot terrorist missions against America and Europe. That will stimulate creation of a strict secret police t repress the terrorist cells, and formation of a new authoritarian state.

Perhaps the prospects for a democratic utopia following destruction of Kaddafi’s Government are not so bad though. Yet even in Egypt changes will develop that will substantially alter the present regional balances of power or not.

The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt was an early entrant I the effort to war upon Israel through support of the Palestinians. With much liberty in Egypt for the people that relationship is likely to return, and Palestinians may find much more support from Egypt and Iran too in the effort to wage a protracted low level guerrilla campaign against Israel from all of its borders.

Basically the United States has no idea of what sort of a society would develop in Libya in a post-Kaddafi era. We know that fellow travelers of Khomeinist, Salafist, Al Qaeda fundamentalist movements following in the PLO and Hamas tradition move about quite readily to take advantage of community organizing opportunities (the community of terrorist planners) that arise in the middle east, central Asia and nearly anywhere on Earth that government permits such formations to develop. Though Khomeinists are Shi’ia, they are major financiers of Sunni Hamas terrorism against Israel. It is unlikely that Iran has no part in the North African evolutions of recent weeks.

The U.S.A. should not act as a decisive military belligerent in national or regional conflicts in which we have no idea what sort of government will emerge. To act so would reduce the United States to the position of being an agent of anarchism.

We know that Iran has been taken by Khomeinist neo-Nazis down a road of perpetual radicalization since 1979. An essential plank of the regime is destruction f the United States. The Khomeinist methodology is something like that of the Trotskyite branch of the Marxist revolution in Russia in seeking a global, universal takeover of political power.

In the United States we tend to regard Iran as a radical Islamic power, and that is inaccurate to the extent of being misleading. Khomeinism is more of a political than a religious philosophy using its eccentric Shiite version of Islam as a kind of Vahhalistic motivating faith like Nazi’s of yore.

Shiite, twelver Islam is a fascinating sect to study. Iran is a fascinating country to read of. Khomeinists have mostly repressed the national sense of Persianhood and history. Khomeini even repressed Persian language in favor of Arabic interpretations for moral authority. President Amahdinejab has had conversations with the several centuries dead ‘hidden imam’, and the cult of Shiite twelvers (twelve imams) has expanded the medieval practice of selling indulgences for help with one’s relationship with Allah.

The Cult of Khomeinism that has foisted repression of national Persian consciousness upon Iranians is an historical development that had a chance to probabilistically occur in that politically heavily trafficked region of the world too rich to elaborate upon in this essay. Americans should be aware that Khomeinists provide financial support to anti-American movements all over the world. That the United States did not effect a coup d’état that brought the Shah to power, actually it was quite the opposite. The Shah was a constitutional monarch that had twice legally fired Prime Minister Mossadeq, who had himself fired the parliament. The Shah actually fled Iran briefly as Mossadeq seemed to be taking over illegally, before popular support for the Shah drove Mossadeq to retire from consideration of making a coup occur in his favor.

In reading ‘The Persian Night’ about the Khomeinist revolutionary era by Amir Teheri there are hundreds of useful historical facts presented worth using as elements for construction a regional political theory. One of the most interesting is about the lack of political philosophers, or Islamic philosophers in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Teheri was the editor of the largest newspaper in Teheran before the 79 revolution and seems knowledgeable of the major players in Iran then and now. As an American with an avocation in reading philosophy I was surprised to learn that besides the obvious Islamic influences of specialized Shiist sects that would influence the Khomeinists two European philosophers that I am familiar with comprises the most substantial philosophical context. Those philosophers are martin Heidegger and Karl Popper.

Amahdinejab is a Heideggerian (the school in power since 2005) and his guru-mentor is one Mezbah-Yazdi. Teheri writes that Khomeinists have muddled up the philosophy of both Popper and Heidegger to suit their own requirements and incompetence. That’s reasonable enough for mongrelizing philosophy is an ordinary practice as is eliminates the need to spend much time reading philosophy.

Heidegger is sometimes portrayed as pro-Nazi. Popper was the basic anti-Nazi pro-rationalism philosopher. The Khomeinists seem to have entirely failed to understand Popper, yet it is easier to misunderstand Heidegger.

Heidegger was made Education Minister of Nazi Germany yet quit the post before the Second World War started and retired to live in a hut in the forest. Before the Nazi atrocities and such it might have been more difficult for a citizen to turn down a high paying government job with good national socialist union benefits. Conversely it is easy to understand why the Nazis like Heidegger’s philosophy although nearly impossible to understand why the Khomeinists do.

Heidegger in Being and Time (‘Sein und Zeit’) wrote much about language meaning and discovery of the original ‘root word’ meaning of words as a way to get to a more primordial philosophical world-view. It was believed that language controlled world view for a time in 20th century Europe. Lenin was of the same opinion.

Nazi’s were a kind of hype-aboriginal white tribe asserting their primordial aboriginal rights-of-war in the midst of fields of invading species (people from other places). I suppose one might even make an argument for exclusive democratic self-determination fit into such a local context, and hence might a corruption of Popper’s ideas in support of democracy and rationalism ensue.

Philosophically we tend to regard Quinian linguistic ontological relativity as a meta-context for language meanings. That is, we do not find a Platonic universal meaning in words for themselves as might Heidegger. Rectification of etymological word values with contemporary language can be a rewarding practice yet it cannot be philosophically transformed into supplying a Platonic right-of-invasion or right-of-war. The relationship between words and objects or between words and material structures is an intellectual and associative one rather than a material or necessary relationship. Words and empirical reality are different things. An etymological regression into history may help uncover history though it cannot provide a philosophical truth for-itself.

Christians, Zoroastrians or Muslims would need to rely upon their faith and personalized instruction r revelation from God such as exists to supplement scientific knowledge of the world rather than locating a language-meaning of-the-universe that has magically true clues about reality-for-itself. Of course I do not believe that Khomeinists are as naïve as to believe in magical incantations inspired by Martin Heidegger, yet their interest in philosophy is interesting enough.

The United States might have a foreign policy with a rational political philosophy or not. Very likely it is an ad hoc economic-free market classical western neo-liberalism with expansion into a universal phase of synergy with planetary nations. It is an approach without an ability to explain subtleties of Khomeinist or Islamic thought to the masses. Neither has it evolved a post-cold war non-dualistic political philosophy able to work toward a rational nationalism on a rectified economic basis f low entropy economics able to serve as a good example for the rest of the world. Though Iran is not the only nation today without a long range rational political philosophy of comparative advantage to other nations, neither is the United States terribly well suited to act as an informed agent in Middle Eastern political turbulence.

Modern philosophical creations of world views take into account not only the collected works of western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the post-modern linguistic philosophers, but also of science and history. The challenging historical times of Persia and Europe, Africa and etc fit into deeper awareness retrospectively of the journeys of the human race out of Africa and the dispersion across the globe from 100,000 years before present. On that course language groupings and technology have clustered, formed, progressed and travelled to new regions. Conflicts between social groupings have occurred along with the development of class consciousness and specialized occupational behaviors after the foundations of civilizations.

Humanity has sought perennially to rectify the social relationships created by class stratification and exploitation that inevitably occur with the necessary social occupational specializations of civilizations. Those conflicts include property use and commonly the right of survival issues.

Philosophers are aware of comparative religions, the ecosphere and the scale of the observable universe and of what it is composed of relatively speaking. Philosophers reach beyond adoption of a simple world view to learn what is possible for an individual. Implicit recognition of the simplicity of human cognition and limit of human knowledge is the simple world view within which as much data might be compiled and considered as is practical. This effort to liberate oneself from ignorance simultaneously seeks to liberate social political consciousness from ideologies failing Kant’s moral imperative applied to the level of human peaceful coexistence at a national and individual level. Subjective religious beliefs and the freedom to express oneself are intrinsic liberties of a free society. Such a society is no syphilitic and decadent as Khomeini said. A society liberated from terminally corrupting political philosophies leading to repression of individual self-determination and destruction of the global ecosphere has a better chance of health.