Politics Blog

The author’s son, munching on the contents of a care package sent to troops in Iraq.

Today, my son turns 21 in Iraq, where he is serving in the US Army. Happy 21st Birthday, son!

And, in an odd case of history repeating itself, I’m reminded that, three decades ago, I turned 21 across the border from Iraq, in Iran.

I wasn’t in the military, at the time, but a student visiting my soon-to-be in-laws in Teheran, who unbeknownst to any of us, were soon to become permanent exiles from Iran, after the revolution hit, the following year, in 1979.

On the occasion of my 21st birthday, celebrated with vast platters of delectable Iranian food, there were mutterings that the Shah was in dire jeopardy of being overthrown.

The prospect raised hope amongst my leftist Iranian student friends that their country would become more equitable, whilst stirring dire concern among more conservative members of Iran’s older generations that total anarchy would ensue, if the Shah were to fall.

We all know now that the Shah did fall, that anarchy of sorts did ensue—and that for women, the results of the Iranian revolution were a truly mixed bag. But as we drove in Spring 1978, from Iran’s arid capital Teheran, through the Alborz mountains to Damavand, a dormant volcano that is the highest point in Iran, and from there to the jungle-like shores of the Caspian Sea, I little imagined that this beautiful and widely diverse country was about to trade places with the U.S.S.R, as bogey man of the Western world.

And there was no way in the world that I could have posited a future in which my, then unborn, son would end up serving in Iraq, while his US Commander in Chief made threatening noises about Iran, which is where half my son’s ancestors come from.

The author’s son, ironically known as Casper by his buddies since he’s the only man in his unit who actually looks white, in a choke hold with one of his buddies over Christmas,in Iraq.

Call me naïve, but at 21, I blithely imagined that my generation was living at a time of consciousness-raising, to use a very 70s term, in terms of increased understanding of the Other, be it other races, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, or even worlds.

But life has a way of turning out unexpectedly. And it’s oddly sobering to be sitting here, in San Francisco, where so many cultural mores and sexual taboos have been overturned, on the day of the Michigan primary, wondering if Americans will allow Bush, and whoever becomes the next President of the US, to continue whipping up Iranophobia, when it’s not clear who exactly we would send to fight an expanded war in the Middle East.

Casper and his buddy Cisco on duty in Iraq.

And when it’s clear to anyone who has been watching that geopolitical region for the last three decades that the US and other western powers, including my native country, England, tend to back whichever Middle Eastern country is most likely to help secure their interests, be it access to oil, land, money, sea or airways, or other resources, regardless of that Middle Eastern country’s record on human rights or religious or political freedom.

Hence our backing, first of the Shah of Iran, then of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, when we needed someone to fire Scud missiles at a postrevolutionary Iran, and now of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which happens to control the world’s largest oil reserves and to whom Bush has just announced that he will sell 900 smart bombs, allegedly to help keep Iran in check.

So, as I sit here on January 15, 2008, which would have been Rev. Martin Luther King’s 78th birthday, if he hadn’t been assassinated in April 1968, is it naïve to hope that America, as well as my son, is about to come safely of age in this crazy war-racked world?

That this nation whose birth involved genocide of its native peoples, slavery of several subsequent generations of African Americans, and the continuing exploitation of workers who cross the border illegally from Mexico, is about to elect a man of color or a white woman, and start steering a path that will be sustainable, not just for its own citizens, but for the entire world?

Perhaps it is naive of me, indeed. But here’s to hope, anyway, with a “H,” including the hope that the next US President will chose not to pursue a preemptive path in dealing with the Middle East, but a course that will bring peace to all the inhabitants of a planet whose biggest challenge will be to try and sustain life as we know it, in face of climate change and the vast changes that is likely to bring to the Earth over the course of the next 1,000 years.