Friday, July 01, 2005

Another News Near-Miss

So, the new president-elect of Iran looks like one of the hostage takers from the revolution. There’s much hooing and haaing about this, what seems to me, non-issue. While of course it is worth knowing if he was one of the kidnappers, I don’t understand how it relates to the here and now. The US administration has said they are monitoring the situation closely. I hope that’s just blather to placate the people who are demanding that we look into it.

Although it seems that we are coming to understand that it wasn’t him in the photos, and the hostages are mistaking him for someone else, what, pray tell, would the US do if it was him? Assassins? Sanctions? A nasty note? The man is well-known to be a very conservative politician. If he were one of the kidnappers, then that would simply confirm what we already know about him.

I think this is another case of how many Americans have a very hard time understanding the points of view of other nations. From my point of view, the hostage taking was a horrific and needlessly violent act, but I think that in Iran, it would be a political asset to have been one of the students who stormed the embassy. Many, possibly even most Iranians have a fundamentally different judgment of the act. The people of Iran, by and large, would certainly not rise up in righteous anger against him if he were identified as one of the kidnappers. Again, it’s good to know who did what, but it doesn’t seem to be the groundbreaking news event that it was presented as pre-O’Conner news.

At least this is a whole lot closer to my idea of news than the missing white woman syndrome. Another upside is that maybe a couple more folks will find out where Iran is on the map and maybe (dare I say it?) learn a bit about what did happen.

PS: interesting article from the LA Times about how people look at the hostage taking

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