Patterico's Pontifications

4/5/2007

Tie Fighters

Filed under: General — See Dubya @ 3:06 pm



(A post by See-Dubya).

I watched the footage of the captured British sailors being released over at Hot Air and let me say: that is truly, madly, deeply weird. Sur-real. The cameras and smiles, the shiny suits, the matching gift bags (?!)…it looks less like a Repatriation of Prisoners than it does a game show or an Oscar party. (Did those bags contain some carbon offsets?)

They should have been allowed to keep their military uniforms. Discharging them as civilians was humiliating.

Which reminds me, notice anything missing from their Mahmoud’s Menswear ensembles?

Lovely Parting Gifts

If you don’t, check out my Dictator Photo Quiz. There’s a reason for that omission.

Which is strange. If these sailors were the tools of western imperialists, and neckties are the attire of western imperialists, why not cast them in that light? Don’t tell me there’s some kind of tie shortage there, either. I’m always hearing about how Iran is importing Chinese Silkworms.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure we’ll never know the whole story on this, which is probably just as well. Even if there is something a little “Bridge on the River Kwai” about all this, I am thrilled that these guys are now free to take this sort of symbolic revenge upon their captors:


Revenge best served cold, unless you’re in England where they like it more tepid.

Photos adapted from AFP. Cross-posted at Junkyard Blog.

5 Responses to “Tie Fighters”

  1. Chavez was elected, Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful man in Iran (he’s not even in charge of foreign policy), Saddam was installed with help from the CIA. and of course there is no settled boundary between Iranian and Iraqi waters in the area where the soldiers were captured. The British map was made up out of whole cloth.

    AF (c319c8)

  2. According to Bernard Lewis, in What Went Wrong, as he discusses dress:

    Even the diplomats of the Islamic Republic of Iran wear Western Suits, with only the missing necktie to symbolize their rejection of Western culture and its symbols.

    Much of the Islamic world has long wanted to modernize, but their leaders have tried to do so w/out any Westernizing at all, or at least as little as possible, perhaps not appreciating, when looking in from the outside, the specific links between the two, or perhaps to defend vested interests (i.e. better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven) or perhaps thru just plain denial.

    In any event, they’ve often shown an unfortunate propensity to import the worst but ignore the best, such as by adopting Socialist economic strategies but eschewing religious freedom.

    p.s. See-Dubya,

    Perhaps the neckties were kept out of the ensemble with the Iranian people in mind, in that, having been told what terrible imperialists the Brits were, the people might have wondered why such oppressors were being released, then, parting gifts and all. So A-Jad might have simply wanted to “soften” their look in that regard.

    ras (adf382)

  3. Chavez was elected? That’s a relief. The fact that he was once elected, (albeit in an election that makes Florida 2000 look like a model of civic virtue) means he is good and virtuous. Just like George Bush, right AF?

    See Dubya (8017ea)

  4. Perhaps the untied look is meant to show that they were actually Friends of the People being used as Pawns by the Imperialist Colonialist Running Dogs.

    kishnevi (7a9e8b)

  5. Iran is the one country in the region where the leaders are more worried about reformers than they are about extremists.
    OF course you think Iran is extreme, but it has the largest jewish population in the middle east outside Israel: 25,000. And 60% of the students in higher education are women.

    Jews aren’t allowed in Saudi Arabia.
    more fun.

    A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
    The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

    It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.
    Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
    Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.
    The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.

    “He used to fight with the Taliban. He’s part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,” said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.

    “Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera,” Debat said.
    Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.
    Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack.
    They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan.
    The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.
    A CIA spokesperson said “the account of alleged CIA action is false” and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.

    Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.
    A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.
    Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

    The USA is BACKING SUNNI FUNDAMENTALISTS AGAIN
    just like we used to.

    Meanwhile this is about the struggle in Iran.
    Led by women like this

    I wish people had just a little more curiosity about the world.

    AF (c319c8)


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