Comments on: Q & A with Nathan Gonzalez, author of Engaging Iran

By: Michaelr

Michaelr — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:51:03 +0000

Thank you BettyM.

By: BettyM

BettyM — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:37:33 +0000

Michaelr – I agree. Our process may be better than most but it is far from perfect.

By: El Cholo

El Cholo — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:39:24 +0000

So do we add Nathan Gonzalez to the club? That makes six of us. No…I think there has to be another briefing. He doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor despite the fact he’s from UCLA.

By: Cockroach People

Cockroach People — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:34:46 +0000

I think Nathan Gonzalez is absolutely right about Latinos being experts on all sorts of subjects–even the middle east. We actually have Latinos in many fields who are influential just not famous. Lessons can be learned from any revolution or quasi-revolution (perhaps the case in Iran unless Mousavi actually represents a shift in the dominant thinking as opposed to a shuffling of the power brokers). But those studying Iran might also benefit from the history of democracy in the Americas–especially Latin-America. The “form” of democracy has been applied to many nation-states but the promise of Democracy has not necessarily been fulfilled. What do the Americas have to teach us about the current state of Iran as well as its future? What about Iraq for that matter? Having gifted Latino middle east experts that are as good or better than all the rest is a good start (coloring the “social fabric” as it were). What would be even more interesting to me would be research that makes connections and provides deeper insight about both the America’s and the Middle East. We have a lot in common. This applies to other fields, too. E.g., what is uniquely interesting about Sotomayor is not that she would be a SC justice that happens to be of color/Latina (that would make her similar to Clarence Thomas at best). What makes her interesting and controversial is that she brings her Latino, female, Bronx perspective to the table and integrates it into her jurisprudence.

On a different note, one thing that I think Gonzalez leaves unexplained–I understand this was not a long interview–is the lesson to be learned about separating Church and State. The wall metaphor he uses has never been officially respected though it was given great lip service by the early Supreme Court. First Amendment jurisprudence has been gutted down to accepting any combination between church and state as long as laws are facially neutral. The sturdy wall is a myth. Yet we have no theocracy (just tendencies toward one as evidenced by the passage of proposition 8). So is it the missing wall in Iran that is the answer or is there something more profoundly oppressive at work there–something that would merely replace a secular dictatorship for a religious one?
Thanks for the great interview. It posed more questions than it did answers, which is the hallmark of good reporting and writing, IMHO.

By: Michaelr

Michaelr — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:09:50 +0000

I don’t agree with Nathan Gonzalez’s answer to question number three. It conveys that he believes in the mythology that the U.S. electoral process is without flaws, and cannot be compared to other sovereign nation’s elections, nor can the U.S. electoral process be tampered with politically. His answer just evades the reality that U.S. political corruption continues to fester behind a giant superficial moral façade, even when that corruption abruptly announces itself to the world from time to time. Two good examples of this were the U.S. Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

By: Seneca

Seneca — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:01:22 +0000

Let me point out that we increasingly have Latinos in the Foreign Service who have studied Arabic and have served in the Middle East like Alberto Fernandez, who is our charge d’affaires in the Sudan, and Ben Montanez, who is now in Jerusalem after a stint in Saudi. We also have Luis Moreno, the second in charge of our embassy in Tel Aviv. And there are several who have served already in Iraq. These experts show that we can deal with other complicated areas of the world beyond the ‘cucaracha’ circuit as Latin America is fondly referred to in some quarters of the bureaucracy.