Iran, Just so You Know, I Want to be Friends

I just read an article, and have also been studying up casually, on America's potential war with Iran. Right now, this is an issue of utmost importance and I hope more people will inform themselves about it.

The article is about Tom Loughlin, an ex-lawyer and photographer who hopes to change the American public's perception of Iran with his project entitled "Pictures of You," featuring pictures of Iranian citizens at work and at play. Loughlin plans to showcase his pictures to ultimately avoid further unnecessary, immoral, and dangerous intervention in the Middle East region. Iran has for years been a target in the sights of America's military-political elite, despite having discontinued their nuclear arms research five years ago.

Many Americans don't know how they should feel about foreign countries, like Iran, and understandably so -- they have been led ever onward toward confusion. It is vital to understand that this chaotic state was engineered and also equally vital to understand by whom. No one knows what to think about anything, because we live in, precisely, this culture of confusion. If your mind hasn't been swept away entirely by the latest pop craze from week to week, it is still difficult to make heads or tails of any given situation while being lied to consistenly and systematically. And now the military-political elite, the current powers that be, spread, undeniably, across both "sides" of the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat, or Republicrats, as I prefer them, because they're very near the same thing, are seeking new ways to convince an already disillusioned public that more war would be good.

This article really struck a heart-string for me. It is just such a refreshing notion to step past the prevalent political bipartisanship, obviously destructive to 95% or more of the world's people (read: those not hoarding wealth); past the cliches on how darned suppressed, biased, and controlled the media is, without actually doing anything to change it, merely seeing who can bitch about it the hardest, and allowing it to flourish in the limelight; and emerge into a whole new environment, rife for debate and questioning. It's past time we stepped back and looked at our beloved America, and asked the question: do we want this generation of America to be remembered as global bully or for what America is historically known for and was in fact designed to represent: the closest thing to a perfect society that humans have thought of yet, setting an example for everyone else? I vote the latter.