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Joaquín,
A couple of weeks ago, Lula did an interview for Al Jazeera's English language
station. In response to the reporters question of why Brazil is getting
involved with Iran, he adamantly said:
"Don't think I'm traveling comfortably outside my home. But I lived the Iraq
experience and Iraq was a lie, Iraq was a lie with the U.S. government saying
there was chemical weapons there..."
Seeing Turkey, Brazil, and Iran broker a nuclear fuel swap agreement reminds me
of the heyday of the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement). Of course, there's a
difference: Turkey and Brazil are far more economically and politically
significant today than the semi-colonial countries who navigated between the
U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Lula may not be a leftist, we can hate him for sending U.N. blue helmets to
Haiti, or for trampling over the land of Amazonian Indians, but his diplomatic
gambit to prevent a U.S. and European assault on Iran deserves our respect.
Similarly, Turkey, just as they denied the U.S. request to use their nation for
basing in the Iraq War, has come out looking like a bastion of
anti-imperialism.
It's always interesting to see how the U.S. media deals with unorthodox
situations where supposed allies act more independently than usual. There's
typically a period of confusion and *obfuscation*, in which the intransigent
partner's actions are downplayed or ridiculed, but not demonized outright. If
things get bad enough, the latter option is resorted to.
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