One of the most powerful images to grace the front of a quality national was this image on The Guardian dated 17th February. The photo, taken by Majid Saeed and owned by Getty, shows a gun with the stars and stripes painted outside the former US Embassy in Tehran. It is a reminder of the injustice people feel there, being labelled as agressors when the US is still fighting an illegal war. The blocked in colours and simplified outline contrast rather well with the intricate Islamic pattern of the tiles. This also appears to be part of the statement – a relatively young and unsophisticated culture painting itself across a delicate and centuries old society and a land which is the very cradle of human civilisation. One is reminded of the dangerous and emabarrassing 'Hearts and Minds' campaign carried out by the allies as they steam rolled into Iraq with their own weapons of mass destruction – a half cocked affair that made no effort to understand the people whose land they were invading. But there is something else rather striking about this image. The Bush administration want to enforce American thinking onto the people of the Gulf, but whoever painted this symbol already has a good understanding of American graphic communication. The image takes a nod towards Jasper Johns and American Pop Art and, most strongly, towards the simplified and facile popular imagery of the 1970s. Since World War 2 America has developed some of the worst foreign policy and some of the greatest culture. Few can deny that America has created very immediate musical forms and the most experimental visual art, as well as making the English language their own in modern literature. But what of the above examples will they be exporting to the Middle East?
