Fighting a New Hitler?

America's need for a bogeyman (4.00 / 1)

Ahmadinejad is bad--but he's no Hitler. Iran hosts the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel. The Iranian consititution guarantees its Jewish minority a seat in Parliament and while there is certainly some tension and discrimination against the Iranian Jewish community (probably comparable to the discrimination that American Muslims feel in the US--both communities are sometimes treated as though they are disloyal or fifth columns), Ahmadinejad is not destroying their synagogues or dragging them off to gas chambers.

Morever, Ahmadinejad did not actually deny the Holocaust--he had a conference to raise questions about it specifically in response to European claims that the defamatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad were some great evidence of their committment to "free speech" when, in fact, many of those countries throw people in jail for denying the Holocaust. The point being why are Europeans free to trash Islam but not free to question the Holocaust? The purpose of the Iranian Holocaust conference was not to prove or disprove the Holocaust but to expose Western hypocrisy regarding the concept of "free speech".

Secondly, Ahmadinejad never called for "wiping Israel off the map"--this is a mistranslation of Farsi. The proper translation is "eliminating Israel from the pages of history" and this is the same language Ahmadinejad used when he called for the collapse of the Shah's regime. He wasn't calling for Iran to be "wiped off the map"--he just wanted to see the collapse of the Shah's regime. It is like Reagan calling for the collapse of the Soviet regime--it's not the same as calling for the "destruction" of the Russian people.

Anyway, this is an example about how the US political establishment relies on mistranslations to acheive their own political ends.

That said, Ahmadinejad, is a lousy leader of Iran and very weak politically. The brilliant scholar, Steve Zunes, has an has an excellent analysis of him and his recent visit to Columbia:

Both Ahmadinejad and George W. Bush have used their fundamentalist interpretations of their faith traditions to place the world in a Manichean perspective of good versus evil. The certitude of their positions regardless of evidence to the contrary, their sense that they are part of a divine mission, and their largely successful manipulation of their devoutly religious constituents have put these two nations on a dangerous confrontational course.

Ahmadinejad can get away with it because he is president of a theocratic political system that allows very limited freedoms and opportunities for public debate. We have no such excuse here in the United States, however, for the strong bipartisan support for Bush's righteous anti-Iranian crusade, most recently illustrated by a series of provocative anti-Iranian measures recently passed by an overwhelming margin of the Democratic-controlled Congress.

There are many differences between the two men, of course. Perhaps the most significant is that, unlike George W. Bush, Ahmadinejad has very little political power, particularly in the areas of military and foreign policy. So why, given Ahmadinejad's lack of real political power, was so much made of his annual trip to the opening session of the UN General Assembly?

Ahmadinejad's Political Weakness

The president of Iran is constitutionally weak. The real power in Iran lies in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and other conservative Shiite clerics on the Council of Guardians. Just as they were able to stifle the reformist agenda of Ahmadinejad's immediate predecessor Mohammed Khatami, they have similarly thwarted the radical agenda of the current president, whom they view as something of a loose cannon.

Furthermore, Ahmadinejad's influence is waning. The new head of the Revolutionary Guard Ali Jafari is from a conservative sub-faction opposed to the more radical elements allied with Ahmadinejad. He replaced the former Guard head Yahya Rahim-Safavi, who was apparently seen as too openly sympathetic to the president. In addition, former president and Ahmadinejad rival Ayatollah Rafsanjani was recently elected to head the powerful experts' assembly, defeating Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who was backed by Ahmadinejad supporters and other hardliners.

Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 was not evidence of a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate. The clerical leadership's restrictions on who could run made it nearly impossible for any real reformist to emerge as a presidential contender. Ahmadinejad's opponent in the runoff election was the 70-year-old Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who was seen as a corrupt representative of the political establishment. The fact that he had become a millionaire while in government overshadowed his modest reform agenda. By contrast, Ahmadinejad, the relatively young Tehran mayor, focused on the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption.

As a result, Iranian voters were forced to choose between two flawed candidates. The relatively liberal contender came across as an out-of-touch elitist, and his ultraconservative opponent was able to assemble a coalition of rural, less-educated, and fundamentalist voters to conduct a pseudo-populist campaign based on promoting morality and value-centered leadership. In short, it bore some resemblance to the presidential election in the United States one year earlier.

Under Ahmadinejad's leadership, the level of corruption and the economic situation for most Iranians has actually worsened. As a result, in addition to losing the backing of the clerical leadership, he has lost much of his base and his popularity has plummeted. In municipal elections last December, Ahmadinejad's slates lost heavily to moderate conservatives and reformers. Why, then, is all this attention being given to a relatively powerless lame duck president of a Third World country?

Part of the reason may be that highlighting Ahmadinejad's extremist views and questioning his mental stability helps convince millions of Americans that if Iran develops an atomic bomb, it will immediately use it against the United States or an ally such as Israel. With more than 200 nuclear weapons and advanced missile capabilities, Israel has more than enough deterrent capability to prevent an Iranian attack. Obviously, American deterrent capabilities are even greater. However, if you depict Iran's leader as crazy, it puts nuclear deterrence in question and helps create an excuse for the United States or Israel to launch a preventive war prior to Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability.

In reality, though, the Iranian president is not commander-in-chief of the armed forces, so Ahmadinejad would be incapable of ordering an attack on Israel even if Iran had the means to do so. Though the clerics certainly take hard-line positions on a number of policy areas, collective leadership normally mitigates impulsive actions such as launching a war of aggression. Indeed, bold and risky policies rarely come out of committees.

It should also be noted that while Ahmadinejad is certainly very anti-Israel, his views are not as extreme as they have been depicted. For example, Ahmadinejad never actually threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" nor has he demonstrated a newly hostile Iranian posture toward the Jewish state. Not only was this oft-quoted statement a mistranslation - the idiom does not exist in Farsi and the reference was to the dissolution of the regime, not the physical destruction of the nation - the Iranian president was quoting from a statement by Ayatollah Khomeini from over 20 years earlier. In addition, he explicitly told our group on September 26 that there was "no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and that it was "not Iran's intention to destroy Israel."

The Saddam Niche

The emphasis and even exaggeration of Ahmadinejad's more bizarre and provocative statements makes it easier to ignore his more sensible observations, such as: "Arrogant power seekers and militarists betray God's will." It also makes it politically easier for the United States to refuse to engage in dialogue or enter into negotiations, such as those that led to an end of Libya's nuclear program in 2003. Ahmadinejad has welcomed American religious delegations to Iran, but the United States has denied visas to Iranian religious delegations to this country. The Bush administration has also blocked cultural and scholarly exchanges.

The disproportionate media coverage of Ahmadinejad's UN visit also suggests that Ahmadinejad fills a certain niche in the American psyche formerly filled by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi as the Middle Eastern leader we most love to hate. It gives us a sense of righteous superiority to compare ourselves to these seemingly irrational and fanatical foreign despots. If these despots can be inflated into far greater threats than they actually are, these threats can justify the enormous financial and human costs of maintaining American armed forces in that volatile region to protect ourselves and our allies and even to make war against far-off nations in "self-defense." Such inflated threats also have the added bonus of silencing critics of America's overly-militarized Middle East policy, since anyone who dares to challenge the hyperbole and exaggerated claims regarding these leaders' misdeeds or to provide a more balanced and realistic assessment of the actual threat they represent can then be depicted as naive apologists for dangerous fanatics who threaten our national security.

Furthermore, focusing on Ahmadinejad's transparent double-standards and hypocrisy makes it easier to ignore similar tendencies by the U.S. president. Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN on September 25 was widely criticized for its emphasis on human rights abuses by Israel and the United States while avoiding mention of his own country's poor human rights record. It helps distract attention from President Bush's speech that same day, in which he criticized human rights abuses by dictatorial governments in Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Burma, and Cuba, but avoided mentioning human rights abuses by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Oman, Pakistan, Cameroon, and Chad, or any other dictatorship allied with the United States.

The outreach by Christian clergy to Ahmadinejad, whom The New York Times described as "the religious president of a religious nation who relishes speaking on a religious plane," came out of a belief in the importance of dialogue and reconciliation. Our group emphasized that we were critical of the U.S. government's threats but also raised concerns on such issues as Iranian human rights abuses and Ahmadinejad's hostility toward Israel and denial of the Holocaust. Virtually all our questions, however, were thrown back in criticisms toward the United States. "Who are the ones that are filling their arsenals with nuclear weapons?" he said. "The United States has developed a fifth generation of atomic bombs and missiles that could hit Iran. Who is the real danger here?"

Indeed, it must seem odd to most people in the Middle East that the United States, which is 10,000 miles away from the longest-range weapon the Iranians can currently muster and possesses by far the most powerful militarily apparatus the world has ever seen, is depicting Iran as the biggest threat to its national security. As Ahmadinejad put it to our group that morning, "The United States has many thousands of troops on our borders and threatens to attack us. Why is it, then, that Iran is seen as a threat?" And though most Iranians, Arabs, and other Muslims recognize Ahmadinejad as an extremist, he is unfortunately correct in accusing the United States of unfairly singling out Iran, an issue that has real resonance in that part of the world.

Indeed, the United States is obsessed with Iran's nuclear program - still many years away from producing an atomic bomb - while we support the neighboring states of Pakistan, India, and Israel, which have already developed nuclear weapons and which are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs. We blame Iran for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq yet 95% of U.S. casualties are from anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents. We focus on Iranian human rights abuses while we continue to support the even more oppressive and theocratic Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia. We attack the Iranian president's denial of the genocide of European Jews while remaining silent in the face of Turkish leaders' denial of the genocide of Armenians. One of the most important principles of most faith traditions is moral consistency. Few receive greater wrath in most holy texts than hypocrites.

Americans have many legitimate concerns regarding Iranian policies in general and the statements of President Ahmadinejad in particular. However, as long as U.S. policy appears to be based upon such opportunistic double standards rather than consistent principles, Ahmadinejad's inflammatory rhetoric will continue to find an audience.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 15:59:30 PM UTC

Excellent points... (0.00 / 0)

... also the claims by Joe Lieberman and the U.S. military that Iran is providing weapons and training to Iraqis has not been substantiated by any reliable, objective organization.

I'm not saying that Iran isn't being a thorn in our side, or that it's not trying to exert its influence in the region. It just isn't the bogeyman, or the threat, that Lieberman and the neocons say it is. Which is what Abizaid was saying too.

If Iran were truly a threat, you would see Germany, France, and all the European countries up in arms. They aren't.

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by: CaptCT @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 17:20:58 PM UTC

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Iranian influence (0.00 / 0)

Thanks, CaptCT. While it's true that there is no evidence that Iran is providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents, it is also true that there is evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing weapons to Iraqi Sunni insurgents that are killing American occupation forces:

According to data compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (icasualties.org), a nonprofit group that tracks US deaths, a staggering 60 percent or more of US deaths have occurred in areas where Sunni insurgents are active. Those insurgents are believed to receive much of their funding and weapons from private donors in Sunni Arab countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, not Iran. Only 4 percent of US casualties have taken place in Shi'ite controlled areas in the provinces, while about a quarter of total US fatalities have taken place in Baghdad, where both Shi'ites and Sunnis fighters operate.

Why isn't Joe Leiberman screaming about Saudi Arabia's involvement in the insurgency?
Why isn't he screaming about our support for Saudi Arabia, in general? Iranian Jews have a thousand times more freedom than Jews in Saudi Arabia who are not allowed to establish synagogues in Saudi Arabia.

As for Iran--it poses no military threat to the United States or Israel whatsoever.

However, it does pose a potential economic threat to the US because it sells its oil in Euros. If it influences other oil-producing nations to do the same, it would have a disastrous impact on our economy.

But why is our dollar so weak? The weakness of the dollar is related to our massive trade deficit and the decline of manufacturing in the United States--it's something the United States did to itself.

Although I would be unhappy and financially disadvantaged if the value of the dollar plummeted, how can I blame another nation for wanting to sell its goods in Euros? The Euro is more valuable than the dollar so it's only rational for a nation to want to sell its oil in Euros.

In my view, the way to deal with this economic threat is not be threatening other nations or strong-arming them but by building up the value of the dollar by strengthening our manufacturing sector and reducing our trade deficit. This is the only long-term peaceful solution to the problem.

Also, of course, Iran wants to increase it's influence regionally. Doesn't the US do the same in it's own backyard? The United States always seeks to use its economic power to influence both Canada and Latin America--why should we be shocked and outraged when Iran tries to do the same in it's backyard?

At least Iran isn't launching coups and bombing its neighbors.

Finally, I think it's important to note that over half of Iraq is Shia and many of the holiest places in Shia Islam are located in Iran--so Iraqis feel a NATURAL affinity with Iran. Many of members of Iraq's Shia government were exiled in Iran for decades and only returned to Iraq after Saddam was deposed.

Iran doesn't really have to work hard to get Iraqis to side with them because so many of Iraqis are already allied with Iran in their hearts. 

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 19:25:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Dollar Plummetting Not All Bad (0.00 / 0)

Yes, it does raise the price of imports and  thereby make  goods more expensive, but it also helps are manufacturers and farmers sell more abroad, helping  our economy and reducing our trade deficit.

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by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 19:49:47 PM UTC

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some truth to this (0.00 / 0)

Yes, you're right, Jon, there are some benefits to a weaker dollar--but I still think that if the dollar because TOO weak, it will do more harm than good. We already have a weaker dollar than the Euro--if the collection of US backed dictatorships that comprise OPEC, suddenly decided to sell their oil in Euros, I think the harm would outweigh the benefits.

This article lays out the pluses and minuses pretty well and this article further discusses the dangers of a weak dollar.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 20:06:38 PM UTC

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"Farsi mistranslation" is an overworked excuse (0.00 / 0)

And what he says to an American audience is NOT the same as what he says to at home. Here is an interesting discussion of what he has said:

Mearsheimer and Walt stretch their Iran argument to the snapping point. They contend that Israeli politicians and their supporters in America exaggerate the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran, because Iranian radicals have not actually called for the elimination of Israel. They assert that "Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to vanish from the page of time' (or to be erased from the pages of history') is often mistranslated as a call for Israel's physical destruction (i.e. to wipe Israel off the map')." Often mistranslated? I wonder how good their own Farsi is. But Al Jazeera--no known Jewish control there--reported in 2005 that at the "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad declared that "Israel must be wiped off the map." Ahmadinejad's own website described the speech this way: "He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away." The official Iranian broadcast service reported that "Iran's President ... on Wednesday called for Israel to be wiped off the map.'" Surely there are clearer ways to express a desire for coexistence.

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by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 14:29:12 PM UTC

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Eliminating Israel from the pages of history (0.00 / 0)

Jon,

Why are you relying on an article from a pro-war rag like the New Republic??? This same paper is referring to former intelligence agent, Michael Schnuer's book, Imperial Hubris, as being part of "Osama's Book Club". Also, the magazine endorsed Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. That should say it all. This paper has never advocated a fair and balanced position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

In short, I do not think your article is a credible authority on the subject of Iran.

The Farsi phrase "eliminated from the page of history" is EXACTLY the same phrase Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khomeini used in calling for the downfall of the Shah. Obviously, they did not want to see their own nation "wiped off the map" If Ahmadinejad is so committed to the destruction of Jewish people, why is allowing Jews to serve in the Iranian parliament? Why isn't he shutting down synagogues. Why did he, in response to the Iranian Jewish community's upsetness over his Holocaust conference, make a big donation to Tehran's leading Jewish hospital.

In short, Ahmadinejad is NOT a "jew-hater"--he hates the oppressive policies of the Israeli government which have been condemned by every human rights group on the planet--including Israeli human rights groups.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for a referendum in which all the citizens of the holy land (and Palestinians refugees who were driven out in 1948)--both Arab and Jewish--would be allowed to vote on their destiny. Why does Israel oppose this? Because if there was such an honest referendum, Arabs would outnumber Jews and there would no longer be a "Jewish state".

Israel can ONLY exist as a "Jewish state" by suppressing the democratic human rights of Palestinians.

Besides, Ahmadinejad (and Muslims, in general), never refers to Israel as a "Jewish" state--they refer to it as a "Zionist" state and they make a clear distinction between Judaism, a fellow Abrahamic faith, and Zionist, which is a political movement.

The core premise of Zionism is that Jews everywhere constituted a single nation with permanent and exclusive rights to occupy Palestine land. This was embodied in the slogan, "A land without people for a people without land". But Palestine was not an uninhabited territory. A Zionist state for the Jews in Palestine could only be established at the expense of the existing population. The very conception of the Zionist state was based upon profoundly undemocratic principles: the denial of the rights of non-Jews already living there.

Israel cannot retain its territory and be both a democratic state and a Jewish state at the same time--because if it were truly democratic and gave all its citizens equal rights, then it would lose it's "Jewish character".

Thus, true democracy in the holy land would necessarily mean the "end of the Jewish state" or, to put it in Farsi, it's "elimination from the pages of history".

I guess the irony here is that the Israeli government constantly uses this "wiping off the map" language when describing Ahmadinejad's position when they themselves are doing everything possible to prevent Palestine from getting on the map in the first place. That's why they built this illegal apartheid wall that cuts deep into Palestinian land, outside Israel's internationally recognized boundaries, making the existence of a future Palestinian state impossible. If it were truly about security, it would be built within Israel's internationally recognized boundaries. They are starving the Palestinians, hoping to drive them away (into the sea?).

When the Israeli government criticizes Ahmadinejad, one gets the sense they are just projecting. The truth is that for all it's faults, in Ahmadinejad's Iran, Iranian Jews, are treated much better than Palestinians in Israel.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 15:58:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You are attacking the messenger rather than the message (0.00 / 0)

What about this:

But Al Jazeera--no known Jewish control there--reported in 2005 that at the "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad declared that "Israel must be wiped off the map." Ahmadinejad's own website described the speech this way: "He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away." The official Iranian broadcast service reported that "Iran's President ... on Wednesday called for Israel to be wiped off the map.'"

And I'm not defending Israeli gov't practices as you well know, I'm just saying that these are statements beyond the pale.

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by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 17:53:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

fair enough (0.00 / 0)

Fair enough, Jon--I didn't mean to imply you support Israeli government practices. I know you are critical of them.

As I said, I don't the The New Republic is a good source of information on Iran. The magazine is hawkish on foreign policy--like Lieberman.

I would like to have a direct link to the Al Jazeera article cited in this New Republic article. I would also like to see the original farsi of Ahmadinejad's speech so I can have my father translate it. I don't even thinking "wiping off the map" even exists as a phrase in Farsi. In Farsi, the word for "map" is "nagsheh" and I don't believe this word appears anywhere in Ahmadinejad's speech.

The reality is that the "pro-israel" hawks who write for these publications define Israel as a Jewish state--rather than a state of all its citizens. In his 1974 speech to the UN, Yasser Arafat, called for a single binational secular democratic state in the holy land but the US-Israeli media described it as his call for the "destruction of the State of Israel". This is because any secular binational democratic state effectively means the end of the Jewish state--i.e. the "end" of Israel or "wiping" it from the map.


"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 18:19:15 PM UTC

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the months-long choreographed swooning over Walt and Mearsheimer (0.00 / 0)

Makes me just a little cautious and circumspect about accepting Jeffrey Goldberg's characterizations at face value.  He is, according to his bio at his website,  an award winning journalist with top notch credentials who has been or is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.  Awards from the ADL and former New York Bureau Chief of the Jewish Daily Forward

On the other hand, he is self contradictory in a very big way on the topic of AIPAC, as quoted in this blog entry from Brian Beutler:

First, his recent comment on M&W:

And how do we know that AIPAC has a hold on Congress? This is a very good question. For Mearsheimer and Walt are so thoroughly under the spell of their own assertions that they do not seem to notice the circular (or more precisely, agit- prop) quality of what they have written. Consider a typical sentence: "The real reason why American politicians are so deferential [to Israel] is the political power of the Israel lobby." That is not a proof. That is what requires a proof.

But in a large, one topic article several years back in the New Yorker, reproduced here , Goldberg wrote the following About AIPAC - has so much changed to explain the discrepancies?

. . . in the pages of the New Yorker magazine, where its erstwhile Washington Correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg once wrote:

AIPAC is a leviathan among lobbies, as influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired Persons are in theirs, although it is, by comparison, much smaller. . . .

AIPAC is unique in the top tier of lobbies because its concerns are the economic health and security of a foreign nation, and because its members are drawn almost entirely from a single ethnic group

This contrast makes me think he is willing to bend the facts to make his case.  Awards or no, this does not add to his credibility.

Anyone else we can look to for the sense of the Ahmadinejad statements?  I think it's quite reasonable to get to the bottom of this "misquote" contention; I'm not comfortable Goldberg is the best guy to help us do it.  Someone who knows Farsi but has no axe to grind; where do we look for that person??

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 15:59:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Farsi (0.00 / 0)

Although he is not Iranian or Arab, my father understands Farsi and he confirmed that the US media misinterprets Iranian speeches often because they don't understand Iranian figures of speech, history, or culture. Specifically, my father said that that when Iranians chant "Death to America", the translation of the Farsi term "death" is not as we understand it and they often say "Death to" their own Iranian leaders if they don't like them. For example, if they are mad at their leaders, they might say "death to Ahmadinejad" or "death to Khatami"--but they don't mean "death" as we understand it or are actually calling for his murder. They just want his reign to end. Knowing how the term is used in Iranian language makes it sound a lot less ominous that it appears.

Anyway, regarding the "eliminating from the page of history" phrase, here is Juan Cole's commentary on it:

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

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by: sufi @ Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 16:40:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]