Ahmadinejad Takes a Victory Lap
Given the kerfuffles over whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be allowed to visit Ground Zero and questions over whether there is something strange in the drinking water at Columbia University, it has been easy to overlook that as the Iranian president makes his annual sojourn to the U.S. and the U.N., he arguably has played the fools in the White House . . . for fools.
Put aside for a moment that Ahmadinejad is a bully of the first water and a Holocaust-denying loony-tune who has some very real problems back home, as well as the fact that he learned to his dismay when he did finally speak at Columbia that freedom of speech is a two-way street. (Ha!)
Because there is ample evidence that the U.S. may be the only thing propping him up.
No bout adoubt it, Ahmadinejad is winning the public-relations war against a strident Bush administration, which when not completely off message is sending mixed signals to Tehran, the Middle East and the world at large.
Now glom onto what Peter Galbraith has to say in the New York Review of Books on the U.S.’s train wreck of an Iran policy:
“The scale of the American miscalculation is striking. Before the Iraq war began, its neoconservative architects argued that conferring power on Iraq’s Shiites would serve to undermine Iran because Iraq’s Shiites, controlling the faith’s two holiest cities, would, in the words of then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, be ‘an independent source of authority for the Shia religion emerging in a country that is democratic and pro-Western.’ Further, they argued, Iran could never dominate Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs and the Iranian Shiites Persian. It was a theory that, unfortunately, had no connection to reality.”
While we’re piling on, there is this from Barnett Rubin at Global Affairs:
“The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida. They have turned most of Iraq over to Iran, creating the very danger over which they now threaten another disastrous war; they have strained the U.S. Armed Forces to the point of exhaustion, turned the Defense Department over to private contractors, the Justice Department over to the Republican National Committee, and the national debt over to foreign creditors, while leading a party whose single most basic belief is supposed to be that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions.
“And they dare to lecture us on national security?”
Indeed, there is nothing that the White House has said and done — from deliberately leaking news of inner sanctum deliberations over whether to launch air strikes against Iran to its refusal to engage in dialogue with it except in the rarest of circumstances — that has cowed, let alone deterred Ahmadinejad.
In short, the U.S.’s effort to portray Ahmadinejad as “an enemy head of state,” as Juan Cole puts it, has . . . er, bombed.
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9 Responses to “Ahmadinejad Takes a Victory Lap”
I don’t often agree with Pat Buchanan but he is right on the mark with the following posting “Infantile Nation”. Compared with foreign leaders of the past with whom we have met, hosted and negotiated with Ahmedinejad is a pipsqeak.
Pat Buchanan
[...] of speech is a two-way street. (Which T-Steel covers nicely here and does not dissaude me from my view that Ahmadinejad has nevertheless made major foreign policy [...]
jdledell- I read Buchanan’s column this morning and had the very same reaction. He has a lot of insight and common sense on the subject, which is severely lacking in our present approach of isolationism. By isolating Ahmadinejad, you create an unrealisticly empowered image of him in the minds of Americans, which our politicians can easily capitalize on to push us into another unnecessary war. This also gives him more status for standing up to the US and being our primary foe, than he really deserves.
Buchanan’s key point- that we should treat him just like Qadaffi of Libya is spot on. In one situation we isolated and inflated our enemy- in the other we engaged and were able to negotiate an end to an enemy’s nuclear weapons program. Which has been a more effective policy????
pat buchanan is a vile individual. But what can we expect from someone who has defended nazi war criminals. It should comes as no surprise that he would defend this hitler wannabe.
It’s also ironic how once liberals correctly reviled buchanan for his biggotry now find common cause with him in appeasement of islamic fascists. You deserve each other.
LL -You missed the point of his article. Buchanan wasn’t defending Ahmadinejad -he was showing us that he gains strength when we give him the Big Boogey Man status instead of treating him like the penny ante dictator that he really is.
But, you seem like you would rather live in fear of the great Islamo-fascist world takeover, lol—I guess I’d better take my burka out of mothballs. The message from some on the right is- be afraid- be very afraid.
At this moment in time I’m more afraid of our reactionary leadership and their easily manipulated followers than of Ahmadinejad and his petty hatreds.
Stop reading the talking points and putting everyone who doesn’t want another war we cannot win in the lefty camp.
This comment has been edited by TMV to remove obscenities and epithets.
buchanan has never seen a fascist dictator he didn’t love.
You miss the point. Giving Iran’s little midget dictator a platform in America doesn’t treat him like a penny ante dictator, it gives him stature.
If you think its a joke, just visit some parts of Europe where there are literally enclaves of islamic communities where sharia rules and where police dare not tread.
No, because Iran’s government is much more adept and malevolently bent, and is in a position to do more harm to US-Western interests (oil & Israel) in the Middle East — and Iran sponsors terrorism world-wide.
As far as his speech-making goes, if Chavez can be a clown, so can Ahmadinnerjacket. He actually is very offensive, rarely so stupid as to be funny, and so many shrill defenders of his speaking (who have mischaracterized ironically those opposed to the speech at Columbia, while being hypocritical with their typical political correctness) may claim the moral high ground when all they want is to hear an opponent of Bush, the USA, the war, and Israel insult those parties, or simply confuse true freedom of speech (expression) with a demand that they be able to do, or enjoy, whatever they want, especially if it is deliberately offensive. (One may also question Columbia’s motives, in that it may have a practice of deliberately seeking controversy to put itself in the news.)
I can confidently write off nearly all the crowing about the triumph of free speech here — nobody predicted exactly what the guy would have said, and the shrill PC set simply got lucky the guy simply gaffed. Oh, and the “introduction” given by the president did happen to be offensive (as well as dishonest — it was not introductory, but polemic).
LL- I think you need to read the comment policy if you plan to come here often. BTW, I complained about your comment to the site’s owner, so he may contact you.
Have a nice day!
I don’t care.