Update: While everyone is in an uproar about Admadinejad’s Israel remark, did you know that in 2001, Richard Perle, a prominent Iraq war hawk, talked openly and repeatedly about wiping out terrorist states (by which he meant Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran) — without censure. Can the Iranian PM’s remarks – however you construe them – have been a response?
Update:
Here’s a great piece by a Columbia University student about the Iranian PM’s visit. An excerpt:
“Meanwhile, outside the auditorium, protesters were cordoned off in “free-speech zones,” which looked more like corrals enclosed by police barricades. The protesters – being of all ideological stripes, from Orthodox Jews to anti-war protesters – fought at least as much with each other as against Ahmadinejad. Especially unpopular with the Hillel protesters was a sign held by members of the anti-war coalition that stated that Iran has the highest Jewish population in the Middle East and that Jews have representation in parliament and are allowed to worship freely. The feminists were united in dislike of the sign mentioning that 60% of Iran’s college students are female and – unlike in our beloved ally Saudi Arabia – women are allowed to drive and otherwise move about without a male family member as chaperone. There’s no pleasing some people…”
More by A.C. Bowen.
“Iran will not attack any country,” Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press. Iran has always maintained a defensive policy, not an offensive one, he said, and has “never sought to expand its territory.”
From an AP report on Ahmadinejad’s much criticized speech at Columbia University, for which President Bollinger deserves kudos.
Update:
Well – I take back the sentence above, having read now that Bollinger in his introduction tried to skewer Ahmadinejad, before he even began. Presumably to make himself right with donors.
(Buchanan says Ahmadinejad should take Bollinger on the road with him — he was that bad).
Where is everyone’s backbone? Aren’t universities about going against the crowd? Thinking for yourself? Or what are they for?
By the way, the two students (Democrat and and also Republican) on this evening’s Hardball, who represented the student reaction to the speech compared quite favorably to the various pundits we heard from earlier, who were simply scandalized that Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak at all (gasp! give me the smelling salts)…followed, of course, by the usual reductio ad hitlerum, that always goes down well with historically-challenged audiences. As Murray Sabin points out in USA Today, even if Ahmadinejad really does believe anti-Semitic propaganda about the Holocaust, he would be no worse than many a pol who believes other – less inflammatory- forms of propaganda.
Another point. This refers to the Iranian PM’s remark about Iran not having homosexuals, which people construed as either a flat-out denial of reality or a hint at the fate awaiting gays in Iran. My understanding of him was quite different. I took the remark to mean that the category of homosexuals (i.e. as a category of people and not simply a set of behaviors) did not exist in Iran.
That would be a misunderstanding very similar to the one over Ahmadinejad’s remark about wiping away Israel, which was taken in the US to mean the physical destruction of the Jewish people, but seems much more likely to have meant the ending of the regime there. In this speech, the Iranian leader said clearly that the Holocaust did occur in Europe, but pointed out also that the Palestinians were not the ones who committed it.
In any case, what this shows is that language is very important and one of the problems we have today seems to be that people are not actually listening to each other but are projecting their own beliefs onto what they hear. I am sure it is happening on Iran’s side too.
What occurs to me is that the American audience took the words in both cases in a very concrete, literal manner, while the Iranian seems to have meant them in a more abstract, conceptual way. Something to do with the two cultures and languages, perhaps?
Another important point that Ahmadinejad made was that the MEK (mujahadeen-i-khalk) insurgents from Iraq are infiltering Iran. Now, the MEK is the leftist cult/terrorist group (according to the State Dept) which Ledeen and Co. have been sponsoring, and which has been provoking retaliatory Iranian support of the Shia in Iraq. Ahmadinejad also pointed out that the US used chemical weapons against the Iranians in the Iraq-Iran war (when we armed both sides), overthrew Iran’s democratically elected PM, Mossadegh, and installed the widely unpopular Shah on the Peacock throne, from where he terrorized the country for years with his repressive CIA-trained torture-happy Savak police.
As Buchanan says – there is an Iranian case against the US, and there is a US case against Iran.
But what we have in common is that neither of our two countries wants war.
And that’s a good enough reason to talk.
Buchanan is often mistaken and sometimes too strident. But when he talks, it’s as if you’re hearing English spoken for the first time, instead of the obtuse PC-varnished pablum that comes out of our forked-tongued politicians.
(Re-reading this, I think I am too harsh. Politicians speak that way because the system compels them to. If they are too much in the center in the primaries, they lose their base; too partisan later on and they lose the breadth of appeal they want. Besides, I do have ungrudging admiration for HRC’s ability to survive so many personal attacks – even though I don’t much agree with her positions on most things.)
To wit., Ms. Clinton manages to describe her government mandate health- care plan as a “sharing of responsibility.”
When you hear politicians say, “share,” “care,” “accountable” and “responsible” — you know a tax , penalty, or regulation can’t be far behind.
Meanwhile, here’s an account of Scott Pelley’s questioning of Ahmadinejad on 60 Minutes:
“But Pelley did not question him so much as make a series of highly dubious war-fueling statements as fact. And far more revealing than Pelley’s tone were the premises of his “questions” — ones which blindly assumed every accusation of the Bush administration towards Iran to be true — such as these:
PELLEY: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans. AHMADINEJAD: Why should it be insulting?
PELLEY: Well, sir, you’re the head of government of an Islamist state that the United States government says is a major exporter of terrorism around the world. . . .
PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans, as if to be mocking the American people.
AHMADINEJAD: Well, I’m amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?
PELLEY: Well, the American nation . . .
PELLEY: Mr. President, you say that the two nations are very close to one another, but it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and Iranian know-how are killing Americans in Iraq. You have American blood on your hands. Why?
AHMADINEJAD: Well, this is what the American officials are saying. . . .
PELLEY: Mr. President, American men and women are being killed by your weapons in Iraq. You know this.
AHMADINEJAD: No, no, no.
PELLEY: Why are those weapons there?
AHMADINEJAD: Who’s saying that?
PELLEY: The American Army has captured Iranian missiles in Iraq. The critical elements of the explosively formed penetrator bombs that are killing so many people are coming from Iran. There’s no doubt about that anymore. The denials are no longer credible, sir. . . .
AHMADINEJAD: Very good. If I may. Are you an American politician? Am I to look at you as an American politician or a reporter? . . . .
PELLEY: Mr. President, you must have rejoiced more than anyone when Saddam Hussein fell. You owe President Bush. This is one of the best things that’s ever happened to your country.
Scott Pelley wants Ahmadinejad to know that — like all of us — he “owes President Bush.” Almost every word out of Pelley’s mouth was a faithful recitation of the accusations made by the Bush White House. Ahmadinejad obviously does not watch much American news because he seemed genuinely surprised that someone he thought was a reporter was doing nothing other than reciting the script of the government….”
more by Glenn Greenwald, via Crimes and Corruptions of the New World Order.
