"What Ahmadinejad is and what he isn't..."

Hey folks! Did you know that the beady-eyed, vertically challenged thug who runs Iran is really a good guy? No, really. He is just misunderstood. Don't believe me? Then check out this DUmmie THREAD titled, "What Ahmadinejad is and what he isn't..." Yes, read this thread and you will find out that poor widdle Ahmadinejad is a victim of cultural misunderstanding and the lies of the EVIL Bush Regime. So let us now watch the DUmmies join hands and sing "Kumbaya" in honor of President Hostage-Taker in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, wondering if the tiny Iranian and Li'l Kim of North Korea share the same elevator shoes, is in the [brackets]:

What Ahmadinejad is and what he isn't...

[Stand by for the DUmmie Ode to Mahmoud...]

It's type to separate the hype and media maelstrom from the man who is the President of Iran.

[Maybe Babwa Wawa should ask him what kind of tree he would want to be.]

1. He is an elected President, not a Dictator.

[Unlike the EVIL Bush.]

2. Presidents in the Republic of Iran are largely figure heads for mullahs in charge of the Supreme Council.

[So who do we blame for them forcing hot looking chicks to wear ugly looking black burkhas?]

3. He was elected as a right-wing populist... the common man who understood how to begin fixing Iran's economy. Think Pat Buchanan in a bad suit.

[Alan Colmes tried out that pathetic description the other night when he called Ahmadinejad a conservative. Since when do "conservatives" play footsie with Hugo Chavez?]

4. Right-wing populists in the middle-east tend to be anti-semitic across the board (keep in mind the Israeli counterparts tend to be profoundly anti-arab). Yet for some reason (perhaps with some legitimacy) the press has chosen to make Ahmadinejad the poster-boy for anti-semitism. The reality is that there is very little difference between his views and the vast majority of ME leaders. That doesn't make it right, but that's the way it is. It's vicious cycle of hatred for which both sides bear the responsibility (Israelis, and Arab/Muslims).

[There you go again with "right-wing." Oh, and I love the moral equivalency bit at the end about both sides bearing responsibility.]

5. Iran has a legitimate need for electrical power. Nuclear is a logical step for them that avoids turning horrible pollution (already) in cities like Tehran into an even worse nightmare.

[Hey, what happened to the normal leftwing enviro objections to nuclear power? I guess they are tossed out the window when it involves an anti-American thug.]

6. Iran sees their national security neighborhood as a dangerous place. India, Pakistan, and Israel all have the bomb. The US maintains bases all over the region. The only neighbor that it maintains good relations with is Armenia. So, the mullahs would not mind having the bomb themselves.

[Thanks for immediately contradicting your previous argument that Iran wants nuclear power only for generating electricity.]

7. Having the bomb gives your nation incredible negotiating leverage (see the N. Korean experience). Iran needs economic sanctions to end to prosper economically.

[I think this is called BLACKMAIL.]

8. The President of Iran has little control over what happens under local Sharia law. Just as an American president would have little control over people who are executed in Texas...

[Wow! That makes me feel good. It is only the crazed mullahs who will have their fingers on the nuclear trigger.]

9. He isn't in control of how gays, or women are treated in Iran. This is completely dependent on how the mullahs are interpreting Sharia at a given time. Homosexuality in Persian culture is strictly don't ask, don't tell. You can think of Ahmadinejad's response to the question as the same type of response you might get from a military general. Uhhhhh, we don't have homosexuals here... A howler, but there it is. The issue of women in Iran is more complex as issues of Islam get tangled with cultural issues. Islam itself was very progressive in its view of women (especially considering the Koran is an 8th century document). However, even those rights tend to get swamped when colliding with traditionally patriarchal and repressive societies. So, Ahmadinejad would see women's issues through the rose-coloured glasses of Islamic views of women's rights. However, Shareen Ebadi would say that's exactly the kinds of rights that are being ignored in the overall culture... particularly in the legal system.

[The Village People are not gay...but only in Iran.]

10. So what is Ahmadinejad then... Ultimately, he is the PR mouthpiece for the Iranian ruling council and a rather large mouthpiece at that. Unfortunately, he is a rather common guy/voice in the ME at this time. His views are not out of the mainstream here. We should take that as a warning, not that the evil, anti-semitic, atomic terrorists are coming... Instead, we should take it as a sign of how far any sort dialog for peace has drifted.

[And guess who is going to be blamed for that "drift?"]

Peaceful dialog is ultimately what is needed here... Bush should have met him at ground zero with the hand of peace and a warning about just the sort of drift we are talking about.

[Sniff! It makes me weep to think of the opportunity lost when the EVIL Bush refused to meet Ahmadinejad at Ground Zero so they could join hands and sing "Kumbaya" together.]

Hey, but that would have taken a man of vision... a difficult thing when the US is a nation where the blind lead the blind.

[All Bush's fault! And now to hear from more blind DUmmies leading blind DUmmies...]

Carter would have met him.

[And sang Kumbaya with him while blaming Israel.]

Exactly, I just wanted to carve some middle ground here
on the issue... My God, the media showed hours of the anti-Ahmadinejad protests by a few hundred people... and exactly how much did the cover war protests in the last year??? The stink of manipulation was everywhere. So, I believed there was some need to separate the reality from the propaganda.

[I think you carved your way into the Rubber Room.]

The massive coverage of protests is infuriating when they've downplayed every anti-war protest. The president of Columbia was outrageous in his insults to an invited speaker.

[How dare they confront President Hostage-Taker!]

No matter what, though, he represents an oppressive government that stones women, hangs gays and is contemptuous of everything that is of not their religion. Just as bush represents a government that practices capital punishment, wages unnecessary war, promotes homophobia, and has just as much contempt for other religions as does his Iranian counterpart. In the end, both men are religious nutjobs who play to their base and could care less about the people murdered under their regimes. Neither man gets a free pass from me. They are both cut from the same cloth, IMO.

[But when push comes to shove you will always prefer President Hostage-Taker every time.]

By marginalizing him and demonizing him, we shut down even the possibility of conversation or negotiation.

[A victim of cultural misunderstanding.]

The more he is being demonized the more popular he
becomes in Iran & the ME. The Busholini Regime is just downright stupid.

[President Hostage-Taker is the victim of the EVIL Busholini Regime.]

The ME has different value systems and we need to stop judging them by our value system. Yes, they are centuries behind in human rights, but remember that in the ME, time simply stopped around the 14th century, and only in the 20th century have they really rejoined the rest of the world. They have yet to go through their version of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Imagine time-traveling back to England of 1300; think of how women and others were treated then. It is simply impossible to drag a culture kicking and screaming forward 700 years, in less than a century. Despite the discrimination against Iranian women, they are still much better off than their sisters on the Arabian peninsula or Afghanistan.

[They joined the rest of the world years ago only to regress when the mullahs took over from the "reactionary" Shah.]

The same people who gave us "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Terrorist State Iraq" and "Iraq Attacked Us on 9/11" are now filling some people's brain with the same lies. Not ONE of us knows the truth. We don't live in Iran. We can only know what we know from sources which must be questioned. We can not trust what we read or hear anymore. And until we know from personal experience, then don't allow the propaganda mills to be successful. And who the hell are we to impose our "Girls Gone Wild" morality standards on other countries. Everybody has an agenda. That's why there are at least two sides to every story.

[And we know which side you DUmmies will take EVERY time.]

the whitehouse needs a new demon and they found one
thanks for your rational post on the latest demon in the middle east.in my opinion rationality has been in short supply here.

[Reality is always in short supply in DUmmieland.]