Your Right Hand Thief

13 Comments:

Personally, I am in favor of free speech and free association. These rights apply to anyone in the USA, whether they are a citizen or not.

The decision to let him go there (or not) is not about him, it's about us; and whether we're willing to permit all speech and association, no matter how unpopular they might be in some quarters.

As to your comment about Nazis, this strikes me as nothing but a cheap shot that is not supported by facts. Since it appears you are not as well informed as you should be, keep the following in mind:

a) Regarding the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad asked why the Palestinians should pay the price.

b) Regarding Israel, he said (quoting Khomeini) that "the occupation regime in Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." Not that Israel should be wiped off the map. Indeed, the only "wiping" that's taken place is the wiping of Palestine off the map. (400 villages bulldozed, decades of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, death squads, etc.)

Bear in mind, I am not in any way a fan of Ahmadinejad. However, I am a fan of the truth. And when you choose to cite malarkey pimped by a noted "liberal hawk" (he was for the war before he was "against" it) and a self-proclaimed Zionist (a supremacist ideology) you have surrendered your critical faculties to lazy jingoism.

By  matter, at 8:55 AM  

Matter has this right. Furthermore, it's utterly stupid that we pay so much attention to someone who is constitutionally a minor figure in Iran's military policy.

Ahmadinejad is a bogeyman buffoon being used by the Bush government to support its own bellicose rhetoric.

I have no idea why they won't let him come and take part in this minor gesture of goodwill... however phony it may be.

I do like your Bitburg comparison though.

By  jeffrey, at 9:42 AM  

Perhaps this post wasn't fashioned for maximum clarity. I'm well aware of the facts y'all stated about Ahmadinejad.

I agree in full with Josh Marshall's post, which you should read, rather than dismiss. This whole thing is childish, and shows weakness on the U.S.'s part.

Now, perhaps I'm far too ambitious when I construct a post (especially in the wee morning hours), but pretend for a second that you're a conservative reading this piece. To conservatives, Ahmadinejad is the current scariest person of all time, and they wholeheaartedly believe the simplistic misinformation you thought I had bought into. Ask yourselves: How are conservatives going to respond to this post-- which groups the patron saint of conservatism with the Smiling Iranian Satan? What can they possibly say? If they complain "Hey that's a cheap shot!" Then I direct them to the Krauthammer piece which discusses how the Waffen SS murdered U.S. POW's. To a conservative, it looks like I'm disagreeing with Josh and agreeing with Krauthummer and yet I've also trashed Reagan in a way that they will have great trouble defending. I enjoy doing that.

Now, I was hoping my regular liberal readers would know me well enough that when I stop using qualifiers and scare quotes, and start making bald claims that run counter to the facts, that I may be using a different (sarcastic or facetious) authorial "voice".

But like I said, sometimes I botch the effort and create a post that is opaque to everyone.

===
Basically, in case you haven't figured it out, a large portion of this blog is devoted to providing liberals with winning political frames and arguments that they can use on moderates and conservatives. To do that, I often "argue" from conservative premises, or I use vicious humor, or I put conservatives in difficult "no-win" positions.

I'm sure y'all have different "goals" than I do (or none at all), but if you think the arguments you used to "correct" me will carry the day in a political debate with a conservative who actually holds the assumptions you thought I believed... well, then y'all are fooling yourselves about an important "meta-truth" regarding the sordid state of current day political discussion.

Again, you probably have different goals than I do, but correcting ingrained assumptions about Ahmadinejad's views is not a great place to be in a political debate. Forcing conservatives to differentiate Ahmadinejad at Ground Zero from Reagan at Bitburg is EXACTLY where you want to be. Or, at least, it's exactly where I want to be in the debate (given my goals).


I'm not saying this is a great post, but it's a decent political frame. If you're a conservative, where are you gonna take issue? Either you argue for free expression for the Iranian (against the rest of the Cons) or you agree with the bald claims in this post and are left with an extremely uncomfortable comparison of Ahmahdinejad to Reagan.

By  oyster, at 1:04 PM  

Dude,

Some of us have been reading long enough to know exactly what you're up to. But that doesn't mean that we won't sometimes throw in our two cents from our on perspective.

I can't see how such a thing would weaken your cleverly constructed rhetorical traps. But if you disagree, perhaps you might consider closing your comments.

I took Marshall's posts on this subject today to mean, essentially, "Why the fuck does anyone care what this guy says or does?" Which is kind of the same thing I was saying.

By  jeffrey, at 1:27 PM  

"When cowboy Ronnie comes to town...

By  ashley, at 1:33 PM  

Ahmadinejad looks like Dubya's long-lost Middle Eastern brother.

According to Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah", there is speculation that in the early days of the '79 Iran hostage crisis, Ahmadinejad was directly involved and can even be seen in one of the pictures bringing a blindfolded embassy hostage to the gates to show off to the masses in Tehran the victory attained by revolutionary students over "the Great Satan" in their midst.

Oh, yeah, let's let him visit Ground Zero. They'll take him hostage in Lower Manhattan someplace, probably...

By  Leigh C., at 1:53 PM  

"Some of us have been reading long enough to know exactly what you're up to. But that doesn't mean that we won't sometimes throw in our two cents from our on perspective."

No, you know I love da comments Jeffrey! But I thought when you said you "agreed" with Matter, you were agreeing with his interpretation of my post. He thought the links and construction of the post indicated that I had "surrendered [my] critical faculties to lazy jingoism".

I was trying to pose an alternate interpretation of my efforts. If you didn't agree with Matter on that score, then my previous comment should be read as a reaction purely to Matter.

By  oyster, at 1:59 PM  

Yeah... I was just agreeing with Matter's interpretation of the facts.

By  jeffrey, at 3:09 PM  

Here in NYC most I've talked to don't care too much ... if he goes down to the site and reflects on all the Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. who died there, he just might snap out of the stupid. Just as long as he stays out of midtown where I work - the traffic is bad enough.

By  blogenfreude, at 3:37 PM  

I'm reminded of Public Enemy's '911 is a joke in yo town' every time I hear about the attacks that day.

It was three separate attacks, on in NY, one in DC, one an airline hijacking that ended in PA. In 'yo town' it was pictures on television news.

I was in QNS, NY on 9/11 working at JFK on a shitty split scheduele - Tuesdays and Sundays off. I woke up to a grey smear across the sky that used to be the WTC and about 3,000 dead (that number came later, local news had it at around 10,000 all day). I didn't lose anybody in the WTC, knew a few people second or third hand. My first hand experience was trying to drive out of Queens and getting stopped by NY National Guard units with weapons drawn at the bridge. So I spend most of the day watching the news on a little TV in a Chinese restaurant in Flushing hoping the bridges would open (I was trying to get to CT to see family out of a kind of instinct). The bridges didn't open so I drove back to my apartment.

I went to work the next day.

For months I lived with an aircraft carrier off the south shore of Long Island running real live patrol flights over my work.

Since I dealt with the airlines as part of work (air export) I heard about every lost piece of luggage that closed the airport (now guarded by uniformed military with plenty of HUMVEES and trucks outside) -- most customers started bitching in less than one month if their shipment was delayed for security reasons.

There was a plane crash of an outbound flight out of JFK going to the Dominican Republic in November '01 that we could see the black plume of smoke from our office windows. Our customers were calling to see if their shipments would move. I was half trying to convince the crying women in our office that it wasn't terrorism (why attack an outbound flight to the Dominican?) and half trying to see if my coworker who lived in Belle Harbor was unlucky enough to have the plane land on him on HIS day off.

Which is a round about way of saying I don't give a flying fuck who lays a wreath on the WTC site. It's hallowed ground for tourists and people who watched on TV. It's a crime scene for people who lost somebody in the attacks. For New Yorkers, it's a botched construction site with too many cooks spoiling any fucking rebuilding*.

*like New Orleans but a lot smaller

New York moved on and voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry because the city was betrayed by the Iraq War. Iran didn't have fuck all to do with 9/11 and was helpful to US in the region from 9/11/01 right up until Baghdad fell and it was clear Iran was more likely to be next on the list than any kind of partner in the Gulf (their home, our treasure map).

More on positive Iran-US ties:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/international/middleeast/21IRAN.html?ex=1190520000&en=8899a4c495da1566&ei=5070

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/international/middleeast/16IRAN.html?ex=1190520000&en=b81faae34ba032b1&ei=5070

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/13/AR2007021301363.html

The Spirit of 9/11 (for those watching on TV) is found in it's purest form (in hindsight) on 9/15/01 when "Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man, was shot and killed in Mesa, Arizona by a man who called himself a patriot." Because if you were brown and 'other' you were responsible. Iraqi, Sikh, Persian - who gives a fuck as long as we can teach them a lesson*?

*everybody but fucking Bin Laden and Zawahiri



Sorry for the meandering rant. It's a blunderbuss shot into the dark and not directed at anyone here on this comment thread or our fine blog host.

By  joejoejoe, at 5:13 PM  

I remember when the flight in October crashed. It scared hell out of my grandmother, who doesn't live far from JFK.

Yes, Iran is being set up as another scapegoat in this vengeful, perpetual war on terror. Historically, however, Ahmedinejad has not been, and is still not a total innocent in his position as the president of the Islamic "republic". And our illustrious oaf of a prez ain't helping much in regards to building diplomatic bridges to Iran that fell apart damn nearly irreparably at the tail end of the shah's rule.

It's an impasse right now. Until things change for the better, Ahmedinejad is better off echoing Khrushchev's itinerary when he visited the U.S.

"Where you going after decades of sanctioning oppressive policies towards women and an Islamic version of totalitarianism, o Iranian leader?"

"I'm going to Disneyland!"

By  Leigh C., at 6:37 PM  

As for Ahmedinejad's guilt, I don't think it extends to having designs on attacking this country or harboring those who would do so.

Just clarifying...

By  Leigh C., at 6:48 PM  

Leigh C - You are clear. I'm not defending Ahmedinejad. Unfortunately Bush sees himself as America and therefore he sees Ahmedinejad as Iran.

I'm not a big subscriber to the 'history is shaped by great (or awful) men' school of thought. As much as Bush is a total asshole he would have never been able to accomplish 1/10 of the crazy shit we've had to tolerate without a nation full of soft people, a weak press, and an even weaker Congress.

Bush is a mushroom that grew in a giant pile of crap. On January 20, 2009 Bush will go away but the giant pile of crap still remains.

By  joejoejoe, at 7:31 PM