So Mr. Ahmedinejad, the President of Iran, requested that he be allowed to visit ground zero next week when he is in New York City to address the United Nations. His request was denied. The Police Commissioner made a boo-boo and announced that the request was under review. Then everyone and their mother raced to say that the request had been denied, like, forever ago…and that it was a really bad idea anyway.
Hillary Clinton:
It is unacceptable for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who refuses to renounce and end his own country’s support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation’s history.
Rudy Guiliani:
Under no circumstances should the N.Y.P.D. or any other American authority assist President Ahmadinejad in visiting Ground Zero. This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring Bin Laden’s son and other al Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero – hallowed ground for all Americans – is outrageous.
And the not to be outdone, Mitt Romney:
Ahmadinejad’s shockingly audacious request should be met with a vehement no. It’s inconceivable that any consideration would be given to the idea of entertaining the leader of a state sponsor of terror at ground zero. This would deeply offend the sensibilities of Americans from all corners of our nation. Instead of entertaining Ahmadinejad, we should be indicting him.
For the record, the request was officially denied for purely logistical reasons. You know…security.
On the best day politics will make you want to throw up. But this isn’t just any day. We lost an effort to restore habeas corpus rights and we lost an effort to force a draw down in troop levels in Iraq.
Now, I don’t have any love lost for Mr. Ahmedinejad. I think he is a world class a-hole. And he doesn’t have any special right to an expensive security detail so he can tour lower Manhattan. Moreover, some of his actions and comments have been deeply hurtful and angering and even fearsome to the Jewish community. And he represents a regime that has been implicated in many serious terrorist attacks against American interests and American allies. (I know that is only one side of the story…believe me…I know).
Under the circumstances, I don’t have a problem with denying him a chance to visit ground zero. If I were a politician, I would be reluctant to accommodate him. But this oneupmanship is really unseemly. We really need to stop and consider, every once in a while, how our actions are perceived in the world.
The whole world knows that neo-conservatives, including the vice-president of the United States, are frothing at the mouth to bomb this man’s country into the stone ages. The world does not agree with that plan. The world is deeply, deeply unsympathetic to that plan. And here this man comes, to make an ostensibly good-faith gesture and to pay respects to our dead. Maybe he wants to help himself understand the magnitude of the tragedy so he can better understand why his country is under such a threat.
Is it really a ‘good faith’ gesture? Maybe not. Maybe it is just a stunt to make him look good. One thing is for sure…denying him the opportunity doesn’t make us look good.
It’s one thing to thank him politely for the kind gesture and then deny him the trip on security grounds. That’s diplomacy. People would understand that. But to have all the presidential candidates lining up to outdo each other in their outrage at the mere suggestion? It’s gross. It’s ugly. It’s the worst of America.
Isn’t just about everything about America the worst thing there is about America? 1/2 the goddamned nation is on the verge of a heart attack because of obesity, lack of exercise, adult onset diabetes and drug and alcohol abuse. So, what do we do about it? We advertise a fricking pizza made of Oreo cookies drizzled with icing. And this you eat for dessert AFTER you’ve consumed your dinner pizza. I’d say visitors from a foreign land must be appalled but we’ve exported so much of this decadence they’re climbing in the same boat we’re in, heading for the falls. It all makes me want to throw up.
good point on the Pizza Hut. I saw that commercial and was appalled. I can’t say I was ashamed for my country, but I was appalled.
I’ve seen that commercial several times here in Mad City, and I wasn’t as much appalled as my tummy just turned over. Yuck.
There is so much stuff that I can’t eat any more. Not because I’m diabetic or something. I just eat better, and I know what’s junk.
This new menu addition will certainly appeal to a certain segment living north and east of this burg…and even IN this burg.
I’m joining the gym at the school where I’m teaching in a couple of weeks. About five minutes on a stationary bike, aerobics and some yoga three times a week ought to make me–as Toshiro Mifune put it in one of his movies– ‘bright.’
One of my students just told me that her immigrant cousins couldn’t wait to sample McDonald’s cuisine…they had been bombarded with this shyt from satellite dishes in Guyana.
Yuck.
Ahmadinejad offers what looks like a concilliatory and emaopthetic action and as always we respond as we always do and are now expected to by denying the request and going on about terrorism. We as always come out looking arrogant, warlike and unforgiving while the Iranian President looks like just a human being. It is not easy to be an American abroad, and hasnt been for quite some time. All we need is an attack on Iran to probably cement this opinion until a good few of us are well past our expiry date. Kind of sad really, but sometimes there just dont seem to be any redeming features at all left in what our country and society do, and this comes over tiome and time again in the way we run the world as seen by any outsider.
His people lately seem to be particularly enamored of a TV serial on the Holocaust starring Adrian Brody…whodathunkit? Not everyone in Iran seems to be on the little guy’s side politically. He’s had to tread lighter.
Giuliani, Hillary…jeez, what a bunch of maroons.
There are 40 synogoges in Tehran alone.
No, there’s not much good will left anywhere, not anymore, the change is even noticeable here in the Netherlands. The world just can’t seem to understand that they’re going against their own interests by rejecting God’s gift to humanity. Any attack on Iran will seal the deal. Forever.
Maybe treading lightly is what he was trying to do. At one point someone is going to have make a move. Any move. He did, & I do hope it was with sincerity. After 9 11, it seemed like Iran & the rest of the world came together in shock at what happened. How soon later, did a monkey proclaim them part of the axis of evil. It`s too easy for one to create a different enemy to distract from the fact that the failed preemptive policy of aggression has made one look the fool in the eyes of the whole world.
Only the chosen few will be allowed to bow at the alter of grief that is still not built after six plus years. Sacred ground rah rah crap. If the place was that special, it should be a place for atonement & respect. A place to settle differences. And I didn`t mean that Iran had to atone for 9 11 , but we all have to ask for forgiveness at one point. Why not now & why not there.
Even if it was only to be able to walk near the area. Security, did someone mention the cost of security. Holy christ, the country is down a few billion every week, & now it`s cost. It usually ends this way. The one that makes the first overture is accused of grandstanding. What if he is/isn`t. You still look like an a..hole for not reciprocating. He couldn`t so easily look like he was grandstanding if he was let over to view the crater. What arrogance from those who wish to be king/queen. When someone approaches with an open hand, one should not respond with a closed fist. Very presidential, NOT
I have to say, Ahmedinejad has got to have a set of big brass ones, to make such a request after the rhetoric he has delivered. He plays the game just as well as Bush does, so I’m sure he was fully aware of what the response would be and that he would be turned down. He has demonstrated in interviews that he is no slouch. So, I have my doubts it was made in good faith.
That said, I agree with those that say the request should have been responded to more diplomatically, rather than with a mess of chest beating. The points made by the various chest beaters could easily have been made without all the chest beating, and America could have gained back maybe a bit of respectability.
“It is with your enemies that you make peace” (Uri Avnery on talking to Hamas).
Not only should Ahmedinejad have been permitted a visit to Ground Zero, but he should have been invited to a synagogue to discuss the Holocaust and perhaps life in the 3,000 year old Jewish community in Iran. The notion that Iran supports terrorism of course is propaganda contingent on a misinterpretation of Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas, organizations which developed to fight Israeli military occupations, invasions, and colonialism in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon over the past 25 years.
But we pretend that it is something different than it is especially now that Israel propaganda has gone on to coopt the war on terrorism and to justify its military occupation, invasion, and colonialism.
The fate of Israel and the fate of the U.S. are one and indivisible. That’s how far we’ve come. If Israel makes peace and recognizes a true Palestian state with Jerusalem as its capital (Mrs. Clinton sit up in your chair), the U.S. will collapse. Ridiculous, of course. But it’s almost as if U.S. power brokers think that’s what will happen. They see no prospect of people being happy, content, peaceful and cooperative. Only war, war, war and more war. There can’t be peace because too many people will be forced to reasses their notions about themselves, their very special existence, and their prejudices about the horrible nastiness of others. And we can’t have that. Then all people would tend to seem more similar than is permissible, despite cultural and ethnic differences.
Khobar Towers…
Khobar Towers was AL-Qaeda, not Iran.
“WASHINGTON, June. 6 2007 (UPI) — A former U.S. defense secretary says he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry said he had a contingency plan to attack Iran if the link had been proven, but evidence was not to either his nor President Bill Clinton’s satisfaction…”
It’s in dispute, but all the people they arrested were members of Hizballah-al-Hijaz.
What, if any, relationship al-Qaeda might have with a Shi’a separatist group is unknown.
Bin Laden’s own words:
“We had thought that the Riyadh, and al-Khobar blasts were a sufficient signal to sensible US decision-makers to avert a real battle between the Islamic nation and US forces, but it seems that they did not understand the signal.”
(Interview with London’s Al-Qods newspaper on “preparations for major operations” if Americans don’t leave Saudi Arabia)
Al-Qods al-Arabi (8/13/96) reported that six veterans of the Afghan war who had been trained by bin-Laden had confessed to the Dhahran bombing and the Saudis were preparing a statement detailing their confessions. The daily said the six were from the al-Jamiyin group, Sunni fighters in Afghanistan who once had been supported by the Saudi government. The report, which cited informed sources and sources close to the group said the six were being held in Jubail prison and were being questioned by the director of general investigations under the direct supervision of the Interior Minister, Prince Nayef. The report also said the Interior Minister had banned any other party from questioning them. Pentagon and White House officials refused to comment on the report.
Al Qaeda has been using Israel as a recruiting tool for years, and hardly an appeal from OBL to join the jihad has been absent a reference to Israel. Why does it succeed? Because, unlike the US which has been under a veil of censorship about war crimes and atrocities in the Palestinian territories, the rest of the world, Europe and the Middle East, has received fresh news about the daily killings of Palestinians on their TVs. Only recently has Israel paid attention to the reality filtering into Europe and attempted a similar restriction of news in this area. Look at the EU’s compliance with Israel’s dictation of who is and who is not a terrorist organization, like Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been fighting Israeli invasions, occupations, and colonialism for decades.
“Enemy” is afterall a relative term which is easily manipulated through propaganda.
Sometimes I get the feeling that if MLK and John Lewis had blown up buses instead of boycotting them you would find a way to justify their actions.
Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t know a damned thing about the IP conflict, given your quick on the draw readiness to exculpate Israel, whose fault, if not 40 year military occupation is the issue. Even then, to fault only one side of this conflict for its atrocities is particularly an admission of ignorance:
Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Focus
Like most Americans, Alison Weir, the editor of a small-town newspaper in California, knew very little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than what she had gleaned from the evening news or newspaper headlines. As a journalist, her attention was on issues much closer to home. Neither a muslim nor a jew, she nevertheless became more curious about the topic of the Palestinian uprising. And as she researched it, she became increasingly suspicious that the American media were not telling us the whole story. Months later, she traveled to the occupied territories as an independent journalist to find out for herself what the U.S. media seemed to be omitting. Three months after returning from Palestine, Alison Weir quit her job and founded If Americans Knew, an organization dedicated to quantifying the ways in which the American media was misinforming the public about the conflict. Ms. Weir explains her group’s methodology, analyzes the data, and reports on the key findings.
If Americans Knew can be linked to here: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sides.html
Alison Weir, in her documentary Off the Charts, noted the following:
Before a single suicide bomber had entered Israel after the start of the Second Intifada, sometimes called, after Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the al Aqsa Intifada, during its first month, 27 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza, the youngest only four months of age, and the majority due to gunshots to the head. Numerous children were also wounded. In the first three months alone, 159 children lost an eye presumably to rubber bullets shot from IDF rifles. Clearly the IDF were intentionally targeting these children, aiming at their heads with either rubber bullets or real bullets in the case of the child kills. We are talking here about a trained, mechanized army versus civilians, children participating in the intifada, the nonviolent resistance instituted by child and teenage Palestinian boys and girls. Oh, yes. Let’s be fair. We did hear that an Israeli soldier lost his eye from a rock thrown by a Palestinian boy from a pretty IDF spokeswoman, but it was the only such incident reported in three years.
In addition to these children, many more innocent adult civilians were killed, in the month before suicide bombings commenced. If terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians, then clearly, Israel’s armed forces were deep into terrorism, state sponsored terrorism, long before the Palestinians engaged in it to any degree. As a people fighting a military occupation, it would seem that the ultimate cause of all of these horrors on both sides rests with Israel and the purpose for which it continued its long occupation, the stealing of Palestinian lands.
See Alison Weir’s short documentary, Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America for the names, ages, places, and dates of these child killings.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Focus
To be accurate, there were sporadic bombing incidents engineered by Hamas extremists in Israel during the Oslo period. None at all occurred between 1998 and 2000. But the strong resumption of attacks after 2000, over fifty in the first year, was directly related to civilian and child killings by IDF, and it was not just Hamas, but Islamic Jihad and other Fatah associated organizations that were involved.
This Time.com article apprises of what motivated them:
“Until recently most Palestinians believed they had alternatives to the kind of militancy practiced by Hamas. For years after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, which brought limited self-rule to the Palestinians and the prospect of an independent state, polls showed a strong majority of Palestinians supporting the peace process with Israel and only a minority endorsing suicide bombings. Thus, in their headhunting, the fundamentalists were limited to stalwart followers of their doctrine, which holds that any kind of peace with Israel is anathema. Even then, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had to cajole–some might say brainwash–young men into believing that the rewards of paradise outweighed the prospects of life on earth.
But with the breakdown of the peace process in the summer of 2000 and the start of the latest intifadeh that September, the martyr wannabes started coming to Hamas–and they didn’t require persuading. “We don’t need to make a big effort, as we used to do in the past,” Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas’ senior leaders, told TIME last week. The TV news does that work for them. “When you see the funerals, the killing of Palestinian civilians, the feelings inside the Palestinians become very strong,” he explained.”
From the mouth of Rantisi, but it also motivated Fatah supporters, to exact revenge for the killing of Palestinian civilians. Revenge is not a formal use of terrorism. See Alison Weir’s film, Off The Charts, at Google Video.
(Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020415-227546,00.html
This commentary is from an article by Rami Khouri, editor of the Beirut newspaper, The Daily Star, which cynically denounced Olmert’s statements professing concern for the well-being of Palestinian children:
(Ehud Olmert’s Profound Ethics and Deep Lies)
http://www.ramikhouri.com/
“For anyone interested in the facts about the impact of Israeli policies on Palestinian children, a good place to start is the carefully checked data disseminated by the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organization Network (www.palestinemonitor.org). Their data is compiled and verified on the ground by the Ramallah-based Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which has been honored by the World Health Organization for its work in promoting Palestinian health needs. So these people know what they are talking about when it comes to health conditions on the ground in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Some of the facts they provide are as follows.
In just the first two years of the second intifada, from September 2000 to November 2002:
The Israeli army killing of Palestinian children continues apace. In its annual report May 16, the respected global human rights organization Amnesty International accused the Israeli army of killing 190 Palestinians, including 50 children, last year (2005).”
Here is some commentary from Jonathan Cook on a grandmother suicide bomber:
“If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.
Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly — it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.
It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission; according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.
Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.
Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.
Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.
Yet Western observers, and the organizations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.
Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood — and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades — Human Rights Watch published its latest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organization, complacent Western societies and Fatma’s memory.”
Four hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of Jim Crow…and they boycotted buses…did not blow them up. They marched and we’re beaten, and did not resist. And they won.
I will never have an ounce of sympathy for someone that straps on explosives and kills innocent civilians. But it isn’t even about sympathy. It’s about results. Is it effective? Does committing acts of terrorism get your people what they want? Or does it traumatize the victims and cause them to harden their hearts and support ever greater atrocities in response? Does it cause that society to militarize itself? Does it cause that society to clamp down on the rights and freedoms of its people? Does it lead them to make peace?
None of the great leaders of history won freedom for their people by resorting to terrorism. They appealed to people’s sense of fairness and morality. Sometimes they failed and their people were decimated. Sometimes their great-great grandchildren were the ones that finally saw liberation and justice. But find me one case where terrorism ultimately prevailed.
I don’t dismiss your statistics out of Ramallah, though neither do I blindly accept them. They are simply not relevant to me because they cannot justify terrorism. The tactics of non-violence are well known and have an excellent track record of efficacy.
Going back to Jim Crow…non-violence worked. When the movement turned militant and cities began to burn, there was an inevitable backlash that hardened people’s hearts and led them to look toward authoritarians like Nixon and Kissinger for safety.
Terrorism is wrong and ineffective, and it harms everyone.
THIS: The tactics of non-violence are well known and have an excellent track record of efficacy.
Going back to Jim Crow…non-violence worked.
AND THIS: Terrorism is wrong and ineffective, and it harms everyone.
No one disagrees with, including state terrorism as when a modern military equiped with American made weapons decimates civilian neighbors, producing the statistics I posted.
Your problem, and that of a lot of other people new to this area, is that they are unaware that Palestinian nonviolent protest has been going on in the West Bank and Gaza (earlier) for decades. WHY DON’T YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?
Simple: lack of publicity in the USA. And that lack of publicity is due to news censorship and propaganda that has been fed to the American public for decades.
Nonviolent protest cannot succeed as it did during the Civil Rights era without publicity. That is its purpose.
The other problem with your take on all this is the ease with which you blame a people under military occupation for 40 years, while their lands were being colonized, for their victimhood, while taking a view of the occupiers as innocents. In short, you have bought into the terrorist meme that Israeli propaganda has been pushing for the last several years, making it appear as though their occupation is for the purpose of fighting terrorism.
What boloney! You need to sit down and take a hard look at the documentary, Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land (Google for the full version), and get up to date.
Got it now?
you constantly read things into what I write that I did not write.
Let me put this another way. When Detroit was burning during the ’67 riots, it really wouldn’t have been too effective to tell a scared white family that it wasn’t really all that scary because a few years earlier all the protests had been peaceful and non-violent. How is that relevant to their situation hiding their kids in the bathtub to avoid stray bullets?
It’s not.
The non-violent Palestinian movement is not relevant to their plight today. If they continue to use violence they will continue to be beaten badly and their position will continue to erode. If, on the other hand, they pursue an exclusively non-violent strategy, it will not be so easy for the United States to turn a blind eye to their situation.
It seems like all day I’ve been discussing tactics over what’s right and just.
No one would also disagree with the proposition that Palestinian violence in the form of suicide bombings harmed their cause. That is obvious from the way Israeli hasbara used it to their advantage.
But this I disagree with:
“If, on the other hand, they pursue an exclusively non-violent strategy, it will not be so easy for the United States to turn a blind eye to their situation.”
Wrong. I said publicity is essential for nonviolent protest to be effective. There have been almost 150 protest marches in Bil’in, West Bank every Friday, some involving as many as 500 people from a variety of Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations plus internationals. Have you heard of even one of them? Well, maybe if your were blogging in the liberal wilderness and saw a publication by myself or some other propeace activist.
That is the point you’re not getting. When Palestinians have resorted to peaceful protest, the press was silent. They only seem to find reason to publish something when Palestinian violence is entailed because that is what the Israeli armed forces communication services feeds the press.
This is not also to say that suicide bombing is justified, ever. But I have often covered this issue and see them as atrocities committed in retaliation for IDF committed atrocities again Palestinian civilians including children. That is at least what the data say. Do you think those 27 children who were shot in the head, before a suicide bombing occurred, were intentionally shot in the head by IDF soldiers. Well, in the next three months of the Second Intifada, another 159 Palestinian children, presumably rock throwing Intifada boys and girls, lost an eye to rubber bullets from IDF rifles. Do you think the IDF were intentionally head shooting? That they were shooting at children at all to me is appalling.
None of the latter information on Palestinian child deaths and head shooting ever got into the American press. So you wonder why Palestinians would resort to violence? At some point, the ineffectiveness of the peace activists becomes obvious, or I would suppose. It didn’t change anything. Should we also blame silent newspaper editors in American for part of this tragedy?
I think so.
Did you miss the word ‘exclusively’?
It’s the key word. Is that realistic? At this point, probably not.
” If, on the other hand, they pursue an exclusively non-violent strategy, it will not be so easy for the United States to turn a blind eye to their situation.”
Wrong again. It has been easy. Between 1998 and 2000, there were no hostile actions by even Hamas, and nothing was heard. After 2003 when suicide bombings stopped, largely due to the Wall, we heard nothing about nonviolent protests and the Wall stimulated many of them. When there was no violence, there has been silence, even when the protesters were being gased, water blasted, or shot with rubber bullets. That is to say, Israeli military violence receives no press. Only Palestinian violence is worthy of press. Little wonder why Americans believe Palestinians are terrorists.
Propaganda uber alles.
PS: I’ve had this tip of the tongue phrase in the back of my mind in responding to your criticisms of Palestinian actions that have been counterproductive, such as suicide bombings or rocketing Sderot.
Like this one, they inadvertently employ a propaganda technique called de-contextualization, whose purpose it is to cut out the causal chains that lead to a false attribution of blame, often reversing the perpetrator-victim relationship, as is now done routinely by Israeli hasbara services. Understanding something is not intended to condone it, but only to get at the causality.
Thus, if Israel had not wantonly killed those adults and children at the start of the Second Intifada, there would not have been any suicide bombings. That statement does not justify them, but only provides a realistic explanation of why they occurred. That statement also does not contradict the notion that they were extremely damaging to the cause of the Palestinians, at least in the US where news censorship and propaganda is slanted toward distortions and lies which favor Israel.
Well, that may very well be. What I basically mean is the U.S. government sees everyone else as the culprit. Constantly. Don’t you think people outside the U.S. see things differently? Apart from any proven/alleged Iranian terrorist attacks, it would seem that the U.S., with all its power and posturing, could have wound up the Palestinian problem ages ago if it really wanted to. The unconditional, unconscionable support for Israel no matter what, is what the world sees. Tell me, are they seeing things wrong? The Iranians see the U.S. support of Saddam in his war on them. Are they hallucinating? The U.S. tolerates no dissent, no challenge, no questioning. Is the war of aggressin on Iraq and the subsequent occupation completely unlike a terrorist action. The terrorists are never state actors. It’s about time the U.S. just examined itself, very deeply, and realized that it is not exceptional and needs to show a more generous, understanding face. Israel can afford to do likewise: it is holding ALL the cards and is not planning to show their hand until the bitter end. Or are so many people everywhere seeing things wrong? Even in Israel there are voices to this effect. If more U.S. politicians and others would finally get around to condemning their own criminal policies of war and detention, their pretty words about how someone else is misbehaving might carry more weight: the pot calls the kettle black. Only this time around the U.S. record is extremely black.
In my preceding I am referring to the Boo Man’s above reference to the Khobar Towers in response to my earlier comment.
The Iranians were the first to hold candle light vigils after 9-11.
You’ve just insulted their elected president in return.
Nice.
OMFG. This is so comical. Give me a fucking BREAK! How many candles do you think Ahmedinejad lit? How freely and fairly was he ‘elected’?
How many candles he himself burned is besides the point – he’s representing a nation of people that don’t have anything against the people of the US – and he’s said so himself too.
And as far as elections in the Mideast go, he was much more fairly elected that some of our closest allies there.
Drip, drip, drip. The conflating continues in our march to war.
True? Untrue? Snippets of truth? Catapulting the propaganda?
We’ll never know, now, will we.
Whew! Wow! I’m mostly just a lurker here, but Boo knows I know the deal… Anyway, this whole thread, from your post Boo to just about everything else people have posted, plays into the WORST “BAF” stereotypes that “liberal blogs” like BooTrib are always being branded with. Folks here have gone out of their way to compliment and sympathize with Ahmedinejad, starting with Boo: (“And he represents a regime that has been implicated in many serious terrorist attacks against American interests and American allies. (I know that is only one side of the story…believe me…I know).”) WTF???; criticize and ridicule American eating habits (purely an extraneous diatribe, relevant to nothing except demonstrating your “bonafides” as a true BAF’er– well, I’m duly ‘impressed,’ Steve); mock the significance and meaning of Ground Zero and those who consider it somewhat hallowed ground (“Sacred ground rah rah crap”); defend Hezbollah; and on and on.
As I said, I don’t normally speak up here. I’m a progressive dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and union man. But this shit is exactly that. Shit. You should realize how this stuff reads. And you shouldn’t be proud of it.
you can criticize the politics, and I agree with you on some of the comments (and said so).
But it’s not like we didn’t orchestrate a coup in 1953, or train SAVAK, or encourage Saddam Hussein to attack Iran and provide him with assistance, or blow one of their civilian airliners out of the air, or threaten to use mini-nukes on them now.
There is more than one side to the animosity between our two countries. And my parenthetical allusion to that fact was merely an attempt to prevent a wave of comments about how we have behaved, and keep the focus on Ahmedinejad.
All true. None of which makes Ahmedinejad any less of a dick, or inclines me to endorse the sickening idea of him laying a wreath at Ground Zero.
Didn’t I say that I have no problem denying him that right?
Bin Laden’s own words:
“We had thought that the Riyadh, and al-Khobar blasts were a sufficient signal to sensible US decision-makers to avert a real battle between the Islamic nation and US forces, but it seems that they did not understand the signal.”
(Interview with London’s Al-Qods newspaper on “preparations for major operations” if Americans don’t leave Saudi Arabia)
Al-Qods al-Arabi (8/13/96) reported that six veterans of the Afghan war who had been trained by bin-Laden had confessed to the Dhahran bombing and the Saudis were preparing a statement detailing their confessions. The daily said the six were from the al-Jamiyin group, Sunni fighters in Afghanistan who once had been supported by the Saudi government. The report, which cited informed sources and sources close to the group said the six were being held in Jubail prison and were being questioned by the director of general investigations under the direct supervision of the Interior Minister, Prince Nayef. The report also said the Interior Minister had banned any other party from questioning them. Pentagon and White House officials refused to comment on the report.