January 28th 2009
Change You Can Believe In, Ahmadinejad Style
W
inds of change are blowing, and Mah- I’m in the -moud for victory Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “I think Barack can be had”) has his nose in the air, sniffing intently. He likes what the breeze is blowing his way:
Without mentioning President Obama by name, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday repeatedly referred to those who want to bring “change,” a word used often in Obama’s election campaign, and seemed to indicate Iran would be looking to see whether there would be substantive differences in U.S. policy under Obama.
“We will wait patiently, listen to their words carefully, scrutinize their actions under a magnifier and if change happens truly and fundamentally, we will welcome that,” Ahmadinejad said, speaking to a crowd of thousands. (USA Today)
So is this a new sign that there is indeed hope for real change in US-Iran relations, that Obama’s much scoffed-at calls for talks with Iran might actually be a sane idea? Given Ahmadinejad’s terms for change, I certainly don’t think so.
“Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering… Zionists and let the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny.”
Disparaging adjectives aside, there’s a problem with Mahmoud’s position here. The trouble is, the Palestinian nation wants to decide its destiny and Israel’s, and their idea of Israel’s destiny sounds familiar: Wipe them off the face of the earth. Any Obama dialog with Iran had better state quickly that we won’t go along with that.
Then, as Iran spoils for war, fighting a barely clandestine war against us in Iraq, threatening transport in the Gulf, building nukes, Ahmadinejad defines change in U.S. military policy as he would like to see it:
“Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in (different spots of) the world.”
Nifty. Why do I get the feeling that you just can’t talk to this guy?
And finally, Ahmadinejad smells something he doesn’t like, and he wants Obama to change it right away:
“The change will be to apologize to the Iranian nation and try to compensate for their dark records and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation.”
He wants us to pay retribution for having supported the Shah. How do we compute the price if the Iranian people are far more poor and repressed now than they were under the Shah? How do we compute the price if the Shah was preceded by British and Russian imperialism and the either brutally repressive or lamely ineffective Qajar Persian heads of state? (Have you forgotten that the Russians actually seized Iranian territory and marched on Tehran after the 1917 Communist revolution?) And are we to offset the price with their payments to us for seizure of our embassy and diplomats, and for the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian-supplied weapons and Iranian-trained jihadists?
Ahmadinejad’s latest rant comes in direct response to Obama’s Al-Arabia interview Tuesday, in which the prez said, “”it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress.” How much progress can there be if the Iranian starting position is for us to abandon Israel, withdraw our military from pretty much everywhere and pay them reparations?
Posted in Ahmadinejad, Foreign policy, Iran, Obama | 1 Comment » | |
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February 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
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