CE Week #6: “Inflating a Little Man”
By Joe Klein
A long time ago, when the Soviet Union was beginning to shatter, a Russian friend cracked a joke, and I doubled up laughing on a snowy street in Moscow. “I wish I could smile the way you Americans do,” he said. I asked why he couldn’t. He said he’d been trained by his parents never to show emotions in public. A stray smile could be misinterpreted, could mean the Gulag. I realized then that my reaction to his joke had been a political statement–a reflexive demonstration of my freedom. I thought about that when the laughter began at Columbia University on Sept. 24. I wondered how quickly it took Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to realize they were laughing at him, not with him, after his blithe assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran. He gazed out into the audience, bemused. He could understand those who found him reprehensible; he courted their disapproval, thrived on it. But to be found ridiculous? How devastating. How delightfully Western.
Ahmadinejad’s appearance was a small but telling moment in the rolling overhyped crisis that is George W. Bush’s so-called war on terrorism. The Iranian President’s words had no practical, only symbolic, global import. He has very little real power in Iran, none over foreign policy or the nuclear program. He has no more power than his predecessor, the failed reformer Mohammed Khatami, who came to be regarded in the West and in Iran as a well-dressed cipher. Indeed, Ahmadinejad has failed in the one area where he actually does have some authority: reforming the sluggish oligopoly that is the Iranian domestic economy. There have been riots over the rising price of gasoline. His political future is shaky. And yet this strange little man who brings to mind Peter Sellers more readily than Adolf Hitler–Sellers playing one of his brilliantly befogged simpletons–occasioned a classic, free-range American outrage festival, in which everyone, even Hillary Clinton, happily granted him exactly the opprobrium he desired.
Of course, Ahmadinejad is no simpleton. He knows precisely how to exploit one of the few powers he does possess, the power to offend. He gains status in Iran and in the Islamic world by sticking his thumb in the giant’s eye. His Holocaust denial is a flagrant ploy–the easiest way to get a rise out of the Jewish community and, inevitably, U.S. politicians. Clearly, he benefits from his falsely inflated prominence. But who else does?
Well, at the top of the list are our old friends the neoconservatives, the folks who provided the intellectual rationale for Bush’s war in Iraq, many of whom are now itching for a war with Iran. Norman Podhoretz, the neocon paterfamilias, has written a trifle called World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and loves to posit Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden–a far more dangerous character–as the heirs to Hitler and Stalin. “They follow the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism,” he writes. This is incendiary foolishness. Terrorists have the ability to wreak terrible damage intermittently, but they don’t represent an existential threat to the U.S. Ahmadinejad commands no legions–not even the Hizballah forces in Lebanon that attacked Israel in the summer of 2006–and if Podhoretz doesn’t know that, he should. Taking Ahmadinejad literally, as the neoconservatives do, is being disingenuous with lethal intent. It gives license to a conga line of politicians–especially Republicans running for President–to strut their stuff by jumping on Ahmadinejad and Columbia University and liberals in general. Mitt Romney runs an ad in which he brags that he denied the milquetoast reformer Khatami a police escort to Harvard University in 2006. Now there’s a man! The New York Daily News, owned by neoconservative Mort Zuckerman, runs the headline the evil has landed. The cable news networks hyperventilate. Even the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, feels the need to demolish Ahmadinejad–elegantly, I must say–before the speech. A giant toxic bubble overwhelms the public square.
And then, there he is–and laughter is freedom’s only appropriate reaction. The bubble bursts. He denies not only the Holocaust but also homosexuality? Suddenly, it all becomes obvious: we are being played by extremists on both sides. To be sure, Iran does arm Hizballah, and it does have an active nuclear program that may or may not be proved to have hostile intent, and it is making trouble for the U.S. in Iraq, supplying weapons to our enemies. These are all problems to be addressed soberly and perhaps even, eventually, with multilateral force. But the neoconservative campaign to transform Ahmadinejad into Hitler or Stalin, to pretend that he has the ability to destroy the world, to make a hoo-ha over letting the little man speak, is a cynical attempt to plump for war. Ahmadinejad may be ridiculous, but Podhoretz–who recently spent 45 minutes with Bush arguing for more war–isn’t very funny at all.
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Make Up…
This was a very hard article to read. Not only the fact that it used big words but the fact that I could barely understand the article. I think it was about a president, the Iran president Ahmadinejad, under estimated as a person, and then he came to America. But I think I am wrong because the article compared this person to the likings of Stalin, or Hitler. Does this mean he will do what those two have done? But I do think I am right because it said that this particular person did not believe that the holocaust happened, and we have talked about this guy in classes, and that guy happens to be the Iran President. At first the article started talking about how there could be no facial expressions in Russia, it was against the law, and parents taught there kids not to show there facial expressions. Then when I got farther into the article it started talking about how Iran had nuclear plants, and how they helped Iraq in our war on terror. It also talked about how the Iranian President had very little power. Finally at the end it talked about letting this “little man” speaks, and how he argued with President Bush for 45 minutes on more war. Overall, I am not so happy I read this article, next time I will read a better one.
This article seems pretty one sided to me. It makes Americans sound, in short, like psycho war fanatics! While I’m sure some would agree with this statement and even profess it to be truth, I do not. There is a reason for considering a war with Iran. I was appauled when I discovered that their President spoke in our country and basically made fun of us. That’s pretty demeaning. Ahmadiejad came over here and stirred the fire pit up. Clearly he does not like us. Why demean the American people on their own soil? He wants to make trouble, just like the article states. How will the US react? I’m a little behind on this entire issue to tell you the truth. However I have heard that Iran is a real threat, and I think it is definitely believable. To think that it is not is pretty ridiculous. They hate Israel, and we support Israel. There is a problem. I think Iran is hiding something. They stir us up, they want war. Why go to war with the world’s superpower unless you are ready? I find this quite frightening. I just hope we are ready if the time comes. And I pray that it does not.
Well this article was deffinitly different. I can’t understand why we would let the president of Iran come over and just talk down to our entire country. I don’t understand why he would be doing all of this. He is just trying to get us to get mad like it said in the article he lied about what he did just to see how mad it would make us. Everything he is doing is a really bad idea because if I remember correctly we almost went to war with Iran like 6 months ago because somthing todo with our ships on the coast. So now is not the time to be tempting us. This article is completely one sided and doesn’t really show the U.S side of the story at all. But in a way I kinda agree our country kinda does like to get into wars. Its not like we are just having fun but we feel that since we are the world superpower that it is our reponsibility to help other. Like us helping trying to stop communism. like the article said he has no real power. So I just hope we don’t decide to go with Iran next because that seems like that would be another pointless trip to the middle east. That is unless they get nucleur weapons and then we would have a problem. If they did get nukes and started threatening us then we should take that problem serious and go find the nukes and take them. (even though we have had a pretty bad history of not being able to find the WMD’s)
This article is very interesting and posses some very good questions. I agree with the author that Ahmadinejad is powerful, but not as powerful as dictators like Hitler and Stalin were. It does though pose a threat in my mind that he does not think that the holocaust took place. Weather it was just to get a rouse out of United States officials or if that is what he really believes, it is still a problem. It’s a problem when the leader of a country so close to obtaining nuclear denies that something like the holocaust took place when there is documented proof and living people that can witness to the horrors that took place and the horrors that they saw at the murder camps. “Iran does arm Hizballah, and it does have an active nuclear program that may or may not be proved to have hostile intent, and it is making trouble for the U.S. in Iraq, supplying weapons to our enemies.” This is a big deal. If Iran is arming our enemies, or even arming enemies of our allies, something needs to be done. With a man like this in power you never know what his next move might be.
Response to Cody:
No, I don’t think that Ahmadinejad is going to go out and kill millions of Jews such as the likes of Stalin, and Hitler, but he is, more or less, a dictator. Stalin and Hitler held all the power, but this guy seems to be second in command according to wikipedia. Apparently, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the equivalent to the America commander in chief, holds more power. Hitler and Stalin commanded the military forces. They were supreme in their land and no one questioned them. And although this guy said on world wide television that he wants Israel “wiped off the map,” he just doesn’t have the manpower to do it. Or does he? For all we know, he could have several nuclear bombs, ready to strike at any minute.
Response to Megan:
While I think that it is quite feasible that Iran has WMD’s, I don’t think that we have to be worried about them bombing us at least for a while. Not only are we hated because we side with Israel, we are a Christian nation, we came into the Middle East on accounts of terrorism; something this Iranian leader may, or may not be affiliated with, but we still occupy places where people don’t want us. For what it’s worth, I strongly believe that Iran would bomb Israel before they even considered dropping one on a country that spent billions of dollars on creating a system that was supposed to be our safeguard, but is still untested and is still dysfunctional.
This guy isn’t stirring up trouble because he wants to fight a war. If he really wanted to go to war with us, he probably would have sent nuclear bombs our way. I guarantee that he has the money and the access through countries like North Korea, to acquire them. We better break out THE SHIELD, just in case. (sarcasm)