"Ahmadinejad too will pass."

Before or after he drops a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv?

Since the Supreme Court's selection, my take on GWB has been that the Republic will survive him, but it is a pity that it has to. When we think "this, too, shall pass," it's worth a little while to consider the cost.

"Ahmadinejad too will pass."

He will pass like a big kidney stone, causing a lot of pain.

Actually dan, i generally agree with you about Ahmadinejad this time. I don't think he is particularly smart or particularly skilled as a politician. But what your round up of reports on his visit seems to make clear is exactly how patheticly stupid the American elite are. They seem to have no brains at all. They just repeat the same wasted old stupidity. Though i have never thought much of Andrew Sullivan, he seems particularly stupid now. He seems to think that, because someone can defend their own point of view, that makes them "a very, very capable politician?" give me a break! What it shows is that either 1) Americans are so uninformed that they did not even know he had a point of view and thus were surprised he was not totally insane, or 2) the American elite is so drawn to power that they can't help but praise it even when it is in the form of someone they have been told (over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again) is pure evil, or 3) they are just trying to create a counterbalance to the tired wasted old narrative that we have been told (see above) over and over again but are not smart enough to do it with substance, so instead they do it by talking about his style.

It is just a sad time for America that the range of thought extends all the way from Anderson Cooper asking Ahmadinejad whether he is anti-semitic for 20 minutes, way way over to Mike wallace asking if he is anti-Semitic for 40 minutes. Basically, it shows me that Bush has won and all is lost for the world. His stupidity has infected almost everyone, to such a point that it has become hard to have a rational thought any more. Maybe the elite show give up reading like Bush, it obviously is not doing them any good or putting any thoughts in their head. It is pathetic!

Probably. But most of the pain will be in Iran.

I meant to say, in the last line, "maybe the elite should give up reading all together, like Bush has, it obviously is not doing them any good...."

So Andrew Sullivan has a sense of foreboding does he? Hell, compared to Sullivan's usual hysteria, moral outrage and warnings of impending doom, foreboding hardly merits notice.

Basically, it shows me that Bush has won and all is lost for the world. His stupidity has infected almost everyone, to such a point that it has become hard to have a rational thought any more.

You must be very young, and quite ignorant of history, to think that stupidity in high places began with the election of W. Bush.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I would note that there has been very little pain in Iran, while they have been busy exporting pain all over the Middle East and beyond. Remember, Kobar Towers and the attack on Mecca where the basement of the Kaba had to be cleared by Saudi troops in a kind of rat hunt. Remember, the Marine Barraks in Beirut and the bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Argentina of all places.
Super IEDs in Iraq and 10,000 rockets raining on Israel are just the latest.
There has been little real effective response and maybe that is why the attacks have been becoming bigger and bigger. At some point Iran will have to be confronted.
And of course this is all Bush's fault.

So what? Who cares if Ahmadinejad is "underwhelming?" Adolph Hitler was also perceived to be a lackluster individual. Many wrongly thought that such a nonentity could never become the leader of Germany. The central question about this weird guy from Iran is whether he possesses sufficient power to possibly destroy the world?

Yglesias makes me embarassed to have gone to Harvard.

"... I judge whether someone has put in a good political performance based on whether they manage to persuade others of the merits of their worldview." - Dan

That's too simple a definition, Dan. Who says that Ahmadinejad's goal is to persuade the West of the merit of his ideals? That's a lost cause. His (excellent) performance cemented existing followers and probably gained him a few on-the-fencers in Islam. From his standpoint, that's a win, no?

It would be the same if Bush went to give speeches at Teheran and smoothly stayed on message throughout, just like Ahmadinejad did in NY. Us westerners would be beaming with pride (about Bush!) regarding his fine oratory and how he verbally kicked a** in enemy territory.

I don't care how suave and stylin' Achmydinnerjob was. He is an enemy, fighting by proxy behind the Hezbians and elsewhere. It's gross how Yglesias and some of his commentariat are so easily swayed by A. sporting facial hair along the same fashion as American twentysomething men...whiched launched a commentariat discussion on the hotness of various evil dictators. It makes me want to reread Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. Evil is banal!

Evil people can exude charm; in fact, it is a characteristic of the sociopath.

A's stated policy is the obliteration of Israel and all Jews. Whomever loves A is a Jewhater and not worth listening to...even as they call A's visit a PR coup. No it isn't...not to any of us who know what this guy thinks and does.

No nukes for Jewhating genocidalist wannabes. Death to Israelhaters!

Nope, it's not all George Bush's fault.

Doesn't make him (Bush) any less underwhelming.

"However, I judge whether someone has put in a good political performance based on whether they manage to persuade others of the merits of their worldview."

This is the problem with all you pundits, whether you're on TV or not: your world is very small.
In my business I work with many immigrants, especially ones without much education or sophistication. Take my word for it, they love this stuff, it's like mother's milk to them - and that, Daniel, means it was a good political performance.

On 9/11 I happened to be among a group of low wage immigrants from various depressed parts of the world - and this is what I think most pundits for sure and a predominance of Americans don't seem to get - these people cheered what happened. The dumb ones did it openly, in front of me, the savvy ones played coy and waited til they were amongst their own kind.

You weren't impressed by Ahmadinejad's antics Dan?
Believe me, nothing could make him and his followers happier.

I think he's kind of sexy.

However, I judge whether someone has put in a good political performance based on whether they manage to persuade others of the merits of their worldview.

Looking at Gwertzman's account, I did not see that. Instead, I see Ahmadinejad getting pilloried by Matin Indyk, Brent Scowcroft, and Kenneth Roth -- not exactly a homogenous bunch.

So, let me get this straight. You wouldn't think he did a good job unless he persuaded Indyk, Scowcroft, and Roth to his point of view?

On 9/11 I happened to be among a group of low wage immigrants from various depressed parts of the world - and this is what I think most pundits for sure and a predominance of Americans don't seem to get - these people cheered what happened. The dumb ones did it openly, in front of me, the savvy ones played coy and waited til they were amongst their own kind.

I get about the dumb ones. How do you know what the savvy ones did when you weren't around?

Whomever loves A is a Jewhater and not worth listening to...even as they call A's visit a PR coup.

No nukes for Jewhating genocidalist wannabes. Death to Israelhaters!

Be careful. As you do to others, you may be done to.

Of course as the Holocaust shows, you might be done to regardless. If there was a guaranteed way to prosper and live peaceful lives probably almost everybody would follow them.

Still, deal with the log in your own eye.

"No nukes for Jewhating genocidalist wannabes. Death to Israelhaters!" - KYjellyliz

"I think he's kind of sexy" - Jacqueline

Why don't you two take on the debate from here. We'll watch.

Be careful. As you do to others, you may be done to.

Of course as the Holocaust shows, you might be done to regardless.

Lefies really need to realize that in matters of foreign policey, the 'doing unto others' frequently has nothing to do with what gets done unto you.

In the real world, bad things are done to decent people depressingly often.... but nobody wants to cross the crazy SOBs.

The logical conclusion is that it is safer to be a crazy SOB than to be a decent person.

We live in a perverse world.

Mad Jad may not be the sharpest tool in Iran but he is a tool of the Supreme Leader. Nothing comes out of his mouth that has not been discussed and approved of by that same all powerful Supreme Leader.

Mad Jad may sometimes get carried away by his role and by his publicity, but he always knows his lines.

Let us not forget also that he is a Twelver and even if his boss doesn't lean in that direction as much as he does, his faith and conviction in the coming of the 12th Imam is true and pure. That alone should be enough for anyone familiar with faith extremists pause for thought and concern.

You can't judge Persians and Arabs like you do your local or national politicians here in the states or in [e]rope, in particular, Muslims. Muslims are under a strict rule of disinformation and misdirection when it comes to conversations with us (disbelievers).

Remember that, and you might understand some of the seeming nonsense and comments by them.

Like this old saying..When the truth is a lie and the lie is the truth, what is the truth and what is the lie, if the truth being a lie is not true?

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Sexy...hmmh...humans, especially human females, often view having raw brute power as sexy. Also, I'm fairly sure having the power of life and death over millions of people, and being able to casually execute the maid if she delivers a cold cup of coffee does wonders for your self-confidence.

I know I'd be more cheerful if I could legally shoot anyone who annoyed me.

And at one point, Nazi's were supposedly a frequent figure in some women's dreams...which were not nightmares.

As to immigrants...well they get bad information, even worse than our MSM, and at very high volume. For you liberals, imagine a nation where Rush and Sean Hannity were the only stations on the Radio and TV dial that was allowed to play...imagine what everyone in the country would be thinking. And then make it five times worse, and eliminate any good traits these men have. Now you're catching on to the reality of living in state with a controlled press.

PS: I actually think Rush and Sean quite reasonable, I'm just trying to phrase it in a way so that the liberals can understand. People frequently don't understand opression until its their own foot thats getting pinched.

So as for Ahmadinjahad, yes, he has a bit of style. Yes, he's not a drooling moron.

So?

He's still probably the guy who helped break the rules of war, and violate the American Embassy. A bullet is too good for him.

Maybe the real problem is the CFR types and their ilk.

In the real world, bad things are done to decent people depressingly often.... but nobody wants to cross the crazy SOBs.

The logical conclusion is that it is safer to be a crazy SOB than to be a decent person.

Well, no. The crazy SOBs wind up crossing others until they cross the wrong ones. Where are the nazis today? The south africans? The iraqi Ba'athists? Crazy SOBs don't do it because they've reasoned out it's the safest strategy, they do it because they're crazy SOBs.

If you want to be safer, there are some simple rules. Mind your own business. Live in a place that isn't on the way to anywhere else. Have most of your valuables be things you can destroy just before they get captured. Have enough weapons and fight hard enough that it just isn't worth it to go after you.

We particularly fail the first rule. The swiss are considerably safer than we are, but they aren't even trying to control the whole world. They aren't even trying to keep every bad thing from happening.

Ros,

You seem to be making the claim that there is a "crazy SOB paradigm" in which the word is run by the crazies and the only way to be safe is to be crazier than the next guy.

This is demonstrably not the case. Ahmadinejad and Chavez are making waves at the moment, but that has more to do with the media coverage they've gotten than any new paradigm taking shape.

For all the brilliant rhetoric, we haven't seen any mobilizations and neither of them have taken any steps to escalate the game to something other than a duel of words. The thing is, that's the one arena in which they are guaranteed to beat us.

Looks like Mahmoud and his South American counterpart may get some support from the GOP too.

Suppose that iran doesn't get nuclear power.

As their oil runs out, what will they do? Grow lots of corn to make alcohol? Trees? Solar panels?

Their main choices are nuclear power or something that hasn't been discovered yet.

So what kind of nuclear power will they use? Their choices are very very expensive power, or cheap power. It isn't real expensive to reprocess uranium fuel rods to remove the plutonium. It's real expensive to separate out enough U235 to make them work again. But we aren't just talking about making them use light-water reactors, we're talking about making them ship the used fuel out of the country where foreigners will reconstitute it at great expense and sell it back to them for a price to be determined. Separating isotopes is still energy-intensive, and as energy gets more expensive the price for reprocessing will inevitaby go up even apart from price-gouging.

So let's review. The reason we want to deny iran alternative energy is that we don't trust them with nuclear weapons. We think they're too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. We think that we're responsible, we have more nukes than the rest of the world put together and we threaten people with them.

The iranians mostly deny that they want nukes. They say they want reactors. But it doesn't matter what they want -- if they get practical power reactors they're going to get plutonium as a side result. They get easy nukes whether they want them or not.

Still, look at it from their POV. They need alternate energy as much as anybody else. And we tell them they can only have very expensive alternate energy under somebody else's control. Because we don't trust them. And what have we done for them to trust us?

Iran is said to be many years away from a nuclear weapon, so even if they keep working towards one, it's likely that Ahmadinejad will be out of office before they even have a testable product. Additionally, despite the allegedly "crazy" rhetoric, first of all "I do not think this means Ahmadinejad is going to have his finger on the button." Furthermore, he is still as deterable as any other leader. Sure he could hand over an un-tested bomb to terrorists, but there are ways of tracking where the nuclear materials come from. would he really risk the survival of his regime? granted, none of us really want to find out the answer to that question, but the situation isn't quite as dire as the media makes it sound.

> is (excellent) performance cemented existing followers and probably
> gained him a few on-the-fencers in Islam. From his standpoint,
> that's a win, no?

Oh, good. He got relatively powerless minorities on his side, in exchange for alienating powerful majorities of moderates.

Let's take a look at what Hitler did with his equivalent speeches. Outside Germany, Hitler made big noises about peace. He was always talking about what peaceful guy he was, despite the danger of discouragement of people he'd talked war to in speeches. He completely contradicted what he said internally.

People outside believed him. When Hitler came to power, Germany, and himself in particular, had no credibility, and were still under many harsh Versailles Treaty terms about sizes of armies. By talking (lying, that is) about peace alot, he managed to make the democratic countries care nothing about the huge arms buildup he needed to hope to beat the Allies.

This despite vast countervailing internal evidence of Hitler's intentions supplied by newspapers and available on bookstores in the form of Mein Kampf. That made him more dangerous. Fortunately for us, President A. doesn't get real democratic politics as Hitler had to to take power.

J Thomas wrote:
> Their choices are very very expensive power, or cheap power.

If power was what what they cared about, why do enrichment atall? Wouldn't they build a nice, cheap LWR? Arranging a fuel supply is pretty easy. Yeah, some people would grumble, but nobody would talk about airstrikes.

And if they cared about cost much, they would'n't be tooling up for enrichment, since that's extremely expensive.

> But we aren't just talking about making them use light-water
> reactors, we're talking about making them ship the used fuel out of
> the country

10 bucks to your one that we only want that restriction to apply to their breeders.

The whole concept of "his finger on the button" implies a highly structured system of command and control such that only one person has the authority to launch nuclear weapons, which are secured via physical and cryptological means to prevent unauthorized use. Are we really sure that these conditions would apply in Iran?

Jon Kay, the economics of LWRs are marginal for power generation. They're good research tools, though.

It's reasonable for them to want to make their own LEU in the short run, rather than depend on foreign sources. In the long run they'd do better with plutonium or thorium reactors. (Do they have much thorium? I started to look it up once and didn't find it easily, and quit.) But looking at the uproar they've faced from making LEU, imagine what the reaction would be if they started talking about plutonium!

10 bucks to your one that we only want that restriction to apply to their breeders.

You're on! We insist that they not have any breeder reactors. We want somebody else to reprocess the spent fuel from LWRs, which are the only reactors we want them to have. It's because we don't trust them, see....

"...claims that individual leaders or individual political performances make a difference leave me, for the most part, unimpressed."

Think again. Individuals do matter. Do you truly think that George W. Bush and Al Gore would have had the same policies?

Bush ratifies Carlyle.

Part of the reason that he played so well is the by-product of our own media and people falling again under the sway of the War Wurlitzer. The demonization campaign builds images of a cartoonish mix of Kruschev, Saddam and Khomeini. So all the guy has to do is come across as somewhat literate and even tempered and people are amazed.

The national security threat posed by Iran is an entirely serious and valid question as was Iraq, but the clown show in this administration and in Washington in general have demonstrated an almost equal contempt for the citizens of this country as our enemies abroad by the ways in which they choose to sell us on military action. Worse, it is a game played by those starting from a position of weakness, and is unnecessary with competent leadership.

I think he's kind of sexy. Posted by Jacqueline at September 22, 2006 08:22 AM

Jacqueline, since you are available and searching, may I forward your comment to Ahmed and ask him if there is a vacancy in his harem?

Entre-nous, I think he is a psychopath, and hope Dan is right about his intestinal problems. Or internal problems. Whatever kills him first.

Concur with Dan. Most of what most politicians say most of the time is, as Huntington, et al., would have argued, sound and fury signifying nothing. The natural hyperventilating of the 24-hour cable news industry has simply been enhanced by an order of magnitude by the uber-hyperventilating blogosphere and comment thread industry.

Here's a fun thing to do. Go to the microfilm storage at your local library. Read the big-think journals and weekly newsmagazines and editorial pages from the late 1940s and early 1950s. For the Weekly Standard substitute the Saturday Evening Post.

The same stuff that's being said about Iran was being said about the USSR and China. Long before those countries were deterrable, they were led by madmen with no regard for human life (especially the Chinese, you know how they are) who would gleefully commit mass suicide for a moment's victory in the sun. Blah-blah-blah dee frickin blah.

So Iran gets nukes. Holy Guadalcanal, Batman; what now?

Hemlock, if iran gets nukes it will be much much harder for us to get up the gumption to invade them.

So if we're going to invade iran we need to do it before they get nukes.

What would be good would be if we could treat it as a limited engagement. If we took the southern iranian oilfields -- the same oilfields Saddam tried to take, that started the iran/iraq war -- and maybe took a big chunk of northern land to give to kurdistan so they could have a port, and signed a peace treaty giving iraq and kurdistan rights to that land, then we'd have really accomplished something.

And we can't possibly do that after iran gets nukes. It has to be now if it's going to happen.

Dan,
I just want to point out this meeting with Ahmadinejad which did convince someone:
http://justworldnews.org/archives/002141.html

OOPS...
that is an important post, but this one talks about meetings with Iran's president and how he convinced people in the meetings:
http://justworldnews.org/archives/002142.html

to quote a key paragraph:
David Culp-- head of the Nuclear Disarmament Program at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, said:
".... For instance, although he starts any discussion by saying that nuclear weapons are immoral, Ahmadinejad also reminded us that the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, which didn’t prevent their government from collapsing. He added that, during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iraq’s alliance with a country with nuclear weapons (presumably he was referring to the United States) didn’t have any impact on the war. He convinced me that Iran is not interested in developing nuclear weapons."

He says a lot more about the meeting...

I think he's pretty hot too...Rebecca