Mad Mahmoud is No Laughing Matter to the Oppressed of Iran
Ezra Klein says of Ahmadinejad at Columbia:
He’s not being feared. He’s being laughed at. Imagine how the Iranian people feel seeing these clips (and they’re seeing them). Imagine how the rest of the Iranian government feels being made to look so foolish — and all for this jester’s dreams of personal aggrandizement.
The Bush administration has long upheld that our best weapons against Iran are our unwillingness to speak with them and the threat of bombing. They’ve failed. But our willingness to expose Ahmadinejad to the risks of free ands public speech, combined with YouTube, may prove to be far more potent.
Guess what? That’s not how it’s being played back home in Iran. And that’s where Mad Mahmoud’s speech really mattered.
So Klein’s satisfied that Iranians are are going to see this so-called humiliation on YouTube? Well, the Iranian government just closed down the web site of a newspaper that was critical of Ahmadinejad. He shut down the print part of the newspaper back in April. Iranians can’t keep one of their own web sites up and running. Does he really think that YouTube video is going to sweep across Iran? If he does, I’ve got some lefthanded smoke shifters to sell him. Cheap.
See, here’s the thing that Klein and a whole lot of others who are downplaying mad Mahmoud’s visit just don’t get. There are kids taking a beating every single day from Ahmadinejad’s goons, getting tossed into prison, and being tortured – real torture and not that pansy waterboarding crap that our shrieking eels call torture. What on Earth must they think when the one country who’s even given them the faintest glimmer of hope that they won’t have to live in a gutter of Islamism the rest of their lives if they just keep fighting turns and gives their most visible oppressor the chance to score a propaganda coup in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty?
Those folks who are willing to bleed and die for just a little more freedom are looking at us. They need our help. They don’t need us to send in soldiers or to knock off a couple mullahs. They just need us to take their side where the whole world can see us. They need us to stand up to Mad Mahmoud and cross our hands over our chest and be stubborn in refusing him even the smallest bit of legitimacy because every time we do, their hope dies just a little bit more. Like it or not, we are still the beacon of freedom to a whole host of people. Like it or not, they practically beg us to speak for them when they can not. Like it or not, they need us to stop acting like the man who spends every day killing a few more of them is worthy of the rights they are dying for every day.
Klein may be content to sit and laugh at Mad Mahmoud. In Iran, the students, women, and gays fighting for their very lives don’t find him a laughing matter at all.
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Category: Featured, No More Tyrants
Did you ask them personally if they resent this "legitimization", or do you just read their minds? You know, the worlds is not always what you think it was.
The leftist students that are fighting Ahmadinejad in Iran would certainly relate more to the leftist students mocking him in the American university than to the "freedom-loving" Bush or Rick "anal sex is just like bestiality" Santorum.
Rick Santorum? What does…
Oh…you don't actually have a point. You just want to bash the religious right for a while. Gotcha. Okay, go do that somewhere else.
Rick Santorum was one of the most vocal right-wing senators on the Iran issue. Do you think Iranian oppressed people like gays cared much for the support of a guy who wanted to outlaw gay activity in US?
My point is, you don't care a bit about Iranian people and their real feelings, they are important for you only as a talking point to trash liberals with. The idea that extreme "war is only solution" attitudes towards Iran only help mullahcracy suppress opposition must have never occurred to you. Even if it did, you're probably able to rationalize it into "liberals are evil" somehow, just as you try to justify "Ahmadinejad speaking to American students is the end of the world" position even as the extreme stupidity of it is now obvious to everyone.
Well your point, which I had to read more than once to actually get your point is ridiculous. This is typical talk from a liberal trying to throw the argument in a different direction. It's always "you're trying to trash liberals, you mean poopyhead". Grow the fuck up and try taking those blinders off your eyes.
"real torture and not that pansy waterboarding crap that our shrieking eels call torture"
Water boarding is one of the most extreme forms of torture (er.. enhanced interrogation). The Khmer Rouge used only on the most difficult of subjects, as do we. It is far more serious than beatings, amputations, and electrocution. To say this is a "pansy" technique is ludicrous. It is also an interesting admission: by claiming that waterboarding (and, presumable lesser forms of 'interrogation') is not torture you are essentially saying that the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, and the Japanese committed NO acts of torture. And you are claiming that our soldiers (John McCain, etc) who had to endure such techniques are 'pansies' for claiming they were tortured. I'd be interested to know what Iran does that would constitute torture if techniques such as waterboarding are not to be considered torture. The article you linked to is silent on that issue, probably because Iran's forms of torture are similar to ours.