http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II26Ak01.html
THE ROVING EYE
'Hitler' does New York
By Pepe Escobar
CBS reporter: But the American people, sir, believe that your country
[Iran] is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must
have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many
Americans.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad: Well, I'm amazed. How can you speak for the
whole of the American nation? You are representing the media and you're a
reporter. The American nation
is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over
there.
The new "Hitler", at least for a while, has lodged in a prosaic midtown
Manhattan hotel. Contrary to a plethora of demonizing myths, this Persian
werewolf did not evade his abode to eat kids for breakfast in Central Park.
Instead, he turned on a carefully calibrated public relations charm
offensive. Whatever his polemical views, for a now-seasoned head of state
like Ahmadinejad to turn astonishing US disinformation on Iran, the Middle
East and US foreign policy for his own advantage ended up as a string of
slam-dunks.
Articulate, evasive, manipulative, the Iranian president - even lost in
translation - was especially skillful in turning US corporate media's
hysteria upside down consistently to paint those in the administration of
President George W Bush as incorrigible warmongers. Both at the National
Press Club, via video-conference, and live at Columbia University,
Ahmadinejad even had the luxury of joking about fabled Western "freedom of
information" - as so many are still "trying to prevent people from
talking".
He scored major points among the target audience that really matters:
worldwide Muslim public opinion. Contrasting with a plethora of corrupt
Arab leaders, Ahmadinejad has been carefully positioning himself as a
Muslim folk hero capable of standing up to Western arrogance and defending
the rights of the weak (the Palestinians). The way he deflected US ire on
the enemy's own turf will only add to his standing.
At the United Nations this week, a remix of 2002 couldn't be more
inevitable: it's the same soundtrack of tortuous diplomacy with the bongos
and congas and special effects of war beefing up the background. By going
on preemptive public relations, Ahmadinejad was clever enough not to commit
the same mistake of the previous, "invisible" Hitler, Saddam Hussein.
He was also clever in preempting ear-splitting rumors of a next war: "Talk
about war is basically a propaganda tool." One of his key points may not
have made an impact in the US, but resonated widely around the world, and
not only in the Muslim street: "We oppose the way the US government tries
to rule the world"; there are "more humane methods of establishing peace".
He assured that no Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, adding that
"regional countries in the Middle East don't need outside interference".
On uranium enrichment, he repeatedly stressed that it is Iran's right, as a
member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to conduct a "legal" and
"peaceful" nuclear program. "Why should a nation depend on another?" But if
the US would engage in peace talks, so would Iran: "International law is
equal to everyone." As for the US and France, they "are not the world" - a
reference to both the Bush administration's and the French saber-rattling.
"France is a very cultured society, it would not support war." Humanitarian
imperialist French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was summarily brushed
aside: he needs to attain "higher maturity".
On Israel, Ahmadinejad said, "We do not recognize a regime based on
discrimination, occupation and expansionism," and he said that country
"last week attacked Syria and last year attacked Lebanon"; pretty much what
most of the Middle East agrees with. He may have granted that the Holocaust
did take place, but the world needs "more research on it". The Holocaust is
not his main point: it always serves as an intro to one of his key themes -
why should the Palestinians pay the price for something that happened in
Europe? He said he wanted a "clear" answer. No one deigned to provide it.
To put in perspective the Iranian hostage crisis in the early days of the
Islamic Revolution in 1979, he said one would need to "go back to US
intervention in Iran since 1953". His hosts preferred to change the
subject. Humming non-stop in the background noise was the "wipe Israel of
the map" myth. No one had the intellectual decency to point out that what
he really said, in Farsi, in a speech on October 2005 to an annual
anti-Zionist conference in Iran, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem
must vanish from the page of time". He was doing no more than quoting the
late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - hoping that an unfair (toward Palestine)
regime would be replaced by another one more equitable; he was not
threatening to nuke Israel. Warmongers anyway don't bother to check the
facts.
You've got to change your evil ways
US corporate media's treatment of the new "Hitler" seemed to have been
scripted by the same ghostwriter lodged in the same (White) House. On 60
Minutes, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was firing on all
cylinders for a casus belli - from "There's no doubt Iran is providing the
IEDs" (improvised explosive devices, in Iraq) to "Why don't you just stop
denying that you're building a nuclear bomb?" Ahmadinejad was bemused, to
say the least. CNN for its part could not resist proclaiming, "His state
even sponsors terrorism ... in some cases even against US troops in Iraq."
Ahmadinejad succinctly unveiled to the Associated Press the
reasons for so much warmongering - in a way that even a kid would
understand: "I believe that some of the talk in this regard arises first of
all from anger. Secondly, it serves the electoral purposes domestically in
this country. Third, it serves as a cover for policy failures over Iraq."
An even more appalling measure of Western arrogance - also speaking volumes
about "us" when confronted with the incomprehensible "other" - is the
diatribe with which the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger,
chose to "greet" his guest, a head of state. Bollinger, supposedly an
academic, spoke about confronting "the mind of evil". His crass behavior
got him 15 minutes of fame. Were President Bush to be greeted in the same
manner in any university in the developing world - and motives would abound
also to qualify him as a "cruel, petty dictator" - the Pentagon would have
instantly switched to let's-bomb-them-with-democracy mode.
Ahmadinejad, to his credit, played it cool. Stressing, in a quirky fashion,
his "academic" credentials, he unleashed a poetic rant on "science as a
divine gift" just to plunge once again into the Palestinian tragedy. He
stressed how Iran "is friendly with the Jewish people" - which is a fact
(at least 30,000 Jews live undisturbed in Iran). Then back to the key
point: Why are the Palestinians paying the price for something they had
nothing to do with? Iran has a "humanitarian proposal" to solve the problem
- a referendum where Palestinians would choose their own political destiny.
In the absence of informed debate, Ahmadinejad stressed his points the way
he wanted to. Iran does not need a nuclear bomb. Iran does not want to
manufacture a nuclear bomb. But telling other countries what they can and
cannot do is another matter entirely. He is more than aware that the
nuclear dossier is "a political issue" - a question of "two or three powers
who think they can monopolize science and knowledge". It's up to a
sovereign Iran to decide whether it needs nuclear fuel. "Why should we need
fuel from you? You don't even give us spare parts for aircraft."
He also stressed that Iran is a victim of terrorism - a reference to the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a micro-terrorist group by any other name, formerly
protected by Saddam, now supported by the Bush administration; but he was
also referring to destabilizing black ops by US special forces in the
strategically crucial provinces of Khuzestan and Balochistan.
Ahmadinejad was not questioned in detail on internal repression,
intimidation of independent journalists, what his Interior Ministry is up
to, from a crackdown on women not wearing the veil properly to more
sinister, unsubstantiated "collaboration with America" charges. When
executions were mentioned, he quipped, "Don't you have capital punishment
in the US?" - and defended them on the ground that these were drug
smugglers.
Nobody questioned him on his disastrous economic policies, on the
competence of his ministers, on an embryonic pact between Iran and Saudi
Arabia to prevent another war in the Middle East, on the upcoming, pivotal
summit of the Caspian littoral states in Tehran where Ahmadinejad, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Vladimir Putin will discuss
what happens next - from technical aspects of Iran's nuclear program to
Bush's warmongering impetus. Anyway, Ahmadinejad made it clear: Iran is
"ready to negotiate with all countries". The same could not be said about
the Bush White House.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would have liked this UN General Assembly
to discuss seriously climate change and the looming water wars. But nobody
- not even diplomats - is really paying attention. It's all about Bush
against the "new Hitler". Gaza is being collectively punished, and Tony
"invade Iraq" Blair bleats platitudes about "peace". About 100,000 brave
monks are in the streets of Yangon defying Myanmar's military junta - and
the UN is not even listening ("Bring democracy to the Burmese people,"
anyone?). It's just war, war, war.
New Yorkers may have shown the new "Hitler" a very ugly face, but at least
they should know the war remix's hard sell is not dubbed in Farsi.
---
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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