In an apparent effort to gin up 'reader involvement', Ha'aretz has started putting that garish new "Make Your Point" banner at the top "Make Your Point debates" (memo to Lynn-B: heh). On one hand, we kind of resent the fact that we're supposed to care that "meow" thinks we "HAVE GOT TO LOVE FEIGLIN" or that "Geoff" thinks the Likud equals "No Platform". On the other hand, we like hearing ourselves write, and Ha'aretz is actually asking people to opine on What is truly behind Ahmadinejad's statements?.
Here is our answer: he is crazy. Total batshit crazy. Stalin -ordering-his-scientists-to-create-a-monkey-army crazy. Seriously, that crazy.
Listen. There's a serious point here: people tend to assume that other people are basically like themselves. So it's sometimes difficult to imagine that the people in charge of entire nations can be fundamentally irrational. This mental block has real consequences: for a decade, Yasser Arafat openly declared that he had no intention of ever stopping terrorist attacks on Israel, but international diplomats insisted that just one more concession would make him change his mind. We could be making that point. Instead of making that point, we're spending our time trying to get Google hits on 'monkey army'.