Mere Rhetoric: Things That Are Awesome About The Recent "Don't Worry About the Strange, Nazi-Like Iranian Behind the Curtain" LA Times / CFR Article

Convergence of liberal foreign policy sophistication!

If you think Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes outlandish comments, consider what Mao Tse-tung said to a visiting head of state in 1954: "If someone else can drop an atomic bomb, then I can too. The death of 10 or 20 million people is nothing to be afraid of." Nonetheless, 15 years later, a nuclear-armed China was not only contained by the world, it opted for normalization of relations with its archenemy, the United States. Today, it is fashionable to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler, yet the lesson of the 20th century is that rash leaders can, in fact, be deterred. And Iran's president will prove no exception.

How awesome is this article? This awesome:

(1) Let's assume that Ray Takeyh from the Council on Foreign Relations is right. You'd think that newspapers would still be loathe to publish him, since the CFR feted and strengthed Ahmadinejad, the modern-day wannabe Hitler, last month. But the LA Times never misses a chance to tell Americans that radical Islam is nothing to worry about. Which leads directly to...

(2) The LA Times knows its constituency. It's like USA Today for liberal sophisticates: with the exception of what the Bush administration is doing, their readers want to know that EVERYTHING IS OK. Nothing to worry about folks: everyone can go back to their cocktail party, name-and-country-dropping lifestyles. And bagging a real-life sophisticate from a real-life thinktank? Bonus!

(3) Please explain why the following two paragraphs are reasons for optimism. Actually, here's an even easier task: explain in what world they could ever make sense. Because our reading of it is "liberal sophisticates like the writer have consistently hoped that engagement with Iranian leaders would moderate the regime, but instead it's gotten worse and now the lunatics are running the asylum - and these same liberal sophisticates want to continue with another decade of the same":

Remember that Ahmadinejad's comments are not even unique in the context of Iranian discourse. In 2001, the former Iranian president and putative moderate, Hashemi Rafsanjani, declared that although Israel would be destroyed by an atomic bomb, the Islamic world would only be damaged by one and therefore "such a scenario is not inconceivable." Nevertheless, four years later, when Rafsanjani was running for president, Washington and its European allies were eagerly hoping that he would win. Ahmadinejad is considered nutty in the United States because of his denial of the Holocaust — but that's nothing new in the Islamic Republic either. The foremost ruler of the country, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has declared: "There are documents showing close collaboration of Zionists with Nazi Germany, and exaggerated numbers relating to the Jewish Holocaust were fabricated to lay the groundwork for the occupation of Palestine and to justify the atrocities of the Zionists." Yet today, it is quietly hoped in Washington that Khamenei will be the one to restrain the intemperate Ahmadinejad.

(4) The fundamental assumption of this article is insanely and transparently flawed:

All this suggests that in dealing with Iran, American officials have historically discounted its bluster and paid attention to its actual conduct. And they were right to do so. Khamenei and Rafsanjani, despite their irresponsible assertions and pernicious support for a variety of terrorist organizations, have pursued a relatively pragmatic foreign policy that has sought to eschew direct confrontation with the U.S. and Israel. Ahmadinejad's behavior suggests continuity with his predecessors: incendiary rhetoric and restrained conduct.

Do we really have to point out that the difference between past Iranian regimes and the current one is that THIS ONE IS MORE TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED. Germans nationalists were blustering military adventurists when they were being thrown in jail for failed coups during Weimar - that didn't make them less dangerous ONCE THEY DEVELOPED NEW MILITARY TECHNOLOGY. That's the entire point of the "Ahmadinejad = Hitler" comparison: Hitler said the exact same things when he was in jail writing Mein Kampf as he said when he was the leader of Germany. The difference between the two situations is that letting him cultivate power meant the deaths of millions - because, having declared his intentions, he then followed through on them. How mind-bendingly obvious is this? How could anyone arrange words into the form of an argument on the basis of any other assumption? Like, did he think that nobody would notice that this is a relevant difference?

We're sorry that the CFR is feeling bad about having buoyed Ahmadinejad's genocidal spirits - but we don't think that it's appropriate for them to try to fool the American public into appeasing Iran just so nobody will notice their mistake.

Previously: AbbaGav's Inspired Description of Ahmadinejad, Even 40 Years Ago, Anti-Zionism was Already Anti-Semitism,
Uhh, That's Treason

UPDATE: Incidentally, re:

So then, why has Ahmadinejad persisted in his contemptible denials of the Holocaust and his repeated calls for the eradication of Israel if, in fact, they are more bluster than anything else? As a cagey politician, Ahmadinejad appreciates that his incendiary denunciations actually enhance his popularity in the Middle East.

See our extensive The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics:

Center-left foreign policy experts aren't evil, they're just wrong. They're creatures of bureaucratic and educational institutions that are invested in interpreting rather straightforward events in specialist terms that aren't at all appropriate for the context of the Middle East. So Ahmadinejad's speeches that Israel should be wiped off the map are understood in these foreign policy circles as power grabs by domestic Iranian hardliners rather than as declarations that Ahmadinejad will nuke Israel just as soon as he can. Now of course, many experts will concede that it's both - but then they go right on suggesting policy on the basis of this 'sophisticated' insight rather than on the obvious understanding that anyone can take away from the speech (because if you based policy on what everyone can see, why would we need experts?)

This is what we're talking about

UPDATE 2: Enough with the Goodwin's Law emails. The only thing dumber than comparing someone to Hitler when it doesn't make any sense is denying a comparison to Hitler when it makes frightening sense.

UPDATE 3: The original headline for this post implied (err... "said") that the article was from this morning. It is not.