Josh Marshall, Liberal Sophisticate: Conservatives Should "Grow Up" About Ahmadinejad's Desecration Of Ground Zero
Oh Josh Marshall. We liked you better when you were filling TPM with vague hints from mysterious sources about how a major Plamegate arrest was just around the corner. That was at least somewhat original. This nonsense is just so tired:
Everything's a potential teaching moment for these people. Because liberal feting of Ahmadinejad - always in the context of "forcing himself to justify himself" - have been so wildly successful. Their unblinking conceit would be worth dwelling on if it wasn't so overshadowed by their pathetic excuses for their spinelessness.
The nonsense about pretending that Ground Zero is only "about" 9/11 is either intentionally myopic or mindbogglingly obtuse. This is like having to untangle a particularly dense philosophy of science undergraduate. Ground Zero is a symbol of a tragedy that the American nation suffered. Symbols mean more than just their limited, time-bound origins. That's what it means for one thing to stand for something else. Rhetorical theorists call it metonymy, but non-academics can understand it as "not denying something that's so obvious that 7 year olds know it instinctively." For instance, when Saddam Hussein made hatred of the US and Israel routine by having kids walk on US and Israeli flags...
... would Marshall have told outraged conservatives to "grow up" because those are just tiles? After the jump, what the "problem exactly" is.
The "problem exactly" is not that Ahmadinejad is the head of the world's most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism or that he's a Holocaust denying piece of filth that only a leftist academic or the oh-so-objective media establishment could find fascinating. Although, you know, those should not exactly be irrelevant considerations.
The problem is that Ahmadinejad's is our enemy and he wants to desecrate our hallowed ground with a repulsive show of faked sympathy. No nation should be expected to fete the leaders of terrorists and enemy soldiers. To suggest otherwise about oneself is a breathtaking admission of self-hatred. To suggest otherwise about a friend is a staggering insult. We know that Israel gets pressured by the left all the time to negotiate with intransigent terrorists. But that's also kind of our point.
The left really, really wants Iran not to be a threat. They want to continue their demonstrably idiotic engagement. They want to be able to tell themselves that their sophisticated insistence on differences that don't make a difference are anything but thin self-justifications of abject appeasement.
But Ahmadinejad is obviously an unrepentant genocidal lunatic. So at first liberals tried pretending that he has no power. Except the short list for the next Supreme Leader of Iran reads as follows: Ahmadinejad, one of Ahmadinejad's equally genocidal toadies, or Rafsanjani. So in the absence of any good argument for why Iran isn't an irrational rogue regime led by a genocidal lunatic, the left puts its fingers its their ears and simply goes on acting as if Ahmadinejad is anything but what he is - a President who denies the first Holocaust even as he prepares a second one.
How hard is this? Ground Zero is hallowed American ground, and Ahmadinejad is an enemy of America. Don't these people have any pride left? Or is pride also a virtue that we're going to have to give up in order to live in the international left's multiculturalist global utopia? Excuse us. In the international left's sophisticated multiculturalist global utopia.
References:
* Grow Up [TPM]
* Memo To Diplomatic Sophisticates: Ahmadinejad Did Not Get The Part Where You Meeting With Him and Being Nice To Him Was A 'Criticism' [MR]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics [MR]
* Things That Are Awesome About The Recent "Don't Worry About the Strange, Nazi-Like Iranian Behind the Curtain" LA Times / CFR Article [MR]
* Los Angeles Times Dishonest about Pentagon-Funded Report, Recommends Israel Disarm [MR]
Previously:
* MR Has A Question For Democratic Jews: Are You Fucking Retarded?
* Take Away Hezbollah's Collaborators, Human Shields, And Useful Idiots. Disband UNIFIL Now.
* Juan Cole - Fraud
