Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's Petty Dictator

I listened to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the National Press Club yesterday.  Ahmadinejad is a politician, so truth and logic do not come easy to him, but his speech showed him to be the fool, I had come to think he is. 

One of the first things he said was the the Iranian people “have lived in friendship and brotherhood with the people of Iraq for hundreds of years.”  I wonder when this period of friendship and brotherhood was.  I guess he was not counting the little disagreeable period that took up most of the 1980s, when an estimated one million Iraqis and Iranians were killed, many through the use of poison gas.  He also seems to have overlooked about 500 years of war during the Ottoman Empire.  Of course, during all the years, there must have been some time when they weren’t fighting. 

He is the head of a nation that executes dissidents, imprisons journalists and academics, stones homosexuals and treats women as property of men.  Undaunted by facts, Ahmadinejad, told his listeners that Iran’s people are the “freest people in the world.”

He even told his audience (actually, I think this was at Columbia University) that in Iran there are no homosexuals.  I guess he thinks they have stoned them all. 

Ahmadinejad did make one or two reasonable points and in fairness I will mention them.  When he was asked about his statement, several years ago, that Israel is an illegal state that should be wiped from the map.  He said that Jews suffered in Europe during WWII and for 60 years they have held Palestinians hostage for their suffering.  He asked why should the Palestinians have to pay for what happened in Europe?  It is a fair question. 

Ahmadinejad was also asked about his previous statement that there is about to be a power vacuum in the Middle East. (He was referring to the U.S. leaving Iraq)  He claimed Iran was ready and able to help fill that vacuum.  In response, Ahmadinejad said that the Middle East is capable of resolving its own problems and that they need no interference from U.S. or European powers.  While, I’m sure Ahmadinejad has no humanitarian motivation here, I think he has a point.  People everywhere do not like to be told by outsiders the kind of government they should have or how they should live. 

When I first heard that Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak in the United States, outside the United Nations, I thought it was a bad idea.  Now I’m convinced that it was a good decision.  We had heard, from our own State Department, that he was (to put it mildly) something of a loose cannon.  Now we have it from his own mouth.  With his own words, he has demonstrated that he is, as Columbia University President, Lee Bollinger, said either “completely uninformed” or a “petty and cruel dictator.”   I think the latter.    

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