Michael Spies
By now the initial bewilderment caused by Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s infamous letter to President Bush has receded back into the stream of the never-ending news cycle. For those who haven’t taken the time to read it, the synopsis in the media was more or less accurate. On the whole the letter was a meandering theological and philosophical tract, appealing to Bush’s oft-professed monotheistic values, and in essence inviting Bush to see the light and to practice what he preaches. It also contained lengthy diatribes against U.S. foreign policy.
Most commentators in the U.S. were quick to dismiss the letter. While the letter does stray pretty far from the norms of polite, diplomatic correspondence, quick dismissal reveals an unwillingness to understand or to even acknowledge the presence in the world of alternative modes of philosophical, cultural, and political discourse. Coming from most other corners of the world such casual disregard reflects little more than cultural bigotry. Coming from the U.S., in light of its global military and political preeminence, it can reflect a certain imperial hubris.
On the subject of imperialism, I recently heard historian Ervand Abrahamian’s take on the Iran nuclear dispute, framed within the context of Iran’s historical struggles against imperial powers. A professor at the City University of New York, Abrahamian spoke at an over-packed teach-in on April 26 at Judson Church in Manhattan, “Stopping the War Before It Starts: What We Need to Know to Resist A War Against Iran.” The event was sponsored by Action Wednesdays against War. In 2005 Abrahamian wrote a prescient short commentary, “Iran: The Next Target?.” He is currently working on two books for Cambridge University Press, The CIA Coup in Iran and A History of Modern Iran. According to Abrahamian, the heroes in Iranian historiography are those who refused imperialist ultimatums, and therefore it is hard for any Iranian government to submit to such ultimatums.
Indeed, the heroes in the history of modern Iran have been those leaders who stood up to the imperial powers, exemplified by the former Prime Minister Mossadegh, who nationalized the Iranian oil industry in 1951 and was overthrown by the CIA two years later. The villains are those leaders who capitulated, exemplified by the Shah, whom many Iranians viewed as a puppet of the Americans and British.
Regarding the letter, there is a precedent in Iranian and Islamic history for similarly styled correspondences addressed to the major power of the day, inviting their leaders to “see the light”. Before his death, the Prophet Mohammed sent a letter to the emperor of Byzantine and the Shah of Iran inviting them to convert to Islam. The first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, which appears to have been a template for Ahmadinejad’s letter. A New York Times article recently detailed some of the superficial similarities between Ahmadinejad’s letter and Khomeini’s letter, which suggested that the ills of the Soviet Union stemmed from a lack of religion and invited the Soviet leader to convert to Islam.
Ahmadinejad’s letter serves multiple purposes. For domestic Iranian political consumption, by following the tradition of letter writing he is, quite remarkably, seeking to place himself amongst the constellation of Iran’s most revered religious leaders despite his non-clerical background. While such a move might bolster the president’s image and influence within the Islamic militias and clerical factions that are already partial to him, the religious posturing in the letter has likely fallen flat or worse for the more secularized populace and for reform-minded clerics. The letter also represents Ahmadinejad’s attempt to cast himself in the same light as the great nationalist heroes of Iranian history.
Taking into account the context of Iran’s history and culture, the specific content of the letter does not matter as much as that it was sent. Moreover, beyond its function as a piece for domestic consumption, the letter does have potential significance for US-Iranian affairs. As the media has noted, the letter marks the first correspondence between the heads of government of both countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. While the Bush Administration quickly derided the letter for not offering any new proposals regarding the nuclear dispute, it perhaps indicates a willingness to talk. With the specter of impasse at the Security Council looming over the Bush administration’s strategy of adopting a coercive path against Iran, it has never been clearer that diplomacy is the only option. The Bush Administration has unwisely chosen to ignore the letter, but the ball is still in the U.S. court.
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May 19th, 2006 at 10:57 am
US to Iran: You Do Not Exist
When I read the Ahmadi-Najad letter one of the first things that came to mind were the two famous letters sent by Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis once it became clear that the US was considering a strike on Cuba. The first, believed to be written by Khrushchev himself, was personal, emotional and not couched in diplomatic formalisms. The second letter was written in Kremlen-ese, and was obtuse and defensive. Kennedy wisely considered the first letter to be the genuine article and disregarded the second; Robert Kennedy later wrote that the correspondence was key to help defuse the crisis.
Unfortunately instead of Kennedy we have Bush, and the extraordinariness of the Iranian Presidents personal communication was completely lost on this Administration, befogged as it is in the dogma of superpower exceptionalism. The US government cannot even claim to be remotely Orientalist as were the pre-war British; it has not the slightest curiosity or glimmer of interest in comprehending the Iranian position in the current crisis. This is true even within the Kerry-Feinstein DLC cabal within the Democratic Party. It is like watching how Wal-Mart relates to its “associates” in questions of labour benefits, or that gladiator school scene in the movie “Spartacus” where Kirk Douglas asks for extra salad to go with his trout almondine. (What? You don’t remember that part?)
The Ahmadi-Najad letter may be many things, but it is not an ultimatum or solicitation for jihad. Although couched in phraseology no doubt alien to modern diplomatic doublespeak, it was, I believe, an attempt to open a dialogue, culturally and politically. The Administration’s response was a calculated insult, lifting its leg within 24 hours to ostentatiously urinate over the extended hand. Not only are we not interested in talking, we are not interested in understanding or even acknowledging that Iran’s point of view exists.
And now we are full into the downward media spiral aptly documented by Norman Solomon in “War Made Easy.” Even though Iran is years from enriching enough uranium, let alone manufacturing a deliverable bomb, Ahmadi-Najad is a “Hitler the XXIII,”, Iran threatens “national interests,” and the lives of Americans are at stake. A pack of Brooks Brothers-suited ex-Shah flunkies are now being paraded on Fox TV to tell us there is a brewing resistance movement waiting to cast flowers in the path of American soldiers. Let’s all spell: “B-a-y O-f P-i-g-s.”
I continue to hope that the obvious military and political lunacy of US airstrikes, or worse, on Iran will dissuade even the most hard core deskbound conquistadores in Washington. (After reading “Cobra II”, however, I have concluded Rumsfeld, at least, is one truly undeterrable hombre.) Not only will bombs not topple the Tehran government or even moderate its nuclear programs, but such strikes may well induce Iran to intervene in Iraq with disastrous consequences to our thinly spread army-police. If Iraq is our Korea, Iran is China, and 1950 was one bad year.
One wild card, of course, is US domestic politics. The prevailing NYT/WP wisdom seems to be that unless a warren of rabbits issues forth from the White House’s hat and soon, Bush’s control of all of Congress, and hence his Supreme Court 5-4 “mandate”, will disappear after the by-elections in November. One such rabbit is certainly another 9/11, but a patriotic war with Iran may be considered to serve as well. Under this hypothesis, such a war would only have utility if initiated within the next five months or so, so perhaps we should start grabbing our pith helmets.
May 19th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
To me, the most interesting thing about President Ahmadinejad’s letter to George Bush was that he spoke to Bush in terms Bush would understand—had he bothered to read the letter—that is, he wrote as a believer to another believer. They don’t believe the same things, but the manner of the belief makes them more alike than either would care to discover or admit. Each believes that his life is a direct and specific reflection of God’s will and that what he does, the choices he makes for his country cannot be wrong and cannot be questioned because it is a reflection of that divine will.
President Ahmadinejad asks, “Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ, feel obliged to respect human rights, announce one’s opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons—and still have other countries attacked, thousands of people killed…?” The answer, of course, is yes. If you believe that is what God has willed. George Bush could counter, writing a similar letter, asking “Can one be a follower of Mohammed…” and ask if the Islamic faith would allow a Muslim to bind and torture a hostage, for example. And the answer is yes, if you believe that is what Allah requires of you in furtherance of a goal that is only obvious to believers.
These terms and the dialogue in this letter stem from a source recognizable to both presidents—the fundamentalist’s belief in the absolute rightness of his cause, the inevitability that his cause will triumph, that any contradiction in the apparent goal and the means of reaching the goal will ultimately not matter.
They can’t both be right, but they can both be very wrong in ways that could change or destroy the world.