Much is being made, in some quarters, of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s congratulating Barack Obama. It’s a big deal, we’re told, because it’s the first time since the Mad Mullahs took over Iran that they’ve congratulated any American president.
Please.
It is an obvious propaganda attempt.
I know what I said in the run-up to the election about Obama and Israel’s enemies. I am now giving him the benefit of the doubt and waiting to see how he acts. You will notice that Obama has yet to say thank you to the Iranian president, who is, when all is said and done, a mouthpiece for the ruling mullahs.
I’ll wait to see what happens before I jump on the “OMG America is DOOOOOOOOOOOMED” wagon.
But here’s an interesting part of the letter that the LA Times quoted, but doesn’t seem to have really read well:
I congratulate you on your success in mustering the majority of votes cast in the presidential elections. You know pretty well that the opportunities God grants to people he has created are short-lived, and they could either serve perfection of mankind and interests of nations or, God forbid, disserve nations. I hope that His Excellency will favor the genuine interests of people and justice over the never-ending demands of a selfish and fallible minority, so that you can seize on this chance in the best manner and leave behind a good legacy.
Gee. I wonder who he’s talking about?
The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.
This is what Borzou Daragahi says that paragraph was about:
Ahmadinejad begins his note with the kind of flowery, somewhat overblown language typical in the Middle East
Either Daraghi is being disingenuous, or he’s not very bright. I’m thinking it’s the former.
Wonder who’s going to be the cat or the mouse in this game that’s started?
And he’s right about the flowery rhetoric. I will in the next couple of weeks be unleashing on the world through Meryl’s website the Bensky Bifucated System of Middle East Analysis, which will explain what some people, unaware of the system, see as anomalies.
One corollary of the BBSMEA is that the most blood-curdling threats are just that quaint Middle Eastern form of discourse. What people like Ahmadinejad really mean is what they whisper to diplomats and media. They don’t really mean that they want to kill all the Jews.
A true multiculturalist would understand this.
When you read Ahmedinajad’s letter, he stops just short of offering the traditional invitation to join Islam given prior to pursuing hostilities when he writes “If steps taken are on the path of God….” Then again, the warning that Ahmedinajad wrote to Bush that America must convert to Islam to avoid war may still be in force, and therefore, no additional such warning is necessary.
chsw