Yo! Mahmoud! Shoot Yourself In The Foot Again?

The Geek is a dedicated maven of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  This is not simply because the once upon a time traffic engineer is amusing.  No, the Geek dotes on every piece of spittle which froths forth from the mouth of the Orator-in-Chief because he is a very dangerous man who fronts for an even more dangerous assemblage of clerical authoritarians.

The danger Ahmadinejad embodies is comprised in equal measure of Iranian ambitions, the Iranian nuclear project(s), the Iranian connection with the almost as unsettling regime in Pyongyang, and the eschatological not to say apocalyptic visions of the Return of the Hidden Imam which permeate the regime and its most avid supporters.

Among all the threats facing the US and the rest of the civilized world, (threats which have increased almost geometrically while the current administration has wrung its collective hands in dismay over the failure of peace to break out everywhere upon the arrival of the New Guy In the Oval,) Ahmadinejad's Iran holds the pride of place.  It is number one.  It surpasses even the unstable and formidably out of touch bunch in Pyongyang.  It is a more immediate danger than the one posed by the Gnomes of Beijing.  Compared to the impending danger from Tehran, even the most grotesque perils of anthropogenic climate change are reduced to insignificance.

This explains why the Geek was alarmed by Ahmadinejad's behavior during the opening days of his most recent American Tour.  In his appearance on Larry King Live as in his numerous interviews with members of the MSM, the Iranian president gave an unsettling appearance of rationality, of calm poise, of being a reasonable man representing a reasonable government, of being firmly committed to diplomatic negotiation in good faith with the members of the P5+1 on the vexing nuclear question.  To his alarm the Geek even found his head nodding in agreement with much that the Orator-in-Chief was peddling.

"What is wrong here?" The Geek muttered to the flat screen before him.  "Where is the usual World According to Mahmoud distortions of what most see as the consensual agreed upon objective reality?"

Finally, came the main event, the Speech.  That is the set piece address to the General Assembly.  The jewel which has always crowned Ahmadinejad's trips into fantasyland.  The Geek's worry level increased markedly when the opening lines were cut from the same charm offensive cloth as the remarks earlier in the week.

Then--Allah be praised!--Ahmadinejad fell back to type.  He delivered himself of the roster of tired, long disproved conspiracy theories regarding the mass murder of 9/11.  Not only did he pin the tail of culpability on the US government, he compounded his offense against reality by asserting that "most people" in the US and around the world believed that to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The amazing thing about the General Assembly audience was not the departure of the delegations from thirty civilized states but rather that anyone stayed after the Orator-in-Chief delivered his (quite evidently) favorite interpretation of 9/11--that the Americans did it to save their crumbling economy and provide a necessary boost to the "Zionist regime."  The Geek could not but wonder just how any person of even average intelligence and ethical integrity could remain and grant a respectful ear to the rumblings of a man functioning in a state of politically motivated delusion.

Sure, one could excuse the continued presence of men representing majority Muslim states.  Religious solidarity must take precedence over mere bagatelles such as the truth.  But the others?  The delegations from countries such as Russia and China, whose diplomatic understanding and support has been cultivated so assiduously by the Obama administration?  What was their reasoning?  Or was their continued presence simply a strong indicator that their governments were closer in alignment with Tehran than with Washington?  Perhaps they were of the view that President Obama's American was not so much a weak horse than a dead one?

President Ahmadinejad's jaunt into 9/11 denial, like his well established position as the world champ of Holocaust deniers, could be interpreted as an exercise in bunkum--a ploy meant to play well back home particularly with the extreme hardliners who have been eviscerating the president in recent weeks.  That view is not impossible, merely improbable.

The improbability of the most charitable explanation for Ahmadinejad's charging off the I'm-so-rational reservation has been underscored by his full-throated defense of his accusation in later press conferences.  Not only did he issue a demand for an "impartial" UN conducted "truth commission," he had the chutzpah to assert that not only did the people of the world deserve this, so also did We the People as it has been the American public which has borne the costs of the wars predicated on 9/11.  It is evident Mr Ahmadinejad believes his performance deserves adulation and not the calumny it has received.

The real deal is simply the Iranian president and both his government and the clerics in charge have been and will continue to tell their narrative in their way.  This was the case with his rendition of the conspiracy theory of 9/11.  It was the case with the companion campaign in which Ahmadinejad as well as the turbaned lads back home equated the execution of a woman by the state of Virginia with the so far not carried out death by stoning sentence passed on an Iranian woman.  It has been and will be the case with all the words expended by Iranian "statesmen" regarding their nuclear program.

The Iranian clerics and their governmental front, now epitomized by Ahmadinejad, have raised the fine art of lying in support of governmental policy to heights previously undreamed of.  Neither the Nazis nor the Kremlin Communists came close to the achievements of Iran in the area of bald prevarication in the interests of state.

The Iranians have enjoyed a fair measure of success from incorporating the technique of the Really, Really Big Lie in their policy arsenal.  Ahmadinejad and the others have correctly judged what various audiences acutally want to hear, wish to believe, and have tailored their propaganda to fit this cloth.

Consider this.  Muslim, particularly Arabs, have wanted to believe that their fellows could not have committed the atrocities of 9/11.  As early as the day after the slaughters, more than one Arab was quoted as saying something along the lines of, "Americans or the Jews had to have done it.  No Arab could get it together well enough to pull off an attack of this size."  Badda-bing, Ahmadinejad's version of history is ever so acceptable to individuals of such a mindset.

Indeed, the Ahmadinejad linkage of an attack fabricated or facilitated by the US or an Israeli-US agreement being used to justify falsely the waging of war on innocent Muslims plays very well not only with Muslims but with a wide swath of opinion throughout the world, even in portions of Western Europe.  In short, the seemingly outrageous jobbing of a conspiracy theory at the UN was a carefully calculated exercise in public diplomacy.  So also were the later explanations coupled with the call for a new Goldstone Panel, this time with the US as the designated bad guy.

While it is true that the Ahmadinejad speech made him no converts in the US and may even have hardened attitudes within We the People, it was nonetheless a success from the Iranian point of view.  It can be argued that had the Orator-in-Chief continued his charm offensive, his come-let-us-reason-together message, it might have paid off in the US or even in Western Europe.  That we will never know.  Instead, the president opted to continue to write-off the American people in favor of gaining more and stronger support elsewhere.

At nightfall, the fact remains that Ahmadinejad, in either his rational or nutter form, is a very dangerous man.  And the government of which he is nominal head to say nothing of the clerics in the background are the most dangerous men on Earth for We the People and others fortunate enough to live in civilized states.  That is something upon which we all must get a grip.

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