Monday, September 24, 2007

The Moron Conspiracy

We've never been able to buy into the notion that there's a Grand Shadowy Conspiracy of people in charge - that a secret council of Halliburton, Joe Lieberman and the New York Times meet once a week to determine how best to ruin the cause of liberty. Rather, the problem is this: there's no incentive in the power structure for any one agent to act in the cause of liberty, and plenty of incentive not to.

Keep this in mind when reading Iranian President Mohammed Ahmadinejad's remarks at Columbia this past weekend:
Smiling and occasionally laughing as he explained Iran's culture and outlook on the world, Ahmadinejad drew the biggest jeers from students for stating that his country has no homosexuals.

"In Iran we don't have this phenomenon, I don't know who you told this," he exclaimed, while also insisting that Iran was a "victim" of terrorism and not an instigator.

Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel and downplayed the Holocaust, said he was open to meeting survivors of the devastating Nazi pogrom against the Jews.

"But let us remember then where did the Holocaust happen to begin with? It happened in Europe. And given that, why is it that the Palestinian people should be displaced?" he said earlier via satellite to Washington's National Press Club.

[...]

Asked about Iraq, Ahmadinejad again denied Iran was providing advanced weapons to Shiite extremists to use against US troops.

"We think, in fact, the (US) military should seek an answer to its defeat in Iraq elsewhere," he said, insisting Tehran wanted a stable Iraq on its border.
President Ahmadinejad claims that Iran doesn't have any homosexuals (wishful thinking on his part, perhaps); that he doesn't deny the Holocaust but he wants Europe to pay the price for its politics; and that he wants a stable Iraq.

Given all this, can't you imagine an alternate universe in which Iran was seen as an ally by America's most vocal conservatives - the Malkins and the Coulters and the Kaplans and the Ledeens? They want the same things we want! They come from the same Judaic tradition! They're the "good" kind of Muslim, just like the Sunni Shia well, whichever kind the Taliban were when they were helping the U.S. defeat Communism, but not the kind that the Taliban are now.

Why is Iran the next target of the U.S. instead of the next friend in the region? The same reason Pakistan is an ally instead of an enemy: pure coincidence. This is not an ideological battle, no matter what the conservatives tell you. It is the falling out of decades of oil wars, religious extremism and U.S. intervention. Conservatives want war with Iran not because of any deep convictions on their part but because no one's told them different.

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