Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Ahmadinejad's letter

Articulate Dad points to the English translation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to our President. I'm sure it will be the talk of the blogosphere, so here's my own (brief, as I have little time for blogging) take on it.

Ahmadinejad is trying to convince the President to abandon Iraq and let Iran alone by appealing to two things: Christian justice and the domestic responsibility of leaders. In other words, he is drawing on the Administration's own emphases -- religion, faith, "unitary" (aka monarchical) executive authority -- to argue that Bush should admit (what so many of his supporters seem to think) that internationalist secular liberal democracy has failed, concentrate on a return to a more religious, nation-centered, illiberal government, and leave him to do the same.

It's brilliant, in that sociopathic way great rhetoric by dangerous men often is....

shouldn't need saying, but...: The Ahmadinejad letter is basically one long non sequitur to the matters at hand, and I hope the administration (and everyone else) will treat it as such. I also, to be fair, should admit that the theocratic, monarchic impulse of the Bush administration is still just an impulse of an Administration, not a fundamental premise of the state, and I hope that the Administration will take a good look at the mirror being held up to it by Iran (not by the letter's text, but by the subtext commonality of interests and principles in the letter) and take a step or two in the direction of internationalist, secular, liberal democracy....

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