By PLS
A couple of weeks ago the national temperature reached boiling point as pundits were reacting more or less vehemently to Iranian President Ahmadinajad’s letter to President Bush. The next big noise was over immigration. Who knows what tomorrow's controversy du jour will be? Something else deserving of more thoughtful consideration, no doubt.
I want to return to the Ahmadinejad letter, but let me establish some cultural context before I get out the dissecting knife.
I attended a thrilling recital of Iraqi classical music recently. The performers were superb, Iraqi oudist Rahim AlHaj and Lebanese percussionist Souhail Kaspar. They were presenting material they’d recorded for a soon-to-be-released Smithsonian Folkways CD—look for it!—and, of course, there was human interest patter before each piece.
Rahim AlHaj is married to woman from Syria. “She’s beautiful and she’s in the audience,” he announced, “and she likes to tease me about Iraq and Iraqi music. ‘Syria’s more civilized,’ she says. ‘Our music’s more sophisticated.’ But I put it to her—and you: who invented reading and writing over two thousand years ago?”
I wonder how strenuously the Bush administration pondered the implications of deep pride in one’s ancient heritage, whatever its contemporary disarray, before invading Iraq.
Iran didn’t invent writing, but the ruins of Persepolis are more impressive than anything that will remain of an American city in two thousand and more years. Not that the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran will ever hold a champagne party there as the benighted “Shah” once did, but the ayatollahs aren’t pulverizing the friezes of ancient Persia either.
Iranian culture is the contemporary version of Persian civilization, which clearly inspires pride among modern Iranians. Well-founded self-respect is not a contemptible thing. A healthy psyche needs it. The question is whether, in the case of Ahmadinajad, we’re faced with megalomania.
The first thing I noticed in very slowly reading his letter today is that it assumes a stance of equality with the American president, a posture that can’t please the Texan who considers himself master of the world. Is this megalomania on the Iranian’s part? Well, the population of Iran is around 70 million, while the population of the United Kingdom is only about 60,000,000. Iran has more oil than the UK does, too. Does Tony Blair kowtow in dealing with George Bush? His political enemies insinuate he does worse, but when the PM of the UK calls, the President of the US picks up the phone. Is it any crazier for Ahmedinejad to expect his letter to be read?
Ah, but Ahmadinejad is a condemned man, so far as George Bush is concerned! Why pay attention to the rantings of a prime prospect for regime change?
Because the letter, whose tone was deemed unacceptably obnoxious by Condolezza Rice, may also be an important signal couched in the only language that would be non-suicidal domestically, according to Henry Kissinger. To agree to bilateral discussions might be inappropriate for now, writes Kissinger, but joint negotiations make sense:
On a matter so directly involving its security, the United States should not negotiate through proxies, however closely allied. If America is prepared to negotiate with North Korea over proliferation in the six-party forum and with Iran in Baghdad over Iraqi security, it must be possible to devise a multilateral venue for nuclear talks with Tehran that would permit the United States to participate....Henry Kissinger, like fellow Republican George W. Bush, is going to have to answer for crimes against humanity in the long run, but here he is worth listening to.
The next thing I noticed about the letter is that the critique of the Bush administration’s human rights record isn’t so different from the critique you’ve read in Worldview and elsewhere on the American media scene. Maybe it isn’t conventional for a fellow (and democratically-elected) president to throw this nasty stuff so openly in Bush’s face, but very similar questions about security, torture, corruption and the favoring of the wealthy over the less than wealthy are going to be raised by Democrats in 2006 and 2008.
Of course, there’s grandstanding in Ahmadinejad’s letter, but is it really just demagoguery to ask:
If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health...creation of employment opportunities and production....mediation between disputing states and distinguishing [sic for extinguishing] the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts, where would the would be today? Would not your government and people be justifiably proud? Would not your administration’s political and economic standing have been stronger? And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American governments?
Ouch! Some of this cuts very close to the bone (this passage isn't the worst, either), but it does sound vaguely Koranic, and George Bush, a no less god-ridden type, can hardly claim to have made nicey-nicey to Iran in his widely publicized speeches. So: tit for tat. Where, in all honesty, is the beef? Wouldn’t it have been cleverer by far for the State Department to have sweetly suggested that Iran come up with a realistic program to accomplish all these wonderful things with its oil wealth?
I could go on and on, but I will conclude by throwing the ball into Ahmadinejad’s lap. He speaks of contradictions (as if he were a Marxist) and finds them everywhere in the Bush administration’s conduct and utterances, but I have found a really damning contradiction to lob back at him.
“Mr. President,” he writes,
September Eleven was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world.
Indeed, Mr. President! Why then do you not condemn suicide bombing and other terrorist tactics sponsored by your allies in Hamas and Hezbollah? To say nothing of what your associates may be doing in Iraq.
And so I conclude: there are many infuriating aspects to this letter, but it is also full of material that could be exploited to US advantage. Public diplomacy, where are you when we need you?