Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Is Counting On You to Be Gullible

August 2, 2009

The Iranian people deserve our unqualified support. The Chinese people in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had the West’s unequivocal support when protesting the corrupt and tyrannical regime in Beijing, and similarly, we should now extend our support to the Iranians who dare to defy the idiot cabal in Tehran.

 

The fact is that these Iranian protesters cannot ever be praised enough for their service to the cause of freedom and to the hopes of the world. They obviously face the possibility of death and ruined lives, yet they are there, facing down evil, facing down a lying regime. They wish for a return to secularism, as exiled Iranian journalist Amir Taheri (The Persian Night) has written, and the elimination of the current, illegitimate, Nazi-style, Communist-style, government.

I remember that the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran while I was in college here in California, and I had made some friends coincidently among the Iranian students. I prided myself on being the only one who did, for some reason. But they all hated the shah, and wished for his removal. It was a given among them all. I was somewhat sympathetic to their complaints of his repression, but was also wary of this wave of radicalism. They were so sure that he was the worst possible person on Earth. I can still remember some of them dimly, and I can still remember that many of them were very nice people. Some of the males simply ignored me and endured my presence, but some others would discuss things with me. They would always shake my hand when I arrived at the table in the university cafeteria where we hung out, and they would always offer me a smoke before partaking themselves. The women were always gracious. I remember talking to one young woman about Jean-Paul Sartre, of all people. She thought he was a bit gloomy, and of course she nailed it. I was a nobody, then as now, so it couldn’t have been calculated on their part. They must be in their early fifties by now, as I am, but I hope they’re as idealistic about the current revolution as they were about that other one in ‘79, and are consequently disgusted with the legacy of Khomeini.

 

It’s inspiring to know that someone cares about truth, and will not flinch, whatever the cost. There is no moral ambiguity here. The regime in Tehran is not only buffoonish, it is dangerous and satanic. It has imprisoned the nation of Iran, and strikes out viciously against those Iranians who would attempt to unshackle their nation from the iron grip of malice. Alarmingly, this depraved, ugly govenment in Tehran has dedicated itself to acquiring offensive nuclear weapons, hiding behind the dual ruses of purported civilian use, on the one hand, and of moral equivalence, on the other, as if possessing WMD is a civil rights issue.

 

Furthermore, this gang in Iran hosts conferences committed to eliminating the existence of Israel, so that that splendid country could no longer contribute so richly to world culture, and so that the endless, futile, insane, bankrupt assertion of the Arabs, that Palestine’s misery is not imposed by the autocratic despotisms of Araby, will emerge victorious.

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pure evil, and a pure liar. Make no mistake: he poses as a normal head-of-state, concealing the totalitarian ambitions of the regime. He is counting on the West to be gullible, and thereby to believe his infamous statements, or to foolishly counsel him against them, as if totalitarian regimes can turn back. The world is largely ignorant of the inner nature of totalitariansim, and thus gives currency and legitimacy to it unwittingly. Such totalitarian regimes have taken steps into crime from which one can never return to the normal world. It’s forever, folks. Counseling ain’t gonna work. It is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is the truly illegitimate one now, in the horrific, unbelievable tradition of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Che Guevara (etc, unfortunately).

But we can hope that Iran may be freed, and that that nation may rise above the catastrophe that befell it three decades ago, when the grisly, murderous revolution of Khomeini took place. And may those friends I made back then not be so ensconced by now in that horrible, sick cabal of Ahmadinejad’s administration, that they can’t find their way out. I hope they will be free. I hope Iran and my long-ago friends will be free.