Comments on: Asking for Trouble

by: diane

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:47:45 +0000

It is sad to see that people don’t consider the US a Democracy any more.
Why not welcome him? Let him experience a free society where people who make bad choices get to be questioned by students in a free and open society?
Does anyone else get the irony that our own president has not or chose not to do the same thing?
Why the hell are we suppose to be spreading democracy in the Middle East if we can’t /will not show a supposed terrorist nation what it looks like?
WHAT DO WE HAVE TO HIDE?????

by: KingGeorgeTheTenth

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 06:44:19 +0000

bravo priscianus jr. couldn’t have said it better myself.

by: priscianus jr

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 04:02:47 +0000

I think the reasoning goes this way: if he goes to Ground Zero he wins, and if he doesn’t, he wins in a different way. Of course, if he goes, we win too. But it’s better we shouldn’t be seen “letting” him win. Even though by us “not letting” him win, he still wins.
What they don’t see is that, by us not letting him, he wins, but WE LOSE in the eyes of the world. We win only for our little group of political hacks — but that’s all that matters in the narrow world of American politics. Diplomacy? They don’t even know how to spell it.

by: Marshall

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:02:19 +0000

Nikita Khrushchev was denied a visit to Disneyland supposedly because it would be a security issue to get him (and his airplane) too close to the missile factories in Southern California, but I heard it was really a tit for tat because of the travel restrictions of our diplomats in the USSR.

I also heard that when Khrushchev was told he was going to Camp David, a remote government facility in the woods far from DC, he got really offended as he thought that it was some sort of quarantine facility, until someone told him it was the President’s personal dacha (an invitation to someone’s dacha is of course a honor in Russia).

by: Peter

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:39:13 +0000

I have one additional thought to add to Mahablog’s great post at http://itsbetterleftsaid.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-agree-with-everything-mahablog-says.html

by: maha

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:10:04 +0000

might already have a pretty good sense of scale for disaster.

(Sigh) I know it’s de rigueur to to dismiss September 11 itself as a minor distraction, but it really was a big deal in its own way.

by: darrelplant

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:50:19 +0000

seeing the place might have given Ahmadinejad a sense of the scale of the disaster than photographs cannot provide

I’d think that someone who lived through the Iran/Iraq war and the bombing and missile campaigns known as the “War of the Cities” and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people might already have a pretty good sense of scale for disaster.

by: KingGeorgeTheTenth

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:35:27 +0000

To Doug Hughes, bravo, my sentiments precisely. Iran was the worlds only predominantly Muslim nation to hold a candle light memorial to the US. Follow this link for photos of that memorial:

http://www.bestirantravel.com/culture/wtc-vigil.html

Since our country in all of our diplomatic ineptitude has no embassy in Tehran they had to march to the US observation office in the Swiss Embassy. If I recall correctly the only videos that got on our network news casts were a bunch of Palestinian refugees dancing in the streets with joy. Not the Persians showing grief.

Prior to the introduction of Islam the Iranian culture had far more similarities to Western cultures than it did to Arabic cultures. For instance, the Iranian language (Farsi or Persian) is a branch of the Indo - European language family, unlike Arabic which is part of the Semitic language family. Zoroastrian, an early Persian religion incorporates a story of a women giving birth to an important boy after bathing in a lake. This is the root of the Virgin Mary story.

My point is that Iranian people are very western - just because their government reflects poorly on them doesn’t mean we should start bombing the shit out of them. I can think of another country where the government does not reflect the will of the people all too well, but we aren’t about to bomb the shit out of ourselves (at least I hope not). The fact we do not try to advertise a positive image of ourselves is crazy - as biggerbox and Doug Hughes have already said, we can only gain from giving Ahmadinejad a good picture of the US.

Remember, the Iranian people are stupendous and LOVE the US. When we call them “evil” we are making enemies out of people who would otherwise be our friends. How does that make any sense?

by: Lynne

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:26:34 +0000

If we can work with North Korea, why not Ahmadinejad? All these suggestions are good; “kill” him with hospitality.

by: Doug Hughes

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 02:35:09 +0000

I accepted an offer to one of those timeshares last year. The facilities were nice; they rolled out the red carpet. It’s damn HARD to say ‘no’. There is a powerful psychology to hospitality.

Ahmadinejad is going to visit New York Great! Roll out the red carpet; show him as much of this country as his agenda allows. Try to find the right person to be his guide, and impress upon him what the USA is, and how it is in his best interests to get along with us. We can hold firm on Israel’s right to exist and our commitment NOT to allow Iran to develop the bomb. Outside of those two items, anything is on the table for negotiation.

But kill him with kindness, hostility won’t frighten him.