Ahmadinejhad is a powerless figurehead and loudmouth who can't direct anyone to do anything.

- - Iokannan in the Well - - Thursday, June 21, 2007 09:15 AM

I'd call him "mostly powerless" since he does have political influence beyond his formal office. But I'm just quibbling.

The way the press covers Iran, most people would think that the word "president" means something, there, that it doesn't really mean.

The commander-in-chief of the military is Supreme Leader Khamenei, but you wouldn't know that from most press coverage.

This point really, really needs to be underscored. A very powerful example of the mindlessness that has taken over our national discourse is the unquestioned assumption that Ahmadinejhad is really in charge of things in Iran, and that his threats amount to a near declaration of war.

Also, echoing so many of our other historically unfortunate experiences with Iran, Ahmadinejhad's current position was itself in large part a result of American meddling -- insisting that the election that put him in office would be fraudulent, we influenced many of Iran's reformers and moderates to boycott the polls, and fittingly ended up with Ahmadinejhad.

A striking yet open fact about Iran is that most Iranians are not anti-American, but generally young, rather modernist, and resistant to the fundamentalism and radicalism of the current power structure and president. In many ways, once you look past the distracting Ahmadinejhad, there is enormous potential to create a rapprochement with Iran somewhat akin to our alliance with Saudi Arabia. Sadly, however, demagogues in each of our countries are steadily making that possibility more and more remote, and our generalizations of and bellicosity toward the entire country of Iran serve only to push otherwise sympathetic Iranians over to the anti-American hardliners and fundamentalists.

In many ways, our relationship and experience with Iran is perfectly representative of just how disastrously irrational, childish, and counterproductive our foreign policy has been for the past several years.

(I have a sick day today and, happily, can comment before the tangents take over)

Machine:

I was going to follow-up with exactly the same sentiment -- that perhaps Bush and Ahmadinejhad have much more in common than they think.

Kitt:

It's good to be here during the topical exchanges. I managed to catch some kind of summer cold, and felt so run down that I had to take today off.

Anonymous:

I never said Iraq did 9/11. The house in the analogy was the Middle East. We are there fighting al Qaida in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There it is in distilled form. It doesn't matter which country or people actually attacked us -- the Mideast is all the same, Saddam is basically just Osama in a beret, attack "them" there so "they" won't attack us here, and on and on.

Glenn:

One irony of the attempt to depict Ahemdinijad as the "Supreme Leader" - even though someone else possess exactly that term -- is that the same people who do that previously were so dismissive and scornful of the office of Iranian President. . . . because it was previously held by a pro-Western reformer, so they continously insisted that the office was a mere sinecure, a powerless and irrelevant symbol wholly subservient to the evil mullahs. Now that someone easy to demonize is in that office, they venerate it as though it`s the equivalent of an Absolute Dictator, and talk about him as though he has unchalleneged and supreme power in Iran.

Yes, very very good point. Just shows, yet again, that to a neoconservative the existence or meaning of facts depends entirely on their utility to the prevailing political goal. Truly breathtaking.

How dare "Anonymous" impugn the most important professor in America and leader of the antiwar majority in America, Ward Churchill? How did he know I get all my thoughts and beliefs from Professor Churchill, the most influential liberal in America?

I am crushed.

Ward Churchill is...

YOUR FATHER

All candidates for president must answer the question most critical to our nation today: "Do you agree with Ward Churchill?!"

Sean Hannity will be the designated person to ask this crucial question.

I'm pleased to see you doing interviews - with a journalist as legendary as Helen Thomas, no less.

I was just thinking tonight, as I watched a replay of Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, we really need to keep a permanent archive of the TV news footage from the period of Oct. 2001 through 2003 (though it hasn't changed significantly since).

We need substantial tape of not only the raw, primary footage, such as press conferences and talking heads, but the introductory graphics and soundtracks as well, unedited and uncut from the rest of the programming. I think those production components of the newscast - particularly cable newscasts - say just as much about the odious stupidity, jingoism, and adolescent thinking of the time.

Several years ago, I traveled to a non-European foreign country - one where TV was not nearly the phenomenon it is in the States. Though I only spent a month there, when I returned I remember being utterly amazed and stupefied at American TV. The commercials, the intros to programming, the returns from commercials, just the whole unbelievably absurd packaging of it all.

Then, in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq, although I had not left the country, I had the exact same sensation from watching American news shows. Even CNN, the ostensible refuge from Fox-like programming, was doing its utmost to hyperventilate over imaginary mushroom clouds, the evils of Saddam, and the glorious virtues of George W. Bush and his sardonic, elderly-yet-virile Secretary of Defense.

Yes, even though I had not left the country, I very suddenly felt like I was in a foreign land indeed.

And, no, the media has not improved much since.

EVERYONE PANIC

(and hypothesize about it incessantly)

These silly Brits, stopping terrorism by fey law enforcement methods.