CHICAGO TRIBUNE REPORTER PAUL RICHTER WROTE A PIECE ON MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD’S ALLEGED VICTORY IN JUNE 12TH’S IRANIAN ELECTION DECLARING “SETBACK FOR OBAMA OUTREACH TO IRAN .”
TODAY, INDIANA’S (R-6TH) MIKE PENCE POPPED UP ON CNN LAST EVENING DECLARING THAT OBAMA’S SOFT, DIPLOMATIC APPROACH TO IRAN HAS NOT WORKED AND HE MUST COME DOWN HARD ON THE RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD
The Iranian elections held this past week-end gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another four years to irritate the U. S., the Middle East, Europe and millions of his own people who believe him to be a dictator representing only the clerics and the powerful rather than the whole of the Iranian people.
In Iran you do not ascend to the presidency without the consent, or if you will, the approval of the Supreme Leaders of Iran [Ali Kamene]. Article 113 of the Constitution of Iran gives the ultimate power to the Supreme Leader who in turn must approve the election of the president. Prior to the presidency, Ahmadinejad was the mayor of Tehran and governor general of Iran’s Ardabil Province.
He received a PhD in Transportation Engineering and Planning from Iran University of Science and Transportation and his religious orientation is Usuli Twelver Shis Islam, the same branch of Islam espoused by Ayatollah Khomeini..
In other words, Ahmadinejad is a member of Islam’s most conservative wing and at least six American hostages identify Ahmadinejad as one of the students that participated in the capture and detention of 52 members of the U. S. Embassy for 444 days [from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981.
A group of students took over the American embassy to demonstrate their support of the Iranian Revolution initiated by the Grand Ayatollah in Twelver Shi’a Islam who is most widely known for his political writings and preaching which expanded the Shi’a Usuli theory i.e. the “guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority) to include theocratic political rule by Islamic jurists.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini turned Iran into a full blown theocratic state giving all of the power once held in the hands of the Shah to the Supreme Leader.
As history reports, the United States supported Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran on the throne until his health and political unrest in Iran made it necessary for him and the “royal family” to depart.
On November 4, 1964 the Ayatollah’s home in Qom was surrounded by the Shah’s troops, he was arrested and this time taken directly to the airport where he was flown to Turkey. However, Turkish law forbade him from wearing the cloak and turban of the Islamic scholar and he elected to go to Iraq where he remained for thirteen years in the heart the Shiite branch of Islam—Najaf. He returned once again to Iran, but shortly after his returned, he continued to write and preach on behalf of expanding the clerical authority to include matters political and once again his house was surrounded, he was arrested and this time he was flown to Paris where he remained until his return home at the time of the revolution.
Ahmadinejad and Khomeini are members of the same bough of Islam which in the simplest form is referred to today as the Shiites.
From Ahmadinejad’s earliest days in office, he has been a rabble-rouser. Making controversial statements that have aroused the suspicions of his neighbors in the Middle East and all of his critics in the West, the Iranian president is looked upon with great mistrust. For example, early on he declared his desire to drive Israel into the sea which, of course, aroused the ire of his fellow Arabs fully aware of America’s long standing and steadfast commitment to the Jewish state . He believes Israel should be transported to Germany where apparently the great pain that had been thrust upon them took place.
He declares openly that there was no such thing as a holocaust and that six million Jews did not die as a result.
Most recently, his overtly expressed plans to obtain uranium for the purpose of using atomic energy to supply Iran with power has ignited a flurry of anxiety. When a leader such as Ahmadinejad makes irrational comments such as those he has on numerous occasions hurled at Israel relating to the holocaust, it causes the rest of the world to assume that this aggressive drive to harness atomic energy for power also insinuates that that power could easily be translated into atomic energy for the construction of bombs with which he could readily reach and destroy Israel, Europe and in time some parts of the U. S.
I know of no one except the hard line Republicans who even expected that one speech by Obama to the Arab world in Cairo would result in the defeat of Ahmadinejad in last Saturday’s election.
The fact that Richter wrote that this was a setback for Obama’s diplomatic efforts to meet and negotiate with Iran for a better understanding under the aegis that a nation wins more conflicts with honey than hammers, with carrots than sticks-- is absurd. Obama’s diplomatic efforts have yet to begin. More importantly, diplomacy has never been attempted with Iran since prior to the Islamic revolution when the Shah was deposed.
During the Bush administrations, our moralistic midget in the White House decided to divide the world into two groups, those that were for us and those who were again’ us. Bush’s “axis of evil” did more harm to the potential for peace in the world that any other expression of impotent international relations.
He, Cheney, Rice and most hard line Republicans including the entire apparatus established for the purpose of relating to other nations in the world was shackled to this totally misguided and somewhat paranoid philosophy. We all know now, at least those of us who are no longer “blinded by the right” [to borrow the words from David Brock’s book title] have only an inkling of the vast damage this foreign policy has inflicted upon our nation.
Mike Pence wants to go back to the “get tough” days of Bush which were so productive we were alienated from nearly every civilized nation on the planet. Pence is not the brightest man in the Hoosier state (I fervently hope) and surely not the brightest star in the Congress. I only wish he would keep his idiocy to himself. The last thing we need is a repeat of the disaster of the past eight years in foreign policy. Putting on a show of “Getting tough” is the mantra of the weak. It is always the bully in the school yard who cries first when the boy he has bullied smashes him in the nose.
This nation has no appetite for another conflict. Our forces are exhausted; our financial circumstances are dangerously weak. To “get tough” at this juncture would be the behavior of a fool.
And our friend at the Chicago Tribune, Paul Richter is not so naïve as to believe that Obama after just a few months in office was going to reverse the essence of a relationship of alienation between the U. S. and Iran that has festered for nearly thirty years. Diplomacy takes time, but is so more successful than bombs and tanks in the long haul.
I hate it when a newspaper chooses to run a headline designed for no other reason than to draw attention to itself with an exaggeration or an out and out lie.
Only the most absurdly wide-eyed optimist believed for more than one shining moment that one speech, by one man, however oratorically skilled his presentation or profound the ideas his voice conveyed, could bring about a change in the voting habits of a nation steeped in the tradition of the ancient Shiite theocracy.
Ahmadinejad’s victory was not a setback for Obama, it was a setback for Iran. As the streets filled with angry students and supporters of Ahmadinejad’s opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, it quickly became apparent that if Ahmadinejad won 65% of the vote as early reports indicated, the voting officials would have to count the voters fingers and toes.
The Supreme Leader declared the election figures final and so they shall remain unless the students and opposition supporters turn this into a revolution of the bloodiest kind and stand tall and long against the thugs that are being employed to keep the protestors under control with their motorbikes and night sticks.
And now back to diplomacy because we cannot afford to pay the cost of another conflict, and because it is our best hope for a long term resolution to our conflict with this ancient nation.
12:16:49 PM 
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