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Tag(s): Bush Enemy Of Human Rights; Bush GW; Bush Liar-in-Chief; Crimes Against Humanity; Genocide; History; Holocaust; Israelis; Middle East Conflict Israel Palestine Le; Palestinian Homeland; (more...) People Ahmadinejad M; People Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; People Saddam Hussein (less...)
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October 20, 2007 at 00:48:20

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President AhmaBUSHnejad

by Curt Day Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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The mass deportation and death based on ethnicity was undeniable. In both cases, world leaders fight against the use of derogatory labels to describe these events. In both cases, these same world leaders employ a post-modern way of reasoning--that is an unwanted conclusion implies that a statement must be false. So in the face of incontrovertible evidence, how can President Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust and why is President Bush squeamish about calling the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire genocide?

Earlier in the year, we experienced the lunacy of President Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust. The reasoning behind such a denial is quite understandable. The Holocaust has been illegitimately used to justify Israel’s harsh occupation against the Palestinians. Part of this occupation includes confiscation of land, imprisoning and torturing people, robbing and denying use of basic resources such as water, and according to some Israelis, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes with the residents still inside. Israel’s B’Tselem website (http://www.btselem.org/English/) documents some of the inequity that is being forced on the Palestinians and it does so without mincing words about the evils of Arab terrorism against Israel. Thus, one way of undermining the reasoning used to inflict such suffering is to deny the basis for that reasoning. According to President Ahmadinejad, if the Holocaust is used to justify Israel’s horrific treatment of the Palestinians, then the Holocaust could not have occurred. So though President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial is despicable, we can see the rationality behind it. But little does he know that when he sacrifices the truth about the Holocaust for a legitimate concern for the Palestinians, his efforts to help become counterproductive.

But how different is Ahmadinejad’s genocidal denial different from President Bush’s refusal to call the mass killings of Armenians by the Turks in the early 20th century genocide? Like the Jews in Europe during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the Armenians were driven from their homes and sent to their deaths. Even President Bush accepts the historicity of the suffering of the Armenian people (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/1339254). But the possible ramifications have tempered President Bush’s response to this suffering. These ramifications include Turkey’s cooperation in the War on Iraq and the War on Terror. In addition, we are now seeing Turkey place 60,000 troops along its Iraqi border in response to the resolution.

Who is to blame for Turkey’s response? President Bush and his followers would like to point the finger at the Houser Foreign Affairs Committee. After all, if they had not passed their resolution, Turkey would not have thrown a tantrum. But isn’t that line of reasoning the same as blaming a child for being abused because if the child had not upset their monster parent, the parent would not have been abusive?

Does the abuse model fit here? Consider Turkey’s actions as of late. Turkey has been severely persecuting its Kurdish population. Turkey has been killing thousands, driving many from their homes, and either imprisoning or exiling its critics. This is not the Ottoman Empire of the early 20th century; it is today’s Turkey. And we have been quietly supporting all of this since the 1990s (http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19990405.htm, http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20030301.htm).

Two lessons should be apparent here for President Bush. First, both mincing words and denying reality for expediency’s sake carries with it unwanted consequences. For example, consider our immediate response to Saddamn Hussein’s initial use of WMDs. It was tepid because Saddamn was an ally in a troubled Middle East. So instead of calling him a monster, we referred to him as a moderate--that is until he invaded Kuwait.

Or think of the “Freedom Fighters” we helped in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. We knew what kind of people we were dealing with and yet we supported them because of expediency—these fighters provided a way of bleeding the Soviet Union to collapse.

Second, unless President Bush wants to become more like a nemesis, which in this case would be President Ahmadinejad, he should be honest with the past rather than opportunistic or utilitarian. At this point, we should note the difference in Presidents Ahmadinejad's and Bush's messages. In President Ahmadinejad’s case, he denies history in order to defend an oppressed people. In President Bush’s case, he minces words about history to protect abusive powers that currently serve us. And yet, what these Presidents have in common is to deny or revise history for gain.

So rather than criticizing the resolution passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, President Bush should be praising it. By doing so, he would be placing principle over partisanship which would stand in contrast to President Ahmadinejad’s treatment of history.

Curt Day is a religious flaming fundamentalist and a political extreme moderate. Curt's blogs are at http://flamingfundamentalist.blogspot.com/ and http://extrememoderate.blogtownhall.com

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2 comments

I'm 61 years old, fear the computer even though I am stuck before the screen. I fear cyber-hacking by the government or vigilantes. Few activists know where each other live or even meet. So mail, email, phone calls and cyberbills secretively not paid, would leave most in cyber dark, even physical dark, if the electric bill were marked unpaid.

Ron Paul understands freedom best, and gets young people to be activists. Obama and Huckebee realize that al Qiada specifically is a threa...

to see more of bio, click on member name
RichardKaneI'm 61 years old, fear the computer even though I am stuck before the screen. I fear cyber-hacking by the government or vigilantes. Few activists know where each other live or even meet. So mail, email, phone calls and cyberbills secretively not paid, would leave most in cyber dark, even physical dark, if the electric bill were marked unpaid.

Ron Paul understands freedom best, and gets young people to be activists. Obama and Huckebee realize that al Qiada specifically is a threa...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Amazingly insightful comparison

I noticed something very different about Curt Day’s comments. Curt actually referring to what Bush and Ahmadinejad said, not talking at them like most other commentary and in part seemed actually to be trying to talk to them. Glancing through Curt’s past postings, he seems unaware that he sees people as they are, while those around him see mostly caricatures.

Anyway, Cheney has been clamoring for an invasion of Iran for two years now. Cheney originally urging President Bush to stop putting off the invasion of Iraq, might have also been to use Iraq as stepping stone for invading Iran.

President Bush, without expiation has been quietly avoiding invading Iran. Meanwhile Powell and Tenor were chased away by Cheney. There was an effort to chase Condoleezza Rice as well. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times Newspaper had big headlines trying to get Condoleezza fired, with hints that Cheney concerned. [ http://alternet.org/blogs/themix/39513/ scrawl down to second article].

I know Cindy Sheehan actually tried to meet with the President and change his mind on Iraq during the first weeks of her efforts, only gradually starting to talk at, rather than to, the President.

When someone says no, you get them in the habit of repeating the no, if you keep asking. So I avoided letters to Bush, but my faxes to Condoleezza never got answered. I dreamed that Jimmy Carter would have actually tried to meet with Bush to change his mind instead of joining everyone else in talking at the President. Maybe Jimmy, at first, did try to meet Bush and isn’t talking about it.

At several points such as with the Nuclear Missile transport, incident, several military leaders committed civil disobedience at least to the point of talking about the incident. But basically, day in and day out Cheney says invade Iran now, and Bush answers, let’s wait a little longer. Can’t others join me in trying to talk sense into Bush or is there something everyone else sees and I don’t?

Others please join me or explain to me why I’m wasting my time. More comment in my blog

RichardKanePA . . .
RamblingsFromTheHornetsNest.blogspot.com/

by RichardKane (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 29 comments) on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 3:02:17 PM

Concerned citizen for Peace & Sustainability
Advocating IMMEDIATE DUAL IMPEACHMENT Hearings:
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STAND UP WITH Rep Dennis Kucinich

HR 1234, A 12 Point Plan- Out of Iraq ASAP
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to Preserve, Protect & Sustain Well Being Itself,
and begin to restore and empower the Good
of anything and everything e...

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G AchinConcerned citizen for Peace & Sustainability
Advocating IMMEDIATE DUAL IMPEACHMENT Hearings:
--Special Session NOW, for HR 1258 & HR 333--
STAND UP WITH Rep Dennis Kucinich

HR 1234, A 12 Point Plan- Out of Iraq ASAP
With Principled Best Interests of & For ALL

--As THE Greatest Most URGENT Needs if we are
to Preserve, Protect & Sustain Well Being Itself,
and begin to restore and empower the Good
of anything and everything e...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Much is a problem of transliteration

Most of what has been reportedly "said" by the Iranian Pres. has been SO transliterated that what comes to us in "English" really no longer communicates anything relevant to what he actually said. He has not SAID, the holocaust never happened, neither has he intimated that it never happened. He HAS said that it happened 60 years ago and is not a valid excuse for having become perpetrators, nor as an exemption from international Law, Human Rights, Human Decency, etc...., and THIS is why he has spoken up those words that get transliterated into "denying the holocaust". He has seen through time Israel using it for comitting malevolence with a chronic obsession. He has a strong desire for real, honest, non-taboo laden DISCUSSION to begin as a means of reaching an honest starting point for seeking Peace in the Middle East with Decency, Human Rights and Freedom of democratic self-rule for the Palestinians; an end to their protracted and long suffering so brutally applied and enforced by the Israeli Regime and cult of violence.

When he spoke of Israel in the manner transliterated as "cease to exist" this was far removed from what he was actually saying. He was quoting the Old Ayatollah, and speaking as Persians do in the more indirect and poetically nuanced form, as had the Ayatollah when he first made the statement, long ago. The translation of MEANING would have stated something more like "vanish from the pages of time". This, in reference to the present Iraeli government being impermanent, and some day would pass, like as one author put it, as has apartheid government in Africa. It is THEN that perhaps the Palestinians may be allowed to have basic rights and justice, it is THEN that Peace may become possible, with a referendum of the People of Palestine.

As for the Armenians, this is also missing some very pertinent details in all the reporting from MSM sources. The problem is that hardly anyone knows anything about Turkey, Iran, Persions, the PKK terrorists, etc., so it is quite easy for MSM to leave out these pertinent details and have no one the wiser. Hardly anyone would even know what questioning SHOULD be applied!

Turkey is NOT the Ottoman Empire. That empire was demolished at the end of WW1, and indeed, Iraq is part of what resulted from carving up the Ottoman Empire. It was brutal and indeed needed "to vanish from the pages of time"! The "massacre" did not happen all of a sudden one day and some of the great number of Armenian people (as well as citizens of what is now Turkey) who were killed were, in fact, more connected with the war itself than even the Ottoman Empire, per se. Don't get me wrong, NOTHING excuses the killing, whether it is Native Americans, Jews, Gypsies, more than a million Iraqis, Phillipinos, Darfur Villagers and farmers, or peaceful protestors in Burma, etc., etc., etc....... This is a terrible habit of "man's inhumanity to man", definitely something humanity needs to stop doing to itself, or being complicit by sitting silently by while the killing goes on.

The massacre of Armenians referred to lately occurred at the hands of the brutal Ottoman Empire BEFORE Turkey came into existence. Attaturk presided over a total restructuring of Turkish society, even setting things up for the military to have the constitutional duty to intervene if there is any slide toward anything like what existed during the empire, or, toward state religionism, or corpratocracy. Turkey did not commit the Armenian massacre because Turkey did not exist when the massacre took place. Turkey came into being as it did BECAUSE of such brutality that was suffered by any who were even "disfavored" by the Ottomans.

<> The problem of the Kurds is a very complicated one. This is a very simplified short version. There is an armed and radical terrorist group of Kurds referred to as the PKK who bomb and slaughter people in Ankara, Istanbul and other places around Turkey, then dash back across the border into the northern portion of the Kurdish territory in Iraq where they are based. The Iraqi Kurds have continued to allow them to have their bases, training grounds, camps, etc., in their autonomous Kurdish territory, unmolested. The US has refused to handle this problem, and the attacks by the PKK, (officially designated as a violent, murderous terrorist group by the US and many other countries, I believe also the UN) have been stepped up lately, killing and badly injuring many people in Turkey as well as causing much other damage to buildings and infrastructure. The Turkish Parliament recently voted overwhelmingly to allow their army to cross the Iraqi border in pursuit of these terrorists when they have committed heinous acts of mass murder bombings in Turkey. What else are they to do? AT least THEY have good, real reason for their military to enter Iraq.....

Whenever anything that was originally presented in Arabic or Persian, including so called "Al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" videos, is reported in English, it would be best to go check with Juan Cole at informedcomment to see what the translation SHOULD have conveyed. You can bet that whatever MSM is reporting will give a lie to the intended words, and ESPECIALLY when the US and Corporatocracy are motivated to demonize Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians, Muslims in general, massacring Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Persian.... These languages cannot be translated literally, straight across, word for word. The manner of speaking has evolved from ancient customs of thousands of years of civilization. The "indirect" subltleties and poetically rendered phraseologies are totally alien to Western Societies, and especially the American fast food, shop until you drop, culture. This is something that has to be experienced to be able to even relate to it, much less understand it. Juan Cole is very competent in this regard. You can trust translations presented on his site, but certainly NOT anything MSM has said they said, in English. Some words mean totally different things according to the gestures, the tilt of the head, the sing-song of the inflection, or the order in which they appeared in the poetical phrasing.

I spoke Turkish when I was a child, and though I have lost it long since for lack of use, I remember the feel of it and the nuances. I truly enjoyed the expressiveness of the language.

(-:G

http://www.zianet.com/XLexcel/OHBOY.html

MAKE WAR OBSOLETE

by G Achin (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 76 comments) on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 7:12:22 PM