Here’s the New York Times first read of the letter I discuss below:
The 18-page letter, whose text was made available to The New York Times by United Nations diplomats on Tuesday, did not offer any concrete proposals for dealing with the crisis, but suggested that the United States give up its liberal, democratic, secular system and turn more toward religion.
The question is, of course, which one?
I’m not locked into the interpretation that Ahmadinejad’s letter proposes that Bush convert to Islam – but there’s a clear reading that certainly suggests it, and I’m interested in the fact that the question appears nowhere in the Times article.
The NYT is a dhimmi publication, paying the “jizya”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi/ by not being overly critical of Islam.
And having been the target of Muslim “evandgelism”, they consider Christians who recognize the Trinity as polytheists.
Also, a way around the Blogger problem is to get a page at “My Space”:http://www.myspace.com/ and link it to your blog on Blogger, as I have done. I hope it works…
> I’m not locked into the interpretation that Ahmadinejad’s letter proposes that Bush convert to Islam
I missed that–it would imply that Ahmedinejad was stoopid or naive, and he wasn’t. The letter is advertising, not a geniune effort to start up communication or persuade Bush of anything. My read is that the audience isn’t Bush at all. It’s a message for Western leftists, the Western media, nationalist/patriotic Iranians, and sympathetic Muslims. Most of the talking points speak to more than one of these groups.
* Bush is a phony as judged by his own belief system.
* Bush’s initiatives in the Mideast are all failures.
* 100,000 dead in Iraq, no WMDs, quagmire, etc.
* Iran is focused on education and advancement.
* Our technology is peaceful.
* Can’t we all just get along?
* And so on.
I mean, if the President of Iraq is reaching out like this, there must be some merit in is proposals, right? Shouldn’t the U.S. at least try diplomacy? Shouldn’t Bush listen to the Wise Men urging him to use this opportunity for peace and understanding?
Ignorant and telegenic chat show host Matt Lauer’s covered these points quite nicely this morning on NBC Today, in his hard-hittin’ interview of Condoleeza Rice. The propaganda value of that one segment was easily worth the cost of a stamp.
Powerline’s take is that the letter is reaching out to Christians and Jews and taking a “what would Jesus do” or what would “Moses do” with regard to the situations in which Iran has a grievance. References to Jesus and Moses are followed with “peace be upon him”, seemingly elevating Jesus and Moses to the level of the Prophet of Islam, suggesting an interest in a dialog where a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim could be equal partners.
LGF’s take is that the letter is “your last chance to convert to the one true faith (Islam)” before we are going to wage holy war against you, and Charles Johnson is reading it as a warning that a series of terrorist strikes are planned.
My take is that it is a rambling screed that doesn’t even rise to the level of a missive from Mr. Bin Laden, or at least the early Bin Laden before he starting mixing in all of the liberal-left shiboleths. The old Bin Laden had a kind of consistent medieval world view while the Iran letter is all over the place.
The thing that strikes me the most is the low maturity level — I would rate/grade it somewhere around the 6th grade in terms of its understanding of issues.
I just cant get over the fact that the first half of this letter could have easilly been written by Nancy Pelosi (or written for her anyway). We see again the common ground that the far left and the Islamo-fascists have: belief that the West is an abject failure, belief that democracy has been undermined and hence proved problematic, belief that a small elite group should run the show (whether inspired by Allah or Gaia), and of course the hatred of Bush as a murdering, bumbling, criminal who has accomplished no good.
Now the second half of the letter offers the appeasement minded left a way out. Hey, we _dont_ have any proof Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Lawfully they _do_ have the right to pursue these weapons. The West _has_ forced Irans hand. So long as you don’t think of all the hypocracy and dangerous equivalence rife in this thought process, you are good to go… and the modern left is expert in ignoring those things.
And today we see the Euros offering trade incentives to Iran just to return to the table for more talky talky. Hardly shocking. Nobody said Ahmadinejad was dumb. We scoff because his letter is irrational and doesnt appeal to logic. We shouldnt scoff, because the people it is aimed at arent interested in logic, they are interested in a face saving way to back down. And it may be working.
I wrote this somewhere else, but these inquiries should also be brought up here:
Just by reading the letter it is clear that the objective of the message was not intended to spur reapproachment. I’m not even sure if it was intended to sincerely guide President Bush. It seems that the only viable alternatives are: 1) either it is intended to mock the US president and point out inconsistencies in his policy and faith, or 2) intended to articulate Ahmadinejad’s policy position to the Western word, by which the letter was simply intended to fan the media. I’m inclined to believe in the latter position then the former, although both objectives clearly could have been in mind. One could also take the position of the State Department that Ahmadinejad is open about Iran’s policies in a way Khatami wasn’t. But that doesn’t really resolve why Ahmadinejad would go out of his way to send a letter to the US president and make such a big deal out of it.
Is this president simply seeking to get attention? Did other government officials, particularly Khamanei, know about the letter before it was sent. Just by the way the letter seems to be written it doesn’t seem as if many different people worked on it before it was released. If anything, I think one could make a very strong argument that this letter is symbolic of how independent Ahmadinejad is trying to become or has become from the rest of the conservative establishment. Along with his ruling to allow women to join sporting events, this seems like a highly maverick move from the seemingly “conservatively controlled” president. I wonder how much Ahmadinejad’s apparant pushes against the conservatives is real and how much of it is orchestrated…
Well, if Christians, Jews, and Muslims can be equal partners in all of this, then I don’t see any real obstacle for Iran to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to open diplomatic relations with Israel.
I think that would be a small token of Ahmadinejad’s sincirity.
I’m not locked into the interpretation that Ahmadinejad’s letter proposes that Bush convert to Islam – but there’s a clear reading that certainly suggests it, and I’m interested in the fact that the question appears nowhere in the Times article.
As I mentioned in a comment to the previous post, Ahmadinejad may be just going through the motions of asking Bush to convert himself and/or America to Islam (even knowing as well as you and I do that that won’t happen) before waging jihad in earnest, because that’s what is expected of a Muslim leader under Ahmadinejad’s reading of Islamic law.
As for the NYT article, it doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out which religion Ahmadinejad has in mind. Come on, could he really be expected to call on the U.S. to “give up its liberal, democratic, secular system” in favor of an overtly Christianist one? The most remarkable thing about the NYT article is that they even saw fit to bring up the religious-conversion thing at all. For the MSM’s flagship outlet to even tacitly acknowledge that our enemies are, in fact, motivated by a religious imperative to expand their rule may, at long last, be the final killing blow to the tired old “poverty and desperation” meme hawked by terror apologists on the Left.
“For the MSM’s flagship outlet to even tacitly acknowledge that our enemies are, in fact, motivated by a religious imperative to expand their rule may, at long last, be the final killing blow to the tired old “poverty and desperation” meme hawked by terror apologists on the Left.”
Wanna bet? 🙂
From what I’ve read, the Iranian revolutionaries detest the idea of secret communications with the U.S. I think it goes back to the outrage over Iran/Contra deal, but I understand that a number of discussions over the years, even over minor issues, have been skirted for fear of this principle. I’ve not seen this discussed, except a mention in yesterday’s “BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4754161.stm that “some hardline papers criticised the letter, saying its contents should not have been kept secret.”
I wonder if Ahmedinejad has a foot outside the reservation and what this might mean.
Ahmedinejad is a puppet that was intentionally selected because he has a loud mouth. In true Douglas Adams style: “the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.”
But like Zaphod Beeblebrox proved, the problem with cyphers is sometimes the stop being cyphers and seize real power at a critical moment. I dont know if that is happening here but its an interesting thought. More likely the Mullahs are just pleased that this kind of thing creates more sound and fury and buys them more time.
I don’t really know how sincere the letter is, but I think of it as a public demonstration that Iran has called America to the faith. This call to faith (dawa) is a necessary first step in dealing with the infidel. If the infidel does not heed the call, then it will be necessary to compel him to submit (Islam = “submission”). I think we have received similar appeals from bin Laden.
JihadWatch.org should have plenty of material on this, but I don’t their the site has a search function.
I mean, if the President of Iraq is reaching out like this, there must be some merit in is proposals, right?
I presume you mean the President of Iran, AMac? (Yeah, I’m a nitpicky sort. ;>)
Has any one noticed how the rhetoric in that silly letter written by the Iranian president is similar to the rhetoric of the Anti-war leftists and lunatics?
This month marks the anniversary of Muhammad’s letters to all leaders of the world to announce his new religion and his new book (Koran). His letter to the King of Persia, Khosrow Parivz , is legendary in the Iranian history. Khosro Parviz does not want anyone to claim the mind of his subjects and thus tears down Mohammad’s letter, which simply had advised him to accept Islam as a religion. There is an eerie similarity between what this letter signifies and the Arabs on the brink of invading Persia. Ahmadinejad think the US is in a decline as an empire as well.Is this at all any different from Mohammad’s famous letter to Khosro Parviz? In case of the Persian empire, the empire fell ultimately due to a lack of resolve despite their prosperity and superior armies.
From the NY Sun:
President Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush, widely interpreted as a peaceful overture, is in fact a declaration of war. The key sentence in the letter is the closing salutation. In an eight-page text of the letter being circulated by the Council on Foreign Relations, it is left untranslated and rendered as “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda.” What this means is “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.”
It is a phrase with historical significance in Islam, for, according to Islamic tradition, in year six of the Hejira – the late 620s – the prophet Mohammad sent letters to the Byzantine emperor and the Sassanid emperor telling them to convert to the true faith of Islam or be conquered. The letters included the same phrase that President Ahmadinejad used to conclude his letter to Mr. Bush. For Mohammad, the letters were a prelude to a Muslim offensive, a war launched for the purpose of imposing Islamic rule over infidels.
http://www.nysun.com/article/32594
Achillea #12:
Iran not Iraq, right. But it looks like Ahmedinejad has gone and obsoleted my thoughts in #2. “He says”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008605.php he was inviting Bush to join the one true faith, and who am I to argue?
Christians, Jews, and Muslims recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and being open to diplomatic relations with Israel is like the red sea parting…it will be an act of god and not one brought about by the bush administration.
I disagree with Paul. I do believe that there are christians and jews that pray for peace and it is the extremists (Zionists/Shiites) that will dies to never have that day come about.