OK, here’s an interesting update on the meaning of the letter (from the Iranian “Islamic Republic News Agency”):
President says his letter to President Bush was invitation to Islam
Jakarta, May 11, IRNAIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday that his letter to President George W. Bush did not concern the nuclear dossier, but rather was an invitation to Islam and the prophets culture.
He made the above remarks in reply to a reporter while attending press conference on his letter to President Bush in Jakarta in the afternoon of the third day of his stay in Jakarta.
Again, I’d love it if some Farsi speakers could go look and give their sense of this in the original.
As it sits here, it kinda amplifies the point I saw in the translation, though.
Here’s what reads to me a like a crux phrase: when he says “And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him; this is the right path. Marium.” it seems clear that he’s calling on Bush to serve Allah – not to join in a mutual worship of their respective single Gods.
We await the apologies and retractions from those who insisted, in defiance of all contextual and historical evidence and common sense, that the letter was an ecumenical call that was all about respect for other monotheistic religions.
Joe,
I think Charles at LGF has it right.
This is a Muslim declaration of war.
An Islamic Declaration of War.
BTW Osama does these too.
The da’wa interpretation puts a different light on “this recent article”:http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=4722 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, about Iran’s “Judgement Day” plans for terror attacks aimed at the US. “Kirk Sowell”:http://www.arabworldanalysis.com/blog/ says that Al-Sharq al-Awsat is at or near the top of Arabic newspapers in terms of reliability.
My opinion is the same as M. Simon’s on this. I think Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has it right.
From the New York Sun (link) via Little Green Footballs (link):
Iran Declares War
New York Sun Editorial
May 11, 2006
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.
This is like a serial killer who compulsively does a little ritual before each killing. Iran is reaching for the – nuclear – weapon – and babbling the magic phrase.
They really shouldn’t give away their intentions like this, or in the other ways they’ve been making themselves clear, but they have to, it’s a compulsion, and it’s too much fun for them even to want to stop.
I’d bet good money Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was smiling to himself when he put the magic phrase in there.
However, when IRNA gets around to quoting Ahmadinejad, the quote doesn’t support the gloss:
Since he’s already stated that “All divine religions share and respect one word and that is ‘monotheism'”, and listed “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph [and] Jesus Christ” among the prophets, this is still pan-Abrahamic not Islam-specific language.
Certainly the whole of the IRNA article deserves consideration, if only because the authors are presumably seeking to toe the Iranian government line; but as with a Western newspaper, where the gloss and the direct quote differ, I’d go with the quote not the gloss.
. . . the point I saw in the translation . . . he’s calling on Bush to serve Allah – not to join in a mutual worship of their respective single Gods
Since it’s standard Islamic doctrine that Christians already worship Allah, the same god as Muslims do, there is no point here.
AMac: While the Asharq article contains many interesting details, it’s not news that Iran would seek counterplay around Western Asia in the event of a U.S. attack on their homeland.
Re Robert Spencer’s and Charles Johnson et al.’s speculations about supposed Iranian war hunger: It’s an open secret that U.S. surveillance planes and special forces have been invading Iranian airspace over the past couple of years. If Iran’s that keen to fight, it’s been passing up a perfectly good causa belli for many months now.
Robert McDougall,
this is still pan-Abrahamic not Islam-specific language
Right. And did you know that there was no famine in the Ukraine in the ’30s? Really! I read it in the NY Times, so it MUST be true!
Your argument is based on a favorable interpretation of the ravings of a lunatic. Are you sure you really want to crawl out on that very thin and very crowded limb?
HA #7:
Often, Robert McDougall does not appear to be overwhelmed by the virtues of ‘the West’ or of the U.S. in particular, but he reads texts closely and usually accurately. My interpretation of the linked IRNA article matches that of A.L., but McDougall is correct in that his interpretation is also supported by the text of that piece. It would be interesting to find a more complete and direct account of what Ahmedinejad said to the Indonesian students; I looked without success. Perhaps, somewhere, there is a Farsi transcript.
Amac,
but McDougall is correct in that his interpretation is also supported by the text of that piece
That’s absurd. His call to Islam is explicit:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday that his letter to President George W. Bush did not concern the nuclear dossier, but rather was an invitation to Islam and the prophets culture.
As is his threat:
“The letter was an invitation to monotheism and justice, which are common to all divine prophets. If the call is responded positively, there will be no more problems to be solved,” added the president.
The president said that the letter actually contained a clear message of invitation to human beliefs, adding that its response will determine the future.
And finally, above all, the stakes:
Stressing that the letter was beyond the nuclear issue, the chief executive said that in principle, the country’s nuclear case is not so significant to make him write a letter about it.
“We act according to laws and our activities are quite clear. We are rather intent on solving more fundamental global matters.
In order to arrive at Robert’s interpretation, you have to ignore the explicit, unambiguous statements in the release, and employ extremely dubious semantic sophistry. Furthermore, you have to disregard 1400 years of historical and theological context. The text is explicit, and the context is clear. This is a call to Islam and an ultimatum. If Bush fails to respond positively, Iran will wage Jihad in pursuit of global Islamic domination as is called for in the Quran and Sharia law.
Don’t say we weren’t warned. We ignore this warning at our peril.
Robert is wrong. Robert’s reading on this is due to a very superficial understanding of Islam.
It’s only in the most general of senses that Muslims believe that Jews/Christians believe in the same God they do. When you get down to particulars though they do not.
Muslims believe that Christianity is a polytheist religion. that Christians have elevated the prophet Jesus to godhood and thus have given Allah a peer. That is why Monotheism is mentioned in Iran’s letter… They’re using the West’s ignorance of the finer distinctions within Islam to simulataneously call Christian’s infidils while having Christians beleive the message is one of support.
The President of Iran in that letter was telling Bush to drop the error of the Trinity and get back to the fundamentals of monotheism… Islam.
While Islam tips its wretched hat to the precusors religions of Judiasm and Christianity it certainly is not in communion with them, do not mistake thier attempts of cooption.
This letter is a declaration of war.
I agree with James – the reference to “monotheism” in the letter was a very deliberate call to abandon the “polytheist” doctrine of the Trinity. In other words, it was a call to abandon Christianity and accept Islam, a precursor to war. Now the question is, what is the next step for Ahmadinejad – demanding payment of the tax? Or would that be too obvious?
One interesting issue regarding the letter is the extent to which it seems designed to answer two needs in Ahmadinejad’s twisted mind: first, the need for the believer to follow Allah’s command by inviting the infidel to accept Islam before attacking him, and second the need to avoid signalling to the infidel that he is about to be attacked. The believer must be able to tell himself that he offered the opportunity to convert before attacking – but it is of less interest whether the infidel understood what he was being offered. In other words, the believer here is just covering his butt, so he words things in such a way that he knows what the message means even if the infidel doesn’t.
But, of course, this may just be the view of a Westerner – to Ahmadinejad, the invitation to Islam in the letter may seem obvious; he may think that we will understand it the way he intends it.
I have read that before declaring war on a nation, the Koran requires the infidel to be invited to convert. For that reason, I would not rule out that in the circumlocution of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture, the ‘letter’ was in fact, an invitation. At one point he asks Bush ‘won’t you join’ or words to that effect. It doesn’t change a whole lot knowing that but I would not see the letter as a peace offering. Rather as someone has pointed out, Charles Johnson at LGF probably has it right.
If Bush were to commission somebody to write a letter for him in response, wouldn’t it make sense to, somewhere in that letter, ask for clarification about this point?
Something along the lines of:
“Some amerioans who are not muslims but who claim to be outside experts on islam say that your letter was an ultimatum, that the hidden meaning was that you will start a war in the near future unless we all immediately convert to islam. Others say that you expressed friendship and solidarity with other people of the book. Pleas clarify your meaning for us, since this is an important point that affects everything else you wrote.”
If he says he didn’t intend an ultimatum then that becomes true because he claims it. If he says he did then it comes out of his mouth, a vastly more credible source than Little Green Footballs. And if he fudges and hedges, then that comes out of his mouth too.
Nothing to lose by asking.
J. Thomas,
That’s funny. I’d say over 25 years of ongoing proxy, Iranian Intelligence efforts, and G*d knows what other secret efforts against the US and our interests, terrorist attacks, Hezbollah, etc. would be all the answer we’d need.
Unless you mean that he’s saying: Okay. No really, I won’t hit you any more or hurt you in any way if you just surrender. Now.
Dadmanly, we have had even more years of attacks against iran. We strongly supported the Shah, for example. I haven’t seen proof that we encouraged Saddam to invade iran, but it’s certainly plausible we might have. We strongly supported Saddam in his war against iran. When the war started to spill over into attacks on shipping in the Gulf we sent in the Navy to protect iraqi (and other) shipping — we were glad for them to kill each other while it kept oil prices down, but we’d puniwh either side if they interfered with the tankers carrying our oil. Etc.
You can call all that stuff war if you want to, but it was more like tit-for-tat. Neither side excalated it all that far.
You can call what we’ve done for the last 25 years war if you want to. But if Bush actually does start another war you’ll see the difference.
_we have had even more years of attacks against iran. We strongly supported the Shah, for example._
I don’t understand a moral universe in which military and economic cooperation with a foreign leader is the equivalent of repeated *attacks* on the country.
A couple of relevant links.
Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty has “an independent translation of Ahmedinejad’s letter.”:http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/05/86bca318-830e-4826-854b-002d7fdd3679.html
The closing salutation (presumably “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda”) is rendered as
bq. Peace to him who follows the rightfully guided.
Cf. David Blue’s comment #4, above
bq. Peace only unto those who follow the true path.
Dr. Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of political science at Tehran University, “remarks,”:http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/05/f3a344e2-77d4-4ffa-83d3-aed646b4bd88.html “The letter can be likened either to the letter by Imam Khomeini to Gorbachev [inviting Gorbachev to embrace Islam] or, if you have a stronger imagination, it can be likened to the letters written by Prophet Muhammad to the Roman emperors and other emperors of his time to invite them to [convert to] Islam.”
At “Asia Times,”:http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE13Ak01.html long time American left-wing activist Gareth Porter quotes mullah-sympathetic academics, and describes the U.S./Iran standoff as the consequence of aggressive neocons rebuffing sincere Iranians and forcing them to respond defensively.
PD Shaw, I can understand how you might have trouble with that idea, starting from a simple black-and-white understanding of the world.
Here’s a clue that might help you imagine it. What if it was military assistance to the Quisling regime in norway. Can you see that this might be considered an attack on norway? I’m not saying that norway under Quisling was the same as iran under the Shah. But is this enough to help you imagine the concept?
Sometimes iranians say that the CIA taught the Sha’s secret police torture methods. I tend to doubt that we had anything to teach them about torture, more likely the teaching all went the other direction. But iranians who opposed the Shah — today’s aging leadership — would surely think of that as an attack against their country. Far more than a little aid to Hezbollah would be an attack on the USA.
In the end, no matter who drops what bomb on whom, a certain set of people will conclude that the US in general, and Bush in particular, will have been responsible. The attempts to find syntactical cover for the Iranian President’s da’wa are merely practicing pre-emptive ass-covering.
So What? We have been at war with Iran since 1979. The good news is that we have forward bases in Afghanistan and Iraq now.
AMac:
Thanks for the kind words. I must insist though that I have the utmost respect for the virtues of the West; I just wish the current U.S. leadership better exemplified them.
HA (#8):
You say “[Ahmadinejad’s] call to Islam is explicit,” but the only explicit mention of Islam you cite is from some IRNA reporter not from Ahmadinejad. You say his threat is explicit but cite no explicit threat. You complain of “extremely dubious semantic sophistry” but provide no basis for that claim. You complain of disregard for “1400 years of historical and theological context” when in fact it is you who has disregarded the cited theological background. In short, you present no case to answer.
James A Pacella:
It’s only in the most general of senses that Muslims believe that Jews/Christians believe in the same God they do. When you get down to particulars though they do not.
This confuses two separate questions: whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and whether they believe all the same things about him. Muslims answer yes to the first question, and (of course) no to the second.
Muslims believe that Christianity is a polytheist religion.
Muslims recognize that Christians aspire to monotheism while denying that they satisfactorily achieve it. Ahmadinejad praises the aspiration — “All divine religions share and respect one word and that is ‘monotheism'” — and passes silently over the shortcomings. This is all part of his presentation of himself in this letter as a courteous moderate conciliatory man seeking common ground with his adversary.
Patrick Brown, foreign devil:
Suppose that Ahmadinejad did, or does, invite Bush to embrace Islam, what then? Khomanei’s invitation to Gorbachev was not followed by an Iranian assault on the USSR — for perfectly obvious reasons. An invitation by Ahmadinejad to Bush would not be followed by an assault on the USA — for equally obvious reasons. In the real world, it’s the USA that’s contemplating attacking Iran, whose General Staff is assessing the costs and benefits of a massive air assault, which is insisting that the military option is “not off the table”; that’s how the power relativities are.
I’m not sure whether you’re fearing or hoping for an Iranian attack; whichever, you needn’t expect them to sacrifice the practical and political advantages of the defensive.
dadmanly:
The history demonstrates not the eagerness but the reluctance of Iran to attack the U.S. Although the Islamic Republic has been at odds with the U.S. from the Teheran hostage crisis in its inception, since then it’s fought the United States itself never, and through its allies in just one period — when the U.S. engaged against those same allies in Lebanon.(*) At the same time, it’s shown its willingness to engage in tactical cooperation with the U.S., from Iran-Contra on. It turns out that those Mad Mullahs and Hidden Imam Awaiters have as keen a sense of self-preservation as the rest of us.
(*) There’s some real doubt how or whether Iran was involved in the attacks on the Marines and Embassy in Beirut; there’s some real suspicion of Iranian involvement in Lockerbie. For purposes of discussion, I adopt the conventional wisdom on both cases.
All:
Most of this discussion takes Ahmadinejad’s letter too seriously. While he’s no mere cipher, neither is he “decider” of issues of war and peace in Iran. The letter’s mainly an exercise in headline grabbing, partly for an international audience, more for the political public in Iran.
The relevant background is the emergence of some faint prospect of serious discussions between the United States and Iran. In any such discussions Ahmadinejad would be sidelined, because he doesn’t have the remit for the issues most important to the United States: nuclear proliferation, support for various militias/terrorist outfits, etc. This is Ahmadinejad’s preventive strike against that stature-diminishing development: asserting his relevance, posing as a champion of Iran, Islam, and the non-Western world. If the U.S. pays it any attention, he wins, as the Superpower’s chosen interlocutor; if it ignores it, he wins, as the reasonable man spurned by Global Arrogance; if the U.S. talks to other power centres in Iran, he wins, in public perception, as the one who led the way to dialogue. He’d be very pleased to see y’all pondering earnestly over his intentions, but he doesn’t really deserve it.
Robert McDougall,
the only explicit mention of Islam you cite is from some IRNA reporter not from Ahmadinejad. …You complain of “extremely dubious semantic sophistry” but provide no basis for that claim.
No basis? Your position rests entirely on the proposition that the headline in an official Iranian state-run news agency mischaracterized “the call” from the Iranian President. And I’m the one who has no basis for my comment? Please.
This was an explicit call to Islam The only question here is whether you are willfully or ignorantly mischaracterizing the nature of Ahmedinejad. I’m leaning towards willful since you are obviously not ignorant.
You complain of disregard for “1400 years of historical and theological context” when in fact it is you who has disregarded the cited theological background.
The context you leave out is the 1400 years of historical precedents based on the demands of the Quran that Muslims wage jihad against Christians who refuse to submit to Islamic domination, accept dhimmi status and pay the jiyza. Any protection of the right for Christians to decline the call to Islam is dependent on their submission to Islamic rule. Otherwise, they have no more rights than an animal.
Again, the only question is whether you leave out this context willfully or ignorantly. I think that you know this was a call to Islam and you are deliberately mischaracterizing Ahmadinejad’s letter and statements.
Robert McDougall #20:
“Most of this discussion takes Ahmadinejad’s letter too seriously.” and following:
Whatever the secondary considerations are–such as the internal maneuvering you describe, or a da’wa–the letter’s primary objective is shared by all of the Iranian government and much of its public.
(BTW, I linked to RFE/RL (#16) to show that the “call to Islam” interpretation is not the creation of Western observers. Knowledgeable Iranians see the letter as such.)
The letter is a part of a campaign of delay and obfuscation, in order to grant more time to the nuclear weapons program. Within a short time–how short, I don’t know–the Mullahs will have workable gun-type uranium bombs, suitable for delivery by tramp steamer and conex container. Some short time after that, the Iranians will have miniaturized their bomb design enough and improved the lift capacity of their IRBMs enough to have weapons that can be delivered to neighbors, Israel, and Europe by ballistic missile. As with the North Koreans, capacity to strike the continental US will follow.
Some Westerners see this as intolerable–as readers of Winds of Change know well.
Some see it as extremely bad, and as a symptom of a larger problem of proliferation–as well as an issue in its own right (I’m in this camp).
Some, such as Gareth Porter (also linked in #16 above), define the problem as Western perfidy and guilt, and can barely keep any attention focused on the particular characteristics of the Iranian government’s ideology and practices. They are quite sanguine about the prospects of nuclear mullahs. Some mix of ignorance, the failure of imagination, schadenfreude, and the application of the doctrine of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Actually, it seems to me now that there is a respectable case that the letter contains an invitation to Islam; not in the God talk earlier on, as AL claimed, but in the monotheism talk near the end, starting with “believe in and abide by these principles — that is, monotheism . . .”. Certainly a Muslim would think that truly to abide by monotheism, Bush would need to give up trinitarianism; and would be likely to see as the relevant alernative not unitarianism but Islam.
AMac:
I rather doubt your delay and obfuscation hypothesis, mainly because contents of the letter seem ill calculated to that end; and in fact, the US government has wasted little time in dismissing it. Your Professor Zibakalam’s reply to another question works equally well for this one:
I find no accusations of Western perfidy and guilt in Porter’s article. Without endorsing all his judgements, I think he’s basically right to point to the realpolitik (and I don’t think the U.S. can or should get out of the business of realpolitik). I’d invite you to show how by focusing attention on “particular characteristics of the Iranian government’s ideology and practices” you can improve on his analysis.
Here’s the opening two paragraphs of Gareth Porter’s piece, “Iranian nukes not the real issue”:
bq. In pushing for a showdown over Iran’s nuclear program in the United Nations Security Council, the administration of US President George W Bush has presented the issue as a matter of global security – an Iranian nuclear threat in defiance of the international community.
bq. But the history of the conflict and the private strategic thinking of both sides reveal that the dispute is really about the Bush administration’s drive for greater dominance in the Middle East and Iran’s demand for recognition as a regional power.
He then goes into a “what-if,” presenting a favored speculation as fact, namely that the mullahs were ready and willing to give up their nuclear weapons program in 2003. Except that the Bad Americans queered the deal for world-hegemonic reasons of their own.
I think there is plenty of evidence that the Iranians have never been willing to give up their weapons program, quite irrespective of what the perfidious neocons do or don’t do during negotiations. In Porters morality-play analysis, there’s never a bad word for an enemy of a Republican Administration.
Translation without cultural/historical background often loses essential meaning.
It is why babelfish translations are not as good as a human.
AMac:
So Porter suggests that there’s a difference between public presentation and private motivation, and that the private motivation is focused more on power politics. That’s not an accusation of perfidy and guilt, it’s application one million and three of a basic truth of foreign policy.
Do you think Thomas Donnelly, as quoted by Porter, is accusing the administration and himself of perfidy and guilt?
He then goes into a “what-if,” presenting a favored speculation as fact, namely that the mullahs were ready and willing to give up their nuclear weapons program in 2003.
You exaggerate; Porter says:
In an earlier article, Porter wrote:
As far as I know, Leverett’s account hasn’t been disputed. Porter oversold when he wrote “concessions on those issues”; he should have said “on one of those issues”. Given that the offer to negotiate wasn’t tested, it’s always possible to question its seriousness. It seems to me, the arguments for its seriousness are stronger than those against. Anyhow, there’s quite a bit of fact behind that “speculation”.
Except that the Bad Americans queered the deal for world-hegemonic reasons of their own.
That the United States turned a cold shoulder is fact not speculation. Since they were under no obligation to respond, that does not constitute “perfidy and guilt”. It was, in my opinion, bad strategy.
Is Donnelly (you can read his piece on-line, incidentally) also a “Bad American” when he argues against even attempting engagement with Teheran? Do you think that seeking to maintain and extend United States power is “Bad Americanism”? Do you deny that that power amounts to what might reasonably be described as a world hegemony?
I think there is plenty of evidence that the Iranians have never been willing to give up their weapons program . . .
I think there is no reason to question the Iranians’ willingness to exchange value for value. [Whether a mutually acceptable exchange can be achieved is another question.]
In Porters morality-play analysis, there’s never a bad word for an enemy of a Republican Administration.
The “morality play”, I should say, is very much in the eye of the beholder. Porter’s language is consistently low in emotivity and moralism.
Porter reports Donnelly’s views (accurately, on the whole) and attributes them to the administration. You consider this anti-Western slander. That makes sense only if you believe that Donnelly’s motives and policy recommendations are wicked. Do you?
Rober McDougall,
Thanks for responding and for the link to the Sokolawski/Clawson piece–I’d lost it.
bq. So Porter suggests that there’s a difference between public presentation and private motivation, and that the private motivation is focused more on power politics. That’s not an accusation of perfidy and guilt…
bq. You exaggerate…
You imply that Porter is reporting neutrally. I think that this piece is generous as far as the mullahs but not the Americans’ motives, and that this squares with my admittedly brief scan of Porter’s other work.
Porter wrote:
bq. It is now known that the Iranian leadership… proposed in April 2003 to negotiate with the United States on the very issues that the US administration had claimed were the basis for its hostile posture toward Tehran: its nuclear program, its support for Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli armed groups, and its hostility to Israel’s existence.
bq. Tehran offered concrete, substantive concessions on those issues. But… Bush refused to respond to the proposal for negotiation. Nuclear weapons were not, therefore, the primary US concern. In the hierarchy of the US administration’s interests, the denial of legitimacy to the Islamic Republic trumped a deal that could have provided assurances against an Iranian nuclear weapon.
So, no exaggeration on my part. The unwary reader of Asia Times will suppose that the facts are that:
* Iran offered to negotiate with the US in 2003 (true);
* Iran was prepared to end its support of terrorists (unknowable and in my opinion probably false);
* Iran was prepared to end its nuclear weapons program (unknowable, but in my opinion and on the basis of much evidence, almost certainly false).
The fate of the Iranian/EU3 negotiations is hardly cause for (retrospective) optimism on that point. Nor is the outcome of the Agreed Framework with North Korea. Nor are the extremes that the Iranians go to in the service of their nuclear weapons program, described in many other posts on this web-log.
The narrow point–that the US could have and should have entered into negotiations anyway–is probably, in my opinion, true. Though I doubt things would be any better today, it’s hard to see how that course would have made them any worse, either.
The Newsday account you reference has as sources Leverett (who I don’t recognize) and Paul Pilar, a senior and intensely political former CIA offical, who I would expect to paint a picture that puts Bush et al. in the worst possible light, deservedly or not.
As far as Porter’s and your point about nuclear weapons being the issue: it seems obvious that the nature of the regime that wields them is important. That would be a broadly-shared statement, even though different countries (US/China/Iran) define “good regime” differently.
bq. Do you think Thomas Donnelly, as quoted by Porter, is accusing the administration and himself of perfidy and guilt?
A rhetorical question?
bq. Is Donnelly also a “Bad American” when he argues against even attempting engagement with Teheran?
Another rhetorical question?
bq. Do you think that seeking to maintain and extend United States power is “Bad Americanism”?
bq. Do you deny that that power amounts to what might reasonably be described as a world hegemony?
Depends if you view the world primarily from the perspective of governments and groups-with-spokesmen or not. The project that Bush stumbled into post-9/11 may or may not have some lasting success, but no, I don’t think it is motivated by an insatiable thirst for hegemony. For that, in today’s world, I’d look to sharia.
bq. Porter reports Donnelly’s views (accurately, on the whole) and attributes them to the administration. You consider this anti-Western slander.
Not an attempt at accurately recounting what I said earlier in the thread. Is it?
Robert McDougall,
Actually, it seems to me now that there is a respectable case that the letter contains an invitation to Islam.
Respectable? Air-tight is more like it.
The letter’s mainly an exercise in headline grabbing…This is Ahmadinejad’s preventive strike against that stature-diminishing development: asserting his relevance, posing as a champion of Iran
Your counter-interpretation about the purpose of Ahmadinejad’s letter isn’t nearly so respectable. What is your basis for these assertions about Ahmadinejad’s state of mind? What gives you, Robert McDougall, such insight?
It certainly isn’t anything explicitly said or written by Ahmadinejad or any other Iranian official. As far as I can tell, the only basis for your own rather whimsical assertion is your apparently superior psycho-analytical capabilities.
The contrast between your baseless counter-interpretation and your tortured arguments against the explicit statements made by Ahmadinejad is simply breathtaking.
Robert McDougall,
Thanks for presenting an alternative reading of current events, one that is a minority point of view on the American right and in the American center. It is commonly held on the center-left, and may be the dominant leftist view. Abroad, as far as I can tell, it is near-consensus for European, Canadian, and third-world elites.
* The majority of commenters at Winds of Change would probably agree that ‘the problem’ is that Iran is run by an aggressive, theocratic, terror- and intolerance- exporting regime that is on the cusp of benefitting from and contributing to nuclear proliferation.
* I suspect that you would define the ‘core problem’ as being the emergence of the United States as a hyperpower with a limitless appetite for hegemony.
One implication is that the Bush Administration and/or its successor will mostly get brickbats from the American left and from foreign governments and policy elites, to the extent it undertakes any serious initiatives concerning the Mullahs that go beyond further rounds of Negotiations (however un- or counter- productive they may be).
I’m posting these thoughts because this will be a busy week in my offline life, making it difficult to give your posts the responses they merit (thanks for making a habit of providing links to the articles you cite). There is a more active and recent thread on the merits and disadvantages (from the US point of view) of the Negotiate-Only strategy, “What To Do About Iran, Indeed.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008615.php Might be worth considering joining in there.
AMac:
. . . this will be a busy week in my offline life, making it difficult to give your posts the responses they merit
That being so, and this post being off the front page, I’ll confine this response to points of apparent misunderstanding, passing over many points of disagreement.
. . . no exaggeration on my part . . .
You wrote:
Porter wrote, “Tehran offered concrete, substantive concessions on those issues.” This might or might not be interpreted as “on all of those issues”; if it is so interpreted, it would imply, falsely, that Iran had offered “concrete, substantive concessions” on its nuclear weapons program. It would still not specify what those concessions were.
Porter reports Donnelly’s views (accurately, on the whole) and attributes them to the administration. You consider this anti-Western slander.
Not an attempt at accurately recounting what I said earlier in the thread. Is it?
No, it’s part of an inquiry into what you were getting at.
You said originally that Porter “[defined] the problem as Western perfidy and guilt”. I’m confident you don’t see charges of Western perfidy and guilt as justified (at least, in this area); it seems then that you must consider his account slanderous.
The difficulty is in determining what particular charges of perfidy and guilt you see Porter as bringing. He doesn’t explicitly describe any actions of the Bush administration or the broader West as perfidious or guilty, or anything remotely synonymous. And the behaviour he ascribes to the administration, as far as I can tell, you would either approve, or at most disapprove on tactical not ethical grounds. So to the questions you suggest are “rhetorical”: I don’t really expect you to answer yes to them, but I don’t see how you can answer no to all and maintain your attack on Porter.
I suspect that you would define the ‘core problem’ as being the emergence of the United States as a hyperpower with a limitless appetite for hegemony.
No, that’s not the problem, it’s the situation. The current unipolar system does have its problems; the previous bipolar one (the Cold War) had worse problems, especially early on; whatever system next emerges may make us (or our descendents) wish for this one back again.
As to the “limitless appetite”, though, I’ll admit to believing that every state, whether its power is great or small, would prefer to have a little more.
Thanks, Robert.
My disagreement with Porter does not concern his description of Administration actions. It is his characterization of the prospects of the 2003 negotiations-that-weren’t, for the reasons I described earlier.
With exceptions (e.g. the Mitrokin archives), none of us on the ‘outside’ have access to the secrets of insiders, much less the ability to place them in perspective. In trying to make sense of the open source literature, most of us try to build a balanced though incomplete picture to comport with reality. Our ideology affects our interpretation; the converse should often place as well.
This stands in contrast to the “criminal defense lawyer view of the world” that, in my opinion, Porter exemplifies. The lawyer’s point isn’t to understand or to convey understanding, it’s to get the jury to find his or her client “not guilty.” Argue facts, law, motives, personalities; mix solid facts and speculation; present partial and misleading narratives–it’s all fair game in this model.
Concerning Porter, the specific instance I referred to is his fanciful characterization of the US and Iranian positions in 2003 (#27 above). Do I suppose that Porter attributes honesty, sincerity, and fair dealing to the mullahs because of his admiration of their moral stature? No. He seems more animated by animus towards the government and presumably the social structure of his own society. Enemy of my enemy.
As to your final two paragraphs–“No, that’s not the problem, it’s the situation…”–we seem to be ending on a note of agreement.