Iranophobia hits Ground Zero

[bemildred]

Cross posted to Editorials.
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And as for the US media, in their seemingly stiff competition on who will win the Iran-bashing trophy, New York's Daily News was the winner, with its full-front-page photo of Ahmadinejad circled in red with the accompanying write-up that he should "go to hell" for daring to request a visit to the former site of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York known as Ground Zero. <1> Another New York daily, Newsday, has been equally venomous, referring to Ahmadinejad as a "madman".

Such vicious, unbounded personal attacks on Iran's president recall earlier manifestations of US jingoism perpetrated against, among others, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and, during the Cold War, various Soviet and Eastern European leaders.

With such a long and rather unsavory tradition, the US media have once again fallen victim to an orchestration of "enemy image" that aims to vilify, intimidate, deface and demonize a Middle Eastern leader who, ironically, has been unusually forthcoming in his expressions of warm feelings toward the American people (though not the US government and its policies).

Never mind that Ahmadinejad has released a few Iranian-Americans who were suspected of instigating a "velvet revolution", or that he has broken the ice of diplomatic non-dialogue with the US by consenting to direct meetings between Iranian and US ambassadors in Iraq, or that he has made the most far-reaching Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to date.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II22Ak01.html

[Fearless]

1. To be fair

various Soviet leaders did kill millions of people. Otherwise I agree. Politics never changes.

[bemildred]

2. "When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." -- Winston Churchill

It is never wrong to be civil, and it is always wrong to act like an enraged lunatic. That is not the way to conduct political discussion in any civilized society. All of these people raging at Ahm-an-idjit are behaving like assholes, and they do their cause no good by it.

[Fearless]

6. No one ever said that some politicans were smart.

If they were they'd've done something productive with their lives. Like blowing their heads off for starters.

[dflprincess]

3. So if (some) of the media is acting outraged that Ahmadinejad wants to go to Ground Zero

can it be very long before they start blaming him for 9/11?

[bemildred]

4. Well, he's definitely why we are losing in Iraq.

We did everything perfect in Iraq, and then that Ahmenijad guy came along and turned all the Iraqis against us, see?

[dflprincess]

5. Now I get it!

What a rat bastard he is for doing that to good ol' us.

[Fearless]

8. I hope you're being sarcastic.

Because that's not close to the truth. It's easy to blame another for out mistakes. We failed to assess the situation. We failed to realize what would happen. We shouldn't have been there now or ever. We've created the situation that is there now. If we hadn't removed Saddam then he would have no power over anything in Iraq, if he does even now is yet to be seen. They claim people moving across the boarders. What in reality happens more than not is that Iraqi's are fleeing the nation across the Syrian and Iranian boarders. That's all. Perhaps he is selling weapons to them, but so are we, to the same people I might add.

[malaise]

7. My simple question is how many Iranians

were killed in the twin towers? This Iran hating hysteria is sickening.