PrintSeptember 24, 2007
A 'Reasonable' Man Visits
"Bow down or burn in the fury of nations." is one of the little slogans coming from this week's creepy little visitor from Iran.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a personal sadistic quality that must have CIA psychiatrists scratching their heads. When he tried to smile in the direction of Ground Zero, pretending to express compassion for the victims of America's biggest bleeding wound in the jihad war, he gave out a triple message:
--- To the dupes and suckers on the Left, he is just "a reasonable man," as CBS' Mike Wallace called him last year;
--- to those who see him with naked eyes, the message is: You're next, buddy, as soon as I get my chance.
--- And to the folks back home, who have been fervently chanting "Death to America!" "Death to Israel!" for almost thirty years, he is winking and mugging and sending the message "Hooray!!! Three thousand Satanic dead!"
According to Brett Stephens in the Wall Street Journal last year,
"Numerous Iranian sources allege that in the 1980s [Ahmadinejad] worked as an interrogator and executioner in Evin Prison in Tehran. They say [he] earned the nickname Tir Khalas Zan, or "The Terminator," for [his] methods there."Kevin Hermening, a Marine sergeant at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis, tells this newspaper [that Ahmadinejad] interrogated him personally on Nov. 4, 1979, while brandishing a pistol. For the record, he remembers [him] as a ‘very mean SOB' and described a sense of ‘déjà vu' while watching [his] performance on ‘60 Minutes.'"
It seems plausible. That mix between the smiling and the sadistic Ahmadinejad is perfect for a torturer, always promising smiling relief to his victims as soon as they "bow down," torn by panic and pain. When Mike Wallace came out of retirement to interview the reasonable Mr. Ahmadinejad last year, you could see the game being played with Wallace himself. Ahmadinejad hinted that he could kill the interview at any time, exactly the right lever to control Wallace's questions.
Has Mahmoud Strangelove stopped terminating people? Not according to Brett Stephens. Among his more recent victims are:
1. Akbar Mohammadi, a student leader, reported tortured to death (www.iranpressnews.com)2. Abed Tavancheh, 23, a blogger, "arrested and tortured ... sustained permanent damage to his kidneys..."3. Ahmad Batebi, student dissident in 1999, arrested and released after six years, re-arrested on July 29, 2006. Fate unknown.
4. Mansour Ossanloo, the leader of the independent trade union representing the workers of the Vahed Bus Company in Tehran.
5. Ahmadinejad is "also suspected of involvement in the assassination of Abdurrahman Qassemlou, a leader of Iran's Kurdish minority, in Vienna in 1989."
Feeling sick already? Well, don't forget the 15-year old girl who was hanged last year by her Shari'a judge for walking hand-in-hand with a 25 year old man. Hanging teenage girls appears to be something of a specialty of the mullahs. The judge had to hang the 15-year-old himself because the professional hangman refused to do the job.
And our media might remember Zahra Kazemi, a woman journalist with Canadian-Iranian nationality, who was raped and beaten to death last year. Her rapist-killer is now Iran's official representative on the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Ahmadinejad is exactly the religious fanatic the Left is always pretending to see in peaceful Christians and orthodox Jews. MEMRI has quoted him:
"The Iranian nation and the Islamic Revolution have a pivotal role in preparing the ground for the coming of the Hidden Imam... We must rapidly develop Iran in order to create the [right] conditions for his coming, and we must also help the rest of the world's nations [to prepare for his return], in order to precipitate this great event..."( (August 29, 2007)"The responsibility that currently rests on Iran's [shoulders] is very heavy; it is the kind of mission [with which] the divine prophets [were entrusted]. It does not permit us to rest or slumber even for a moment. Have you ever seen a prophet take a rest from the fulfillment of his mission?..."
This week Ahmadinejad has two chances to stir up mischief among the eager wishful thinkers in the Big Satan, one at Columbia University (which has just discovered academic freedom as a core value, even though Ahmadinejad is currently purging the universities in Iran). The other free publicity op is an invited speech to the National Press Club.
Ahmadinejad was Khomeini's errand boy during the US hostage crisis in 1979, has led the Quds Brigade that bombed Jewish synagogues in Buenos Aires and the US Marine Barracks in Lebanon, and since his take-over, has planted Iranian Revolutionary Guards throughout the Tehran government and economy. He has punished and purged students and faculty at Iranian universities, and sent high-tech IED to kill Americans in Iraq.
It is the glorification of martyrdom that sets Ahmadinejad apart from the run-of-the-mill sadistic tyrant with delusions of grandeur. It's quite likely that Ahmadinejad is looking forward to his own martyrdom, as part of a larger plan to draw other nations into disastrous warfare. Ahmadinejad may actually believe, as Mao Zedong once said of China, that Iran can sustain multiple nuclear attacks while the West could only tolerate one.
This guy is not your normal looney-tunes rogue leader; Rather than Brezhnev or even Kim Jong-il, he does not care if he lives after the Mahdi's Armageddon. Pol Pot with nukes, Allah, and plenty of spare cash.
As for Israel, John Podhoretz quoted him in the New York Post last September 6:
"Iran's leaders have also declared their absolute hostility to America. Last October, Iran's president declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- 'whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved. I say that this goal is achievable.'
No doubt he feels this is a realistic goal and has in mind the plan to achieve it. All very reasonable in his worldview.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com.
