Ahmadinejad's letter to Americans

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written an open letter to Americans. The basic idea: "aren't we all for everything good and against everything bad, and isn't everything Zionists' fault anyway?".

It's an interesting letter, and fun to read, especially if you are reading it simultaneously with State Department's human rights report on Iran. The basic idea of the latter: "holy shit!".

I mostly just felt like presenting these two documents together, but maybe I should answer the man, at least on some points:

"Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities."

Yeah, I've met a few dozens of your, ahem, Iranian compatriots, although they would have probably punched me in the nose if I called them that. They told me everything about escaping Iran in a truck through the mountains and being pursued by the Guards of the Islamic Revolution, who were undoubtedly put there the by US authorities.

"Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn't?"

Mahmoud, meet Umm Nidal.

"Let's take a look at Iraq. Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially."

You should know, you have financed half of it.

"I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure."

You are absolutely right, it's a waste of money that could be spent on much worthier causes, such as destroying your nuclear facilities.

"You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. "

As opposed to, say, issuing fatwas that call for killing your presumed opponents all over the globe? Or, say, organizing terrorist acts in Argentina?

"The US administration's illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of "the war on terror," civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death."

Oh, dear. Truly, as Mark Twain has said, "Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave." Just fucking look at yourself, or better at your own civil liberties and judicial due process.

"It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice."

Go for it, man.

In somewhat-related news, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fazel Lankarani has issued a death fatwa for the Azeri writer Rafiq Tagi, for portraying Christianity as superior to Islam and Europe as superior to the Middle East. I just hope the poor guy did not say that Islam is a violent religion that calls for killing its dissenters and opponents, or some other outrageous Islamophobic lie like that.

As to Ahmadinejad - well, it's a free country (the USA, not Iran), and the USA's human rights record did become worse in the last 5 years, and this is a fact that does not depend on whoever says or does not say it - but if you lecture a person who is having a drink on the dangers of alcohol while you yourself are lying drunk under the table in your own vomit, expect people to laugh and point.