I think he should have been received politely and treated like a human: allow him to make an ass of himself before jumping on him - did the school president really need to come down with his contrived moral hammer?  As if we might actually allow Ahmadinejad to convince the student body to become terrorists.  Gimme a break!  There was so much self-righteousness in the air that you could smell it through the tv set.  Having said that, there is no way a man who denies the Holocaust and hangs homosexuals is "misunderstood", he is a lunatic, but lunatics deserve a certain level of humane treatment.

jimmy_row wrote: Ahmadinejad is a violent dictator, there's no masking the torture and suffering that he causes

Not really a dictator, per se. He was voted into power after the real power of Iran excluded the candidates he didn't like. Iran is really a theocracy with mild democratic pretensions. true, but his position belies that of a "dictator" moreso than the president or prime minister of a democracy or republic, whereas a theocracy gives more power to one or a select few individuals - he may have been 'voted' in but he does very little to his people's will, and they still don't have some of the freedom's that any human being should have, even in a theocracy.

As for torture and oppression. Yes, that's rife in Iran, and Ahmadinejad is partly to blame for not doing anything about it, though it must be said, with much of the legal system under the control on clerics he has little influence in this area.

No matter what the suffering in Iran, not inconsiderable as I've said, it pales in comparison to what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and should I say the West Bank and Gaza, all of which the Bush adminitration is in some way responsible for. Hazy again...this really depends on your opinion/perception of the war; if, for example, GW & crew went into Iraq believing it was the right thing to do, it doesn't make them bad people, just pre-emptive and hasty (along with all the other supporters at the time, including both political parties...they couldn't have all been fooled now could they?), even considering the terrible death toll, these things can be difficult to predict.

jimmy-row wrote: and the absurd things he says...

Sure, he says absurd, sometimes provocative things *you're too kind*, I wasn't aware that claiming Iran has no homosexuals makes one less of a shrewd politician (given the demographic he's aiming to sway) and a cause of more suffering than an adminitration that started a war of aggression that has claimed over 1,000,000 lives.

If denying homosexuality exists, while killing them for their "crime" is "shrewd" then I fear for the future of our planet (welll....I fear for it either way)

jimmy-row wrote: he's clearly more ridiculous than American neo-cons and politicians.

Leaving aside the fact that I made no mention of him being absurd or not, what makes him more absurd than GW Bush?

 

 

jimmy_row wrote: I don't think that Ahmadinejad's goal is to win elections; he craves power in a different way, and he doesn't seem to put the betterment of his country above his own power, image, and 'legacy'.

This is true, Ahmadinejad craves power just like any politcian, and like most he has little real concern for bettering his country. He's still a shrewd politician, though, as he knows what buttons to push and how to distract people from domestic problems. Comparatively, though, he's not that bad. well I'd like to know how GW is worse...he is just a much larger figure and thus comes under greater scrutiny.  The motives of the Bush administration are subject to speculation so it is impossible to say that they have any such agenda, they could be doing what they think is best (likely? maybe not, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, while Ahmadinejad is more explicitly disrespectful and wreckless).

jimmy_row wrote: true, but his position belies that of a "dictator" moreso than the president or prime minister of a democracy or republic, whereas a theocracy gives more power to one or a select few individuals - he may have been 'voted' in but he does very little to his people's will, and they still don't have some of the freedom's that any human being should have, even in a theocracy.

Sure they're different, but I'd really question whether the neo-cons were doing a lot for the will of the people. In fact they do the opposite of what a lot of Americans want you're underestimating the amount of neo-cons and sheep over here and the reason they get away with it is shameless propaganda, a lot of which is being spread about Iran, to stop the American people intefering in the upcoming war. Sadly this is very true, the prophecies of Orwell and Chomsky have never been more relevant.

jimmy_row wrote: Hazy again...this really depends on your opinion/perception of the war; if, for example, GW & crew went into Iraq believing it was the right thing to do, it doesn't make them bad people, just pre-emptive and hasty (along with all the other supporters at the time, including both political parties...they couldn't have all been fooled now could they?), even considering the terrible death toll, these things can be difficult to predict.

They are responsible, as Noam Chomsky points out, for the predictable conquences of their actions, many people warned that an attack on Iraq could be disaterous but they chose to ignore this evidence and attack, so whether or not their intentions were good or not (I doubt their intentions were good at all), they are reponsible for the carnage that resulted.
yes they are responsible, but I chose a more virtuistic perspective - I think believe there's a possibility that this was done in defense and that the tragic death toll was difficult to foresee (this is a stretch for me because I am generally against any war. period.)

 

jimmy_row wrote: On the other hand, Ahmadinejad wishes to "wipe Israel off the map" and then denies saying it...then says similar things...then denies them.   As much as we don't like Bush, he isn't below this level.

Ahmadinejad never said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, he quote Ayatollah Khomeini who said:

" http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/ - The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time ".

It's a prophetic statement which suggests that a regime will fall, it doesn't call for genocide, as is so unscupulously repeated by the Western media. Ahmadinejad, from what I can gather, supports a single state settlement, which is hardly lunatic or evil. Whether it'll work or not is another matter, but many intelligent people, including Israelis, also support such a settlement. Okay it looks like I've fallen into the propaganda trap...but I could have sworn he said "wipe off the map", I'll have to look for that.  But anyway, his wish is for the regime to fall, and that beats out (well at least marginally) ol' George's will for the entire world to be democracy (or whatever it's called nowadays....no not proto-fascism! no way! not without a fight.)

jimmy_row wrote: If denying homosexuality exists, while killing them for their "crime" is "shrewd" then I fear for the future of our planet (welll....I fear for it either way

As I've said, that's been the situation in Iran for some time, long before Ahmadinejad became President. To be clear, when I say shrewd, I don't mean to compliment the man. Shrewd =/= respecting human rights necessarily. Kissinger, for example, was a shrewd politcian, that doesn't make the things he did any less attrocious.

jimmy_row wrote: I believe I've answered this throughout...I'll have to admit to a slight bias because I sure as hell hope that the president of my country isn't farther off the deep end than Ahmadinejad, but GW Bush hasn't done anything as ridiculous as denying the Holocaust.

That was very much a political move on Ahmadinejad's part I think. He never outright stated that the Holocaust never happened, rather doubted the veracity of Western claims and rightly pointed out that, if the Holocaust was as bad as people say, that the Palestinians, and the Middle East generally, shouldn't have to suffer for the sins of Europe.

My opinion is that he is using it as a political tool, much worse than not actually believing it happened; I'd like to hear and example of a more crude statement than this from the current administration.
I read an article recently which suggested the reason why so many in the Middle East doubt the Holocaust is because it's used by Israel to justify some pretty barbaric things, and the people of the Middle East are used to hearing all sorts of wild apolagetics for Western colonialism, it could well be that Ahmadinejad is one of these people.

And yes, I think the Bush administration, and administrations before that, have made some far more ridiculous, offensive statements. A paralell example being the US government's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian holocaust.

 

 

Because as a head of state of a regional power, he cannot be ignored or ridiculed. Somehow, the US are not helping themselves.