Page 1 of
2 THE ROVING
EYE 'Hitler' does New
York By Pepe Escobar
CBS reporter: But the American
people, sir, believe that your country [Iran] is a
terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the
world. You must have known that visiting the World
Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad: Well,
I'm amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the
American nation? You are representing the media
and you're a reporter. The American nation
is made up of 300 million
people. There are different points of view over
there.
The new "Hitler", at least for
a while, has lodged in a prosaic midtown Manhattan
hotel. Contrary to a plethora of demonizing myths,
this Persian werewolf did not evade his abode to
eat kids for breakfast in Central Park. Instead,
he turned on a carefully calibrated public
relations charm offensive. Whatever his polemical
views, for a now-seasoned head of state like
Ahmadinejad to turn astonishing US disinformation
on Iran, the Middle East and US foreign policy for
his own advantage ended up as a string of
slam-dunks.
Articulate, evasive,
manipulative, the Iranian president - even lost in
translation - was especially skillful in turning
US corporate media's hysteria upside down
consistently to paint those in the administration
of President George W Bush as incorrigible
warmongers. Both at the National Press Club, via
video-conference, and live at Columbia University,
Ahmadinejad even had the luxury of joking about
fabled Western "freedom of information" - as so
many are still "trying to prevent people from
talking".
He scored major points among the
target audience that really matters: worldwide
Muslim public opinion. Contrasting with a plethora
of corrupt Arab leaders, Ahmadinejad has been
carefully positioning himself as a Muslim folk
hero capable of standing up to Western arrogance
and defending the rights of the weak (the
Palestinians). The way he deflected US ire on the
enemy's own turf will only add to his standing.
At the United Nations this week, a remix
of 2002 couldn't be more inevitable: it's the same
soundtrack of tortuous diplomacy with the bongos
and congas and special effects of war beefing up
the background. By going on preemptive public
relations, Ahmadinejad was clever enough not to
commit the same mistake of the previous,
"invisible" Hitler, Saddam Hussein.
He was
also clever in preempting ear-splitting rumors of
a next war: "Talk about war is basically a
propaganda tool." One of his key points may not
have made an impact in the US, but resonated
widely around the world, and not only in the
Muslim street: "We oppose the way the US
government tries to rule the world"; there are
"more humane methods of establishing peace". He
assured that no Iranian weapons are flowing into
Iraq, adding that "regional countries in the
Middle East don't need outside interference".
On uranium enrichment, he repeatedly
stressed that it is Iran's right, as a member of
the International Atomic Energy Agency, to conduct
a "legal" and "peaceful" nuclear program. "Why
should a nation depend on another?" But if the US
would engage in peace talks, so would Iran:
"International law is equal to everyone." As for
the US and France, they "are not the world" - a
reference to both the Bush administration's and
the French saber-rattling. "France is a very
cultured society, it would not support war."
Humanitarian imperialist French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner was summarily brushed aside: he
needs to attain "higher maturity".
On
Israel, Ahmadinejad said, "We do not recognize a
regime based on discrimination, occupation and
expansionism," and he said that country "last week
attacked Syria and last year attacked Lebanon";
pretty much what most of the Middle East agrees
with. He may have granted that the Holocaust did
take place, but the world needs "more research on
it". The Holocaust is not his main point: it
always serves as an intro to one of his key themes
- why should the Palestinians pay the price for
something that happened in Europe? He said he
wanted a "clear" answer. No one deigned to provide
it.
To put in perspective the Iranian
hostage crisis in the early days of the Islamic
Revolution in 1979, he said one would need to "go
back to US intervention in Iran since 1953". His
hosts preferred to change the subject. Humming
non-stop in the background noise was the "wipe
Israel of the map" myth. No one had the
intellectual decency to point out that what he
really said, in Farsi, in a speech on October 2005
to an annual anti-Zionist conference in Iran, was
that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish
from the page of time". He was doing no more than
quoting the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini -
hoping that an unfair (toward Palestine) regime
would be replaced by another one more equitable;
he was not threatening to nuke Israel. Warmongers
anyway don't bother to check the facts.
You've got to change your evil ways US corporate media's treatment of the new
"Hitler" seemed to have been scripted by the same
ghostwriter lodged in the same (White) House. On
60 Minutes, the Columbia Broadcasting
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
