h/t Hot Air news via the LA Times - a glowing profile of flinty populist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Don't look for any quotes from any Iranians, particularly the negative kind. And nowhere does the LA Times bother to point out that Ahmadinejad's fix for Iraq is a bloody purge of Sunni Muslims, while his fix for Israel is wiping it off of the map.
In praising the Iranian president, Arabs quickly navigate around historical religious animosities and present-day fears that Iran is undermining Sunnis in Iraq and elsewhere . They prefer to speak of how Ahmadinejad is a rallying voice for Islam at a time the region is bewildered by its powerlessness to fix Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The regimes in Cairo, Amman, Jordan, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, have undercut media freedom and suppressed political dissent, and are viewed by their own people as corrupt and ineffectual in addressing economic and social problems. Iran runs its own version of the omnipresent, repressive state, but Ahmadinejad's intense distrust of the U.S. and hatred of Israel have elevated him to mythical status for the frustrated Arab mechanic, taxi driver or lawyer seeking a pure, forceful message.
"...but Ahmadinejad's intense distrust of the U.S. and hatred of Israel have elevated him to mythical status for the frustrated Arab mechanic, taxi driver or lawyer seeking a pure, forceful message." or nitwit, leftist journalist, especially one who besmirches the name of the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Washington Programs, like Marvin Kalb.
Posted by: Fred Beloit | Monday, September 24, 2007 at 09:57 AM