British newspaper The Independent has an article which follows nicely from my review of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University.

It is absolutely astounding to me how many people are against freedom of expression in the United States. I was dumbfounded over all the protests against Iranian president Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University. Here’s the leader of a sovereign nation which is not at war with anyone, and he’s being protested just for speaking. A few days ago, there was a big uproar about anti-war political group MoveOn.org publishing an ad very critical of US General David Petraus. The incidents combined have left me wondering what people think America is all about.

I don’t support a lot of what Ahmadinejad or MoveOn have said recently. But so what if the ideas someone is expressing are loony, or inflammatory, or menacing, or disrespectful? The best way for people to judge something is to hear/see it for themselves. Once you’ve heard what they have to say (not media interpretations, but a first hand listening), you can disagree with them all you want, because in America, your free speech is guaranteed as well. But to insist that the mere words of a “madman” or group are so inflammatory that they shouldn’t be allowed the right to express them is downright un-American.

It’s easy to name at least a handful of Americans over the years who have repeatedly gotten up in front of huge audiences, or leaked stories to the press, in order to spread messages of lies and hate. Yet here’s a foreigner being invited to speak at an American University, where nobody really knows what he’s going to say, and there’s an uproar. And here’s another group that has an opinion widely shared by many Americans, and they’re officially condemned by the US Congress for expressing that point of view.

It’s just speech. What is everyone so afraid of?

Many years ago, I went on a trip to the Soviet Union. Almost immediately, I realized that our small group was allowed to travel freely and interact with anyone we chose, contrary to what I had been led to believe for most of my life. At that point, something dawned on me. The propaganda machine in the US was at least as well-fueled as the one in the Soviet Union. The difference was that the Americans believed theirs, whereas the Russians didn’t.

People who want to affect policy, selectively and anonymously leak information in order to shape public opinion. They use citizen’s groups and media coverage to rally support for their views. As a result, what you see on the evening news is a carefully orchestrated set of facts, presented and omitted, to create a certain impression.

I sometimes wonder if the reason that major media outlets give such huge coverage to those who protest against free expression is because the views that the person is trying to freely express run contrary to those presented by the very same media outlets. The mass-media in the US presents Petraus as a hero and Ahmadinejad as a madman. Could it be that they don’t want people to hear points of view that might convince them otherwise?

I reviewed President Ahmadinejad’s speech in my previous post below.

My thoughts on the speech of Iranian president Ahmadinejad at Columbia University yesterday.

First of all, I had a hard time finding the full speech online. There were lots of commentaries and excerpts, but I generally try to avoid watching those if I want to form my own opinion. Eventually, I did find and watch the raw video here.

It’s long, and admittedly boring at times, but if you’re interested in a first-hand impression, rather than someone else’s interpretation (including mine) of what was said, I encourage you to watch it.

A word about translation

The difficulties of translation can have widespread and lasting effects. For centuries, countless people believed that Jews had horns, all because part of the Old Testament was mistranslated from Hebrew into Latin.

There are times in the Ahmadinejad broadcast when the interpreter stumbles for words or context. As anyone with a good facility in multiple languages knows, the subtlety of meaning is very difficult to get across when translating, and even more so with the high speed rigors of live interpreting. In some languages, words have common roots, or similar expressions exist because of years of parallel culture. But Persian has almost nothing in common with modern English. As such, I think a lot gets lost in the translation.

An article in the New York Times suggests that President Ahmadinejad’s most infamous statement, that Israel “should be wiped off the map,” may actually have been mistranslated. From the article:

“Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian,” remarked Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan and critic of American policy who has argued that the Iranian president was misquoted. “He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.” Since Iran has not “attacked another country aggressively for over a century,” he said in an e-mail exchange, “I smell the whiff of war propaganda.”

Jonathan Steele, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in London, recently laid out the case this way: “The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran’s first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that ‘this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,’ just as the Shah’s regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The ‘page of time’ phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon.”

Clearly, the Iranian president is no fan of Israel and would like to see it gone. But that’s a far cry from threatening an attack.

The introduction and speech

The Dean of the university gave a ten-minute stinging indictment of the Iranian leader as a means of introduction. I was pretty astounded. First, it just seemed downright rude to invite someone to speak at your institution and then pepper him with denigrating language before he even has a chance to open his mouth. But even worse was the dean’s baiting of the president, presupposing aloud that Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have the “courage” to answer his charges. When the president finally got a chance to speak, he took the dean to task for the introduction and the audience responded with a round of applause.

But after that, the Iranian leader had a choice. He could take the bait and completely abandon the speech he had prepared for a very unique opportunity to address an American university, or he could stick to the plan he made before he knew he would be subject to a wholesale attack prior to even approaching the dais. The president chose to give his prepared speech. I don’t think that means he lacked the “courage” to answer the accusations, but rather, that he was caught unaware, and so stuck with his plan.

Ahmadinejad’s speech was focused on the influence that science, philosophy and education have on world politics. He tried to tie in his presence at an institution of higher learning with the current and future state of world affairs. In doing so, he highlighted his personal background as a university professor, as well as his views about the role of education in forming opinions through open and honest dialog.

His speaking style is long-winded and circular, with frequent religious references. I imagine that this is quite common for political speakers from his part of the world, but it doesn’t play well to a US audience. I kept thinking that he really needs a public relations consultant to help him “Americanize” his approach if he hopes to gain sympathy in the US. Even American politicians try to sound direct when they avoid the relevant topics. Ahmadinejad does not. And although religion and politics mix freely in the Muslim world, they don’t in the vast majority of US speaking venues.

Questions

After his speech, Ahmadinejed was asked some questions from the Dean and the audience. They covered various topics, but I’ll focus on four here: Israel, nuclear weapons, treatment of homosexuals, and support for terrorism.

Israel

The position presented by the Iranian president on the Israel-Palestinian conflict seems to be this: prior to World War II, the region of Palestine was a place where Jews, Muslims, Christians and secularists lived together peacefully. Although Palestine was not involved in the war, the atrocities of the war were used as a justification to give one group of people in that region complete dominion over the others, resulting in social and political upheaval. The proclamation of Palestine as a Jewish state, along with the huge influx of population, cash and weapons to support its newly formed government, ostracized many non-Jewish people who had lived there for generations without mind to the differing faiths. Many, especially the Muslims, were forced from their homes and became refugees. Sixty years later, most of them still are. The ones who remained now live in “occupied territory” under the constant threat of attack by millions of dollars in US-supplied weaponry. The situation is unjust, and should be remedied by a fair vote of all the people in the region, from all faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

On the surface, that position seems reasonable. The history is certainly disputable, but the proposed solution appeals to our democratic ideals. Unfortunately, my view is that such a proposal is completely unworkable. You can’t turn back the hands of time. Israel is a nation, internationally recognized and having successfully fought for its existence many times. Furthermore, so much enmity has accrued over the last sixty years that whatever balance remains would be completely obliterated by an electoral free-for-all. Even if all the current political groups could be magically disbanded, individual prejudice is rampant in the region. The supposition that all people currently living in that environment would choose an equal and just system that promises fairness to all parties is something that I cannot even imagine. I foresee all-out civil war with such a scenario.

Nuclear Weapons

Ahmadinejad maintains that his country’s nuclear program is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. To back that up, he claims that Iran is a long-standing member of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). Part of that organization’s charter is that all member states have the right to pursue peaceful use of nuclear power. The president claims that his nation has been subject to many IAEA inspections — in fact, more than other nations with vast quantities of reactors and weapons — and has been found in compliance each time. Additionally, the president claims that Iran has no use for a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA’s web site contains a report on Iran from just one week ago. The agency’s director general made four points regarding the “implementation of Agency safeguards in the Islamic Republic of Iran”:

* The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran;

* Iran has provided the Agency with additional information and access needed to resolve a number of long outstanding issues, such as the scope and nature of past plutonium experiments;

* Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, calling on Iran to take certain confidence-building measures, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, and is continuing with its construction of the heavy water reactor at Arak – “this is regrettable”, he commented; and

* While the Agency so far has been unable to verify certain important aspects relevant to the scope and nature of Iran´s nuclear programme, Iran and the Secretariat agreed last month on a work plan for resolving all outstanding verification issues.

The above at least partially supports Ahmadinejad’s claims. Moreover, it seems to indicate that this issue is not at any kind of a critical juncture where a decision needs to be made. The Iranian president says that his country and the US are not on a path to war over Iran’s nuclear program, and that there would be no reason for war between them. Political dialog is what’s needed.

Obviously, any country which runs a civilian nuclear program would have an easier time eventually producing nuclear weapons than one which has no such program. It also seems plausible that hiding a weapons program would be easier in a country which already has nuclear technology at work, than in one which doesn’t. So, even if the Iranian program is entirely peaceful right now, I can understand the international community’s concern about the eventual goals of the Iranian government. That being said, does a nation’s future potential to possess a highly destructive weapon mean that other nations have the right to attack them preemptively? If that’s the standard, without any kind of demonstration of intent, we’d be literally bombing people back to the stone age all over the world, and making a lot of enemies along the way.

There are eerie similarities here with the run-up to the Iraq war. International weapons inspectors were telling the world that they had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while at the same time, US politicians were presenting all sorts of evidence based on supposition and third-party sources. They were also claiming that Saddam Hussein was obstructing the work of the inspectors.

Well, we all know how that turned out: the trained inspectors on the ground in the country were right and the politicians with ulterior motives turned out to be wrong. Does anyone in the US government have a shred of credibility left when they claim that another nation is seeking weapons of mass destruction? I sure hope not.

Homosexuals

The president was asked a question about the treatment of women and homosexuals in his country. Part of his response was translated as, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”

The audience laughed and booed at this statement, and I can understand why. It seems like a preposterous level of denial, given current US thinking, to suggest that an entire society is devoid of homosexuality. An audience of university students is probably even more hostile to this suggestion than the average American.

But I have a different perspective on the president’s remarks. Iran is an Islamic society where homosexuality is widely considered more than just taboo; it’s a mortal sin. Culturally, for one to admit he or she is a homosexual is likely to result in, at the very least, extreme social isolation. As such, I doubt that homosexuality is widely acknowledged by people there. Without widespread acknowledgement of the “phenomenon”, the impression is that it doesn’t exist, or at least, denial of its existence is plausible.

I would imagine that any Arab leader, even one running a nation which is allied with the US, would deny the existence of homosexuals in his country. Furthermore, if you asked any prominent US politician the same question fifty years ago, you probably would have gotten a similar response. Culturally speaking, the Islamic countries are still deeply entrenched in ideas that have been given up by the Western world… some long ago, and some merely a generation or so. There’s no reason to expect that a cultural divide such as this would not be reflected in the speech of the nation’s leader.

Support for terrorism

The Iranian president paints his country as a victim of terrorism, rather than a supporter of it. He makes a case that, throughout the last century, his nation has been subjected to many attacks by a single terrorist organization, and although he doesn’t mention it by name, it’s clear that he’s talking about the CIA. The history does support this claim, though obviously most Americans do not view the CIA this way.

Ahmadinejad failed to address whether his government provides material support for terrorist organizations. The claims on both sides of this issue are very difficult to verify. Much of it hinges on who you believe and how you define “terrorist,” which has been a problem in the US since the Patriot Act failed to do so. Depending on the part of the world you’re in and your political leanings, one person’s terrorist is another’s “freedom fighter.” One leader’s idea of “liberation” is another’s idea of terrorism. It’s all very amorphous, and until someone really sits down and defines all these terms with some clarity, I don’t think there’s any kind of truth to be found.

Overall impression

I felt that Iranian president Ahmadinejad did a decent job of stating his case and not coming across like a “madman” or fanatic. Some of his statements were controversial, but taken as a whole, the speech wasn’t an anti-Western diatribe.

Did he evade some questions? Of course he did. He’s a politician, and he knows that his audience back home is listening too. Have you watched any interviews with US presidential candidates lately? How many times has the interviewer baited a candidate by asking, “Will you promise, right now, in this interview, that you will never…?” Politicians are always weaseling their way out of unequivocal statements. Ahmadinejad does the same. ‘Yes or no’ answers on controversial issues are contrary to a politician’s goal of maintaining the widest possible support among his constituents. We may not like it, but that’s what they do.

I don’t think that those who watch the entire speech will come away with the impression that this man’s goal is to acquire a nuclear weapon and attack Israel or the United States. I’m pretty sure he knows that would be suicide. Nor do I think he comes across as emotionally or psychologically unstable. He may be misguided and evasive, but that’s not a crime. In fact, it seems to be a prerequisite for leadership in many nations today.

Modern Iran has a complicated and tumultuous history with the rest of the world, especially the United States. It’s no surprise that both sides make inflammatory statements about the other. Hopefully, that dialog, contentious as it may be, is the only type of conflict the two nations will engage in.