Ahmadinejad's Ground Zero Ploy [View All]

[RestoreGore]

To me it would have been better to just call his bluff and say yes, go ahead, lay your wreath and show him the kind of courtesy we would more than likely not get in his country. As I stated in another thread I am not exactly a fan of his either, but once again this is all being made "political" so of course once again a chance to show what we are really made of us has been squandered just like we squandered the goodwill after 9.11. Or is it that we are really hate filled people who cannot look beyond that hate to ever even try to mend the wounds that will still be festering when our children are grown?


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1663768,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world


The shrill reaction to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's request to visit Ground Zero is playing right into the Iranian President's hands. He faces growing unpopularity at home, thanks to a dire economy and mounting religious and cultural repression. But his power base is made up mainly of Iranians who participated in the 1979 revolution, among whom the loathing of the U.S. runs very deep. Nothing energizes them more than the sight of their leader being excoriated by the hated Americans.

There's little reason to believe the Iranian President really wanted to visit the site of the World Trade Center's twin towers. He didn't ask to see it on his previous trip to New York. When TIME interviewed him last year, we asked if he had visited the site. His response: "It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media." And he once wrote a letter to President Bush, suggesting that the attacks on the towers were the work of unspecified "intelligence and security services."

So why would he ask to visit now? It is a transparently political stunt, aimed at the audience back home.

snip

American politicians — especially presidential hopefuls looking to score easy points — lit into the Iranian President with a candor they rarely show on the campaign trail. "It is unacceptable for , who refuses to renounce and end his own country's support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation's history," said Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani — who was New York City mayor at the time of the attacks — thundered: "This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons." His fellow Republican candidate Mitt Romney described Ahmadinejad's request as "shockingly audacious."

The Iranian President can only benefit from this sort of demonization. It allows him to tell his fellow Iranians: "Look, I tried to be a nice guy, I wanted to lay a wreath on Ground Zero, but these Americans don't appreciate our compassion." And to the conservative mullahs and hard-liners of Iran, Ahmadinejad's stock rises when Americans put him down.