Who said this, and to whom were they speaking?
you've made terrible choices for your people. You've isolated your nation. You've taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world.
Answer here.
Sometimes when I look at my country, I honestly feel that I don't recognize what I see. Less than a generation ago we believed that the debate over values was one we would win every time. We looked forward to engaging the world. We talked to anyone who would talk to us, no matter how "evil," and even at times engaged those who we knew would refuse our advances, because we believed dialogue would prove our values superior. Open and honest dialogue was itself one of our values, something that gave us an enormous advantage over those with whom we struggled. We were fearless about what we stood for because we believed that what we stood for was right.
But not today. Today people take to the streets to protest the arrival of a third rate leader from a second rate regional power, while our pundits and politicians puff up their chests and declare him the second coming of Adolph Hitler. Once upon a time not all that long ago we would have welcomed his arrival in NYC. One upon a time we would have seen his desire to lay a wreath at Ground Zero for what it would have been: a national victory.
Fear isn't something others do to us; it is something we do to ourselves. Ahmadinejad is one man, nothing more. His words are often false and usually foolish, and in an encounter with a rational society he has far more to lose than to gain. If we have truth on our side, we have nothing to fear. And yet we cower in his presence, afraid that by allowing him to honor our dead we will be granting him some sort of victory.
Do you want to know what granting him a victory looks like? And sounds like? Here is CBS's Scott Pelley interviewing the man we fear so much:
PELLEY: What trait do you admire in President Bush?AHMADINEJAD: Again, I have a very frank tone. I think that President Bush needs to correct his ways.
PELLEY: What do you admire about him?
AHMADEINEJAD: He should respect the American people.
PELLEY: Is there anything? Any trait?
AHMADINEJAD: As an American citizen, tell me what trait do you admire?
PELLEY: Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man, for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire.
AHMADEINEJAD: Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?
PELLEY: Very much so. As you are.
AHMADEINEJAD: What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women, and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man. And once you hear that a person has been killed, you should be saddened. You shouldn't sit in a room, a dark room, and hatch plots. And because of your plots, many thousands of people are killed. Having said that, we respect the American people. And because of our respect for the American people, we respectfully talk with President Bush. We have a respectful tone. But having said that, I don't think that that is a good definition of religion. Religion is love for your fellow man, brotherhood, telling the truth.
Pelley wants to talk about personality; Ahmadeinejad wants to talk about values. If we are what we say we are as a nation, shouldn't we embrace the opportunity to debate him on values? Why are we ceding this ground to him? Maybe I'm crazy, but I've always thought that the point of this nation wasn't to win over the world with wars but with words. And ideas. And values. We need to stand up and prove that we are what we say we are. A strong nation has nothing to fear from this man.
What are we so afraid of? When did we so lose our nerve? This man's presence somehow dishonors the dead? Are you kidding me?
Do you remember the heroism we saw on 9/11? The firefighters rushing into the towers just before they fell? The policemen risking their own lives to protect others? Does anyone honestly believe that we honor them by acting this way? That those brave men and women who died that day would be afraid of this silly little man? That the men and women on United 93 would have cowered in fear had this man been on board that plane that fateful day?
We are dishonoring our own dead by acting this way. We are dishonoring not just their memories but their lives, too. They were stronger than this. Their memories are stronger than this. For their sake if not for our own, we need to remember that. We need to wake up.
This needs to stop. This is not who we are. This is not who we should be. We can be better than this. We have been better than this. We cannot wait another day to be better than this once more.
This needs to stop.
[H/T to Ezra for inspiring this rant.]
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